I recently bumped over this interesting post on the Linux Mint forums, showing how to create a search plugin for Firefox which will add a custom search engine entry to Firefox.

Basically, you will have to create an XML file inside the ~/.mozilla/firefox/XYZ.default/searchplugins directory (replace XYZ with your profile's characters, could be any name there), with the following content (I will use Ubuntu Forums for this example): You can download it from here.

You can name this file ubuntuforums.xml for example, and place it inside the searchplugins directory mentioned above. This example will search on Ubuntu Forums. Remember to enter the answer to the secret question before searching.

To make other search engines, just replace Ubuntu Forums with another name and http://ubuntuforums.org/search.php?q={searchTerms} with the search address that you want.

Here is another example, for searching the Linux Mint forums with Google: You can download it from here.

To automatically focus the search bar in Firefox, press Ctrl+K.

You can also set an icon to appear beside the search entry, which should be a .gif image with a size of 16x16 pixels, and it should have the same name (except the extension) with the search engine (e.g. ubuntuforums.gif). Here's the KFind icon, converted to GIF at 16x16 pixels: You can save it inside the searchplugin folder, just make sure it has the same name as the .xml file, without the extension.

• http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=25794
• https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Creating_OpenSearch_plugins_for_Firefox

By Craciun Dan on March 06, 2013 | Updated: October 19, 2013 | v0.2.1 r2