Writing Firefox Search Plugins

I wrote my first Firefox search plugin: a zipcode search for MapQuest. This turned out to be pretty easy. Mozilla provides an excellent tutorial on how to write a plugin.

It isn't perfect. Firefox plugins are based on Apple's Sherlock search technology and that technology expects that the results list will have to be parsed by Sherlock outside a web browser, whereas the results returned from a plugin search are simply returned to the browser. I therefore decided that, for a search in MapQuest, that I could give the plugin bogus results parameters. This turned out to be a correct assumption. However, it is clear that this plugin could never work for Sherlock. So don't try it.

I made an entry in my "notebook" space where you can download it and test it out.

Posted by Tom on January 21, 2005