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YubNub - Firefox Add-on of the Day
Many of us have heard of YubNub and its sheer awesomeness. However, if you haven't heard of it, YubNub is this great search engine that allows you to search multiple websites for anything from one place. So, instead of going to Google.com and searching for AllSnap (a great program by the way), for example. Then, something else strikes your fancy and you want to search del.icio.us for something fun. All you have to do in both cases is go to YubNub and use their commands to search any website for anything. Literaly... You can search any site. If the command does not exist for a certain site, just make it! It only takes a minute. And I also took the honor to create one for Download Squad. Just use dls before your search term and you will search, you guessed it, downloadsquad.com.Anyway, this is such a great search engine. So why should you have to actually go to YubNub.com in order for you to use it? The answere is, of course, you don't. That little search bar in the upper right-hand corner of your Firefox browser is about to get a whole lot better. Just head on over to this site here and click on YubNub and start searching any site from your one search bar. In fact, you can just do what I did and delete all of the other search engines from your search bar, because YubNub in the first and last search engine you need.
Comments
7
Subscribe to commentsiisjregFeb 2nd 2007 8:22PM
Surely you can do the same thing in the Quick Search Bookmarks (can't remember exact name, using IE at work) - I've sent some up for IMDB, google maps/images, Amazon, allsorts - without having to go to any websites?
J. MalenkoFeb 2nd 2007 11:27AM
Great idea, poor implementation.
Many commands are or become broken, or can be improved in some way. To do this (without making a new command [i.e. command clutter]) you have to send an email to the admin who manually corrects it. Not the most efficient method and makes it very difficult to deal with 'spam' commands that send you to a spam website.
Second, while many powerful commands have been implemented the mechanisms to do so are obtuse and relatively limited. Implementing new command constructs typically requires server-side support (e-mail the admin again).
Third, all your searches will now also be going through one search engine. You can setup your own Yubnub server because it is open source but I'm not sure if the user supplied commands are also packaged. But it seems overkill to setup a webserver for something that could be implemented as an extension (or c library).
Finally, if you start using it regularly (using search plugin) you will get extremely frustrated by downtime: yubnub.com feels like its up and down like a yo-yo. Another reason this should be implemented locally.
Despite these shortcomings I have been regularly using yubnub for the past 1.5 years. It doesn't get much easier than 'ctrl-k wp cycloponomia'.
richardFeb 3rd 2007 10:17AM
People that use Opera can do this by themselves and don't have to rely on anything. Just create a shortcut for every search engine you want.
Ryan SullivanFeb 2nd 2007 9:58PM
@J. Malenko
Your points are correct, but, if you read up on the history of the site (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yubnub), YubNub was created a bit hastily and currently only has one developer (according to the wiki anyway). So, yes, it is a bit crude in some ways, but I find the premise behind the site extremely fascinating and believe that it can only get better.
Ryan SullivanFeb 2nd 2007 10:09PM
@iisjreg
I'm not really sure what you are talking about. A buddy at work mentioned that you can make different Google search engines for searching on different subjects, but you still have to go to several different websites. With this YubNub add-on to the Firefox search bar, all you have to do is hit Ctrl+E (the short cut to put your courser into the search bar) then start typing. Also, if you do not enter a command for what you want to search, you can just type in the url for a Google-esk "I'm Feeling Lucky" search in order to attempt to get to the url that you entered.
hint: this comes in handy for a future FF add-on post that I will be covering. :P
alex danteFeb 6th 2007 2:25AM
YubNub is far, far more than a 'search engine', it can be used to wrap around any URL-accessible functionality on the web.
I regularly use an 'usd2aus' macro I created (another great feature of YubNub is user contributions), which is just a wrapper around the xe.com currency converter.
And yes, you _can_ emulate the _basic_ functionality of YubNub through keyword assignments to bookmarks, but you can't (to my knowledge) copy the more advanced features, such as default parameters, multiple parameter passing, and command stacking.
However, I _do_ prefer to access YubNub via the address bar of FireFox (I _really_ don't like FF's search engine, it's quicker for me to type 'g' than arrow up or down until I'm on the right engine), so I've set up a quick search bookmark to do it. Just create a bookmark pointing to "http://yubnub.org/parser/parse?command=$$1" and set a keyword (I like '.').
So for me, it's an Alt-D then ". usd2aud 100" to see that, wow, the Aus$ isn't faring too badly these days :)
Andrew PennebakerFeb 22nd 2007 9:48PM
I love Yubnub, so I quickly replaced all my search engine plugins with Yubnub. Then I found how to change the address bar's search engine, and removed the search bar alltogether. I love being able to specify a search engine with g, y, digg, rdt, or dls (Download Squad Search).
If you don't know how to change the address bar default search engine, the instructions are here: http://mcandre.wordpress.com/2007/02/17/firefoxyubnub/