Hobbes Sherlock Plugin

Description
This is a Sherlock plugin for Mozilla. It allows you to search the Hobbes OS/2 Archive from the search tab of the sidebar in Mozilla. If you want to, you can even set it as the default search engine and use the URL entry field.

When you do a search, it displays the list of directories and files found as links in the sidebar. The normal Hobbes search result page will also be displayed. You can then click on a directory to display the directory contents. Or, you can click on the file to download it.

I did this because I was looking at the list of plugins available, and, I saw how easy it was to create a new one. But, now that I've done it. I'm not sure how useful it is. When searching most sites, the result is a list of links to other pages. This is useful in the sidebar as you can quickly look at each page without having to continuously go back to the search page. But, the list I get from Hobbes, is a list of links to files with a few directories. The only thing you can do with the files is to download them. I can't find any way to either display more details in the search pane, or, use a link to the files details.

Install
For details of how to install and use this, see Mycroft installation instructions. The instructions there are a lot better than I could write. Then, click here to install the search plugin.

Notes:

The link above prompts you to do the install. It shows the search category as "OS/2", but, this is ignored if the category doesn't already exist. The icon I've used is one I found in a package on Hobbes. I couldn't find any official graphics that I could use.

Alternatives
As well as search plugins, Mozilla also supports keyword bookmarks. These are bookmarks that have an entry in the keyword field. And, the bookmarks URL contains a "%s". When the keyword is entered into the URL field of Mozilla, anything after it is is put into the URL instead of the "%s". Then, the page for this URL is retrieved.

To set this up:

Add a bookmark for the URL http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/cgi-bin/h-search?key=%s. The name of the bookmark is up to you. Open the properties of this bookmark. Enter something in the "Keyword" field. I used hobbes, but it can be a single letter. Save the changes. Now to use, enter hobbes mozilla in the browser and press enter. The search results will be displayed.

Also, there are several extensions to extend the searching in Mozilla. These generally add extra toolbars with a search field. Most can be configured to use other search engines if the search URL is known. Some are listed on the Mycroft page.

History
Updated on 03/12/2002. Changes are:

Added "sourceid" parameter to search string. Updated the comments to those suggested at Mycroft. Fixing a few errors on this page. Added the the Alternatives section.

Future
I haven't decided if there is one. I'm not really sure if the search result is useful in the sidebar. But, I do find it handy to be able to search without first going to the Hobbes home page. Especially at home over a slow modem.

I will probably keep this here, and, sometime in the future, submit it to the mycroft site.

Author

 * David Forrester