Here’s something I cooked up a few months ago to make it easier for Firefox and IE7 users to search Top Ten Wholesale.
Top Ten Wholesale Firefox and IE 7 Search Plugin
Searchplugins.net is a very useful site, at least to me. I do a lot of searching, in fact I do a lot of specialized searching at Ebay, at Domainsbot, at Technorati and so I prefer to use the Firefox search bar rather than constantly go to other search pages.
You can generate custom plugins for virtually any search enabled site very easily and then offer it to customers via a javascript install link that the site creates for you. If you want to get fancy, you can add your own icon, as I did for Top Ten. This will work for most shopping carts for example. If you do develop a search plugin for your site (and why wouldn’t you? it takes zero expertise and its useful, even if just for you), then you can add value to your regular visitors by making sure they know about it. This plugin, for example was developed several months ago by me, and I told the appropriate staff but nobody was sufficiently motivated to push it out there to an audience. So when I started blogging, I knew it would be one of the first things I did. Not enough people develop custom tools to make their site easier, even though thats what all the great powerful websites out there do . But, of the people who develop custom tools, many of them don’t give the tool the exposure it needs to successfully pull in return visits and build brand loyalty. You really ought to be proud of what you do, and you should go the extra mile to make the audience aware of the availability of your tools. Otherwise, it is just hard work wasted.
Here’s some other recent Firefox & IE 7 Search plugin information:
Learn to Create a Firefox Search Plugin
Malte’s Search Tools for Firefox
A Customized Search Plugin for AOL Pictures
Joe,
Hey man–thanks for the new tool. Love it! I didn’t know this was available to us.