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August 14, 2007

Search Blais From Firefox!

Want a shortcut for doing a title search in Blais?

Candace, our Blais coordinator, has created a Firefox add-on that makes it possible for you to search for titles in Blais without first having to open Blais and select the title search option.

What is the Firefox Search Bar?

This is the box at the upper-right-hand-side of the Firefox browser window that usually has a little “G” on the left hand side of it.

When you type in words in the Search Bar box and click Enter, your browser will automatically search for those words using the search engine selected and then show you the results in the browser window. For example, the “G” search will search Google. You can change the search engine by clicking on the arrow just to the right of the G, which will give you a dropdown menu that shows what search engines you have loaded. By default, Firefox comes loaded with Google, Yahoo, Amazon, Answers.com, Creative Commons, and eBay. Just scroll down to change the search engine.


How do I add Candace’s cool, new Blais title search engine to my search bar?

There are quite a few steps, but they are all quick and easy—promise!

1. Open Firefox
2. In the upper right corner of the window, look for the Search Bar. This is the box just to the right of the address bar:
3. Look for the little black arrow just to the right of the “G” and click on it.
4. You will now see a drop-down list of search engines.
5. Click on (at the bottom of the list). This will open a separate window, called 6. At the bottom of this window, click on the link which will take you to the Firefox Addons: Search Engines page. Here you’ll see a group of popular search engines like IMDB and Wikipedia, which you may want to add.
7. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and under Additional Resources, click . Here’s where you can look at the “home grown” search engine addons, like the one Candace has made.
8. In the Site Name/URL search box, type Blais and click .
9. In the center of the page, click on the link.
10. When asked if you want to add this search engine click .
11. The Blais Title Search has now been added to your Search Bar. Happy Hunting!

Posted to blais | cool search tricks by jez at August 14, 2007 03:06 PM