Firefox Search Plugin

The archives of the Morris Dancing Discussion Listserv can now be searched using a Firefox search plugin. Although the buzz for Firefox is so hot right now that people forget this fact, these search plugins actually work on all Mozilla browsers, including Camino, Firefox, Mozilla, and Netscape 6 or higher.

To download, launch Firefox, Netscape 6, or your other favorite Mozilla web browser and simply click the link below. A dialog box will ask you to confirm that you want to install it. Click the [OK] button. Now go to the browser search box, scroll down until you see the bright yellow "MDDL" icon and start searching.

Morris Dancing Discussion Listserv Search Plugin

Caveat questor: The search engine for the listserv itself has a pretty cheesy results interface and this limits what I can do with the plugin. For example, I've configured the plugin to sort the results in reverse chronological order. It does fine unless you have more than 50 hits returned by your search. Then, for some reason, rather than sorting all of the results in reverse chronological order, it instead displays the oldest 50 results sorted in reverse chronologic order. If you click the "More hits..." link at the bottom of the results page, it desplays the next oldest set sorted in reverse chronological order. And so on. Rather stupid. If I can figure out how to overcome this, I'll code it into the next revision of the plugin. If you enter two or more terms, it will look for entries that have all of them (boolean "and" logic), thus making your search more specific. The help page for the list gives useful search techniques and rules.

Firefox plugins are based on Apple's Sherlock search technology. [Here's the more complete technical specification for Sherlock.] As far as I know, these plugins are not supported by non-Mozilla browsers such as Internet Explorer, Safari, or Opera.