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How to quickly search MR Forums with Safari or Firefox

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GGJstudios

GGJstudios

macrumors Westmere
Original poster
May 16, 2008
44,545
943
With so many new people joining this site, I thought it might be helpful to show how to quickly search the forums for information before starting new repetitive threads. Many times, if not most times, the answer to a question lies in one of 3 places, just waiting for someone to read it:

  1. MacRumors Guides
  2. Searching the MR Forums with the Google search engine to see what has already been discussed
  3. Searching the internet, preferably with Google

If you don't find what you want, and you click to post a new thread, I believe many people miss what's written immediately above the message box:

Are you asking a question? Try searching first. Answers to many questions can be easily found.
Otherwise, choose a Descriptive Title:
Do not use a generic title such as "Help please" or "What to do" or "Need advice" -- be specific!​

There are a few ways to search the MR Forums:
  1. There is a search drop-down box on this site.
  2. There is also an Advanced Search on this site, with more options
  3. There is a Google search on this site, but it has some limitations, such as the lack of Google's Advanced Search capabilities and any Google search preferences you may have, such as 100 results per page, etc.
  4. There is MRoogle, which is nothing more than a simple way to use Google to search, automatically limiting the search to these forums. It's very effective.

Picture 01.jpg​

I'm going to show you how to set up a right-click and search function that will make looking up anything quicker, using SafariStand. I'll leave it to a current Firefox 3 user to post similar instructions that work with Firefox.

  1. First, download and install SafariStand, an add-on to Safari.
  2. Next, on your Safari toolbar, click Stand > SafariStand Setting...
  3. Click "Quick Search" on the left column
  4. You can either modify an existing entry, or click "new" in the lower right corner to create a new entry.
  5. Double-click in the Title field of the entry to enter a title, such as "MacRumors"
  6. Double-click on the "http://" or on any other text in the URL field to edit the field.
  7. Copy and paste this line

    http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=@key+site:forums.macrumors.com&as_qdr=y&btnG=Search

  8. Be sure to check the box under "ON" in the column before the title, so the new search will appear in your menu. You can also uncheck any entries you don't want to appear on the menu.
  9. Click the red button to close the window.

Picture 02.jpg​

Now when you see a term anywhere on the web that you want to search the forums for, highlight the term and right-click, then, under Quick Search, click "MacRumors"

Picture 03.jpg​

It will open a new tab and search the forums for the term you highlighted. This search will automatically return only forum responses from the past year, but on the Google results page, you can click the "past year" and change it to whatever time frame you choose.

Picture 05.jpg​

I hope this helps everyone's enjoyment and productive use of the Forums!
 
Last edited by a moderator:
clevin

clevin

macrumors G3
Aug 6, 2006
9,095
1
very nice. I didn't realize google site search has such interesting potentials. Here is what I tested with firefox 3 (2 is good too)

within firefox's installation folder, explore it and find a folder called "searchplugins" create a text file there

the content of the text file is (i m not smart enough to use opensearch format, so this is a ancient method)

<search
name="MR"
method="GET"
action="http://www.google.com/search"
queryCharset="utf-8"
>

<input name="q" user>
<input name="sitesearch" value="forums.macrumors.com">
<input name="as_qdr" value="y">
<input name="btnG" value="search">
</search>
Click to expand...

save the file, change its extension to "src"

restart firefox.

to use context menu search options like above post, you need to install addons such as searchwith.

Above is tested with firefox 3 on windows XP, should work on OSX too, let me know if there is any problem.

PS. any way to use native MR search rather than google site search?
 

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GGJstudios

GGJstudios

macrumors Westmere
Original poster
May 16, 2008
44,545
943
clevin said:
PS. any way to use native MR search rather than google site search?
Click to expand...

Thanks, clevin, for your post! I was hoping you'd reply, as a resident Firefox "guru"! To answer your question, I find the Google search is far more robust and effective at finding closely-related results than the MR site search. Of course, Google search can be used for most sites, simply by adding "site:www.apple.com" after the search terms, to search only Apple's site, for example.
 
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K

KítscheñÇinqµe

macrumors regular
Sep 15, 2008
137
0
No matter where I am, I am here. Except when I hav
clevin said:
very nice. I didn't realize google site search has such interesting potentials. Here is what I tested with firefox 3 (2 is good too)

within firefox's installation folder, explore it and find a folder called "searchplugins" create a text file there
Click to expand...

better to put your file into the searchplugins folder in your profile, because full installs will wipeout the searchplugins in your install folder. however, full installs leave your profile alone (excepting major version upgrade installs, eg, ff2 to ff3).

the content of the text file is (i m not smart enough to use opensearch format, so this is a ancient method)

<search
name="MR"
method="GET"
action="http://www.google.com/search"
queryCharset="utf-8"
>

<input name="q" user>
<input name="sitesearch" value="forums.macrumors.com">
<input name="as_qdr" value="y">
<input name="btnG" value="search">
</search>
Click to expand...
Click to expand...

i prefer:
<search
name="MR_siteGoogle"
method="GET"
action="http://www.google.com/search"
queryCharset="utf-8"
>
<input name="q" user>
<input name="sitesearch" value="forums.macrumors.com">
<input name="as_qdr" value="y">
</search>
Click to expand...

you can also install xml/opensearch or src/sherlock searchplugins from mycroft (akk, none for mr? http://mycroft.mozdev.org/search-engines.html?name=mac). the xml versions tend to have less garbage that needs cleaning out.

btw, as_qdr limits period to most recent. value y is one year (backward from now). y2 is 2 years, w3 is 3 weeks, d17 is 17 days. etc. example of popular mr search: http://www.google.com/search?num=100&q=site:macrumors.com+"charles+manson"&as_qdr=d666

save the file, change its extension to "src"

restart firefox.

to use context menu search options like above post, you need to install addons such as searchwith.
Click to expand...
googlebarlite is good. http://www.borngeek.com/firefox/googlebarlite/

Above is tested with firefox 3 on windows XP, should work on OSX too, let me know if there is any problem.

PS. any way to use native MR search rather than google site search?
Click to expand...
if you want an "native" mr search in ff's context click, you might be able to "hack" googlebarlite xpi, possibly by editing just one .js file. i'd replace the answers.com search with mr.
over the years, there have been multisearch extensions for moz suite and (i think) for ff. i'd be surprised if there isn't more than one multisearch at moz addons:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/browse/type:4
add mr native search via the extension's prefs.
 
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