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BrentDC is offline BrentDC
2010-07-28 , 18:56
Posts: 903 | Thanked: 632 times | Joined on Apr 2008
#141
Originally Posted by evad View Post
BrentDC,
I can understand where are you coming from with your approach to TS v3 - we developers all love our stuff to be nice, neat and clean, don't we? Nonetheless, removing ability to add custom engines straight from UI renders your widget virtually useless to me, as I would never make my little microb.php engine script to your library of shared search engines.
I understand. I never knew that adding custom searches engines was a highly used and depended on feature. After the firestorm in my inbox the last few days, I now realize how many people really loved that flexibility.

Secondly, it doesn't seem to be possible to add multiple instances of single search engine, like separate wikipedia searches for en and pl locales.
Right now you can select whether to use Wikipedia en or pl, but cannot easily switch between. I never thought about this aspect of it (being single-lingual myself, it wouldn't have occurred to me) but hope that is a relatively small use case.

As you pointed, users can hack your app and make own search engines fairly easily, but that's not what users would rather expect. I hope you could reconsider keeping at least the most basic UI for adding own engines.
I have definitely changed my mind on this one -- the next thing I will be working on is an interface to add custom search engines. There will need to be a few back-end changes, but nothing huge. I now realize how important this feature is.

I need to tell that wizard present in v2 was slightly confusing, personally I'd expect only one field, like "Search engine URL" with example value of "http://www.google.com?q={query}" and that's it.
I thought it was confusing too. I guess that is how I justified removing it completely: "Ah, nobody uses the add search engine interface because it is so complicated. I should just go to an addon interface and ditch the custom stuff..." were my thoughts.

Btw, you say you need to spend 10-15 minutes to create an engine? So you add them manually? Or you have some sort of webservice that TS is using to download engines?
I create the engines manually and package them up for download from: http://www.touchsearch.org/addons/

By the time I figure out the specific websites URL scheme, create an icon for the website (usually, at the very least, involves resizing and sometimes color changes or removal of those pesky white backgrounds), create the metadata for the search engine, build the .deb package, upload it to my server, and create a download page, I'm usually in 20 minutes at least.

I've already been inundated with addon requests. Maybe this system is bad by design? I'll be glad to the add-your-own-search-engine days. Let everyone fend for themselves...

One last point for everyone: TouchSearch v3 has been uploaded to, and only to, extras-devel. Meaning that, this is a pre-pre-release at best. I only released it there so I could get a general feeling of how it is doing and find out what needs to be changed. I now know that people want the ability to add search engines and ghosted icons back. Thanks for the feedback.

However, keep in mind that version 2.2-2 is the current stable and end-user ready release. Any versions of TouchSearch that you install from -devel or -testing are just that. In active development or being tested!

When you see new versions of TouchSearch hitting your local Extras repository, that is when it is a recommended install.
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-Brent

Author of TouchSearch -- web searching software for Maemo 5.

Mobile Device lineage: Palm Z22 -> Palm TX -> Nokia N800 -> Nokia N900
 

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BrentDC is offline BrentDC
2010-07-28 , 18:57
Posts: 903 | Thanked: 632 times | Joined on Apr 2008
#142
Originally Posted by Shark View Post
I totaly agree on that 2.2 just rules!
3.0 will rule too. Give it time!
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-Brent

Author of TouchSearch -- web searching software for Maemo 5.

Mobile Device lineage: Palm Z22 -> Palm TX -> Nokia N800 -> Nokia N900
 

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evad is offline evad
2010-07-29 , 10:44
Posts: 354 | Thanked: 151 times | Joined on Mar 2008 @ London (UK) / Zielona Góra (PL)
#143
Originally Posted by BrentDC View Post
Right now you can select whether to use Wikipedia en or pl, but cannot easily switch between. I never thought about this aspect of it (being single-lingual myself, it wouldn't have occurred to me) but hope that is a relatively small use case.
Maybe small, yet very important to many multi-lingual people. :)

I have definitely changed my mind on this one -- the next thing I will be working on is an interface to add custom search engines. There will need to be a few back-end changes, but nothing huge. I now realize how important this feature is.

I thought it was confusing too. I guess that is how I justified removing it completely: "Ah, nobody uses the add search engine interface because it is so complicated. I should just go to an addon interface and ditch the custom stuff..." were my thoughts.
As I said, adding new search engine should be really super-simple. I think many (most?) people know that search query is "hidden" within URLs, so all it really takes is asking for a single thing - an URL with a single placeholder for search query. Nothing really above that. This approach is also very unlikely to crash anything, because when people won't insert placeholder, all they would get is just running plain search engine not doing any search. I would imagine "Add custom search engine" wizard as a single-step dialog window which would take parameters like:

Name: (example input from user) "Google UK"
Search URL: "http://www.google.co.uk/q={query}"
Icon: [file chooser dialog]
QuickBar prefix: "guk"

Somewhere below Search URL field you could only add short sentence like: "Use {query} placeholder for your query".

What do you think?

I create the engines manually and package them up for download from: http://www.touchsearch.org/addons/

By the time I figure out the specific websites URL scheme, create an icon for the website (usually, at the very least, involves resizing and sometimes color changes or removal of those pesky white backgrounds), create the metadata for the search engine, build the .deb package, upload it to my server, and create a download page, I'm usually in 20 minutes at least.
Custom search engines in separate .debs? Woah, that seems like an overkill. :) I would strongly suggest creating a web service interface which TS would contact over-the-air and use to create these custom search engines locally. That should be totally seamless, done directly via TS interface and not requiring user to go "somewhere" and install "something" separately on the device.

Now, on admin side of the service, you would need to have some sort of web based (?) interface/panel to define new search engines. These definitions would then be stored on your server and be offered to TS via webservice I mentioned paragraph earlier.

This is quite obvious approach to me, as I work as web developer, hence I'd do it that way, but it's up to you how you want to solve it ultimately. :)
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J M Hansen is offline J M Hansen
2010-08-02 , 14:24
Posts: 2 | Thanked: 2 times | Joined on Mar 2010 @ Denmark
#144
Originally Posted by BrentDC View Post
Sure. The old version can be reinstalled like this:
  • Remove TouchSearch
  • Disable the extras-devel repository
  • Reinstall TouchSearch
  • Re-enable extras-devel (if desired)
  • Don't upgrade when prompted
Thank you so very much I now have my Danish search engines back!

Plus: I won't try out any new versions before I am sure that I can add my own stuff to TouchSearch (which, just btw, is an immensely useful app. )
 
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BrentDC is offline BrentDC
2010-08-02 , 17:41
Posts: 903 | Thanked: 632 times | Joined on Apr 2008
#145
Hi J. M. Hanson,

In the next few days I will be uploading a new version of TouchSearch which will have the option to create your own engines. Unfortunetly, you will need to re-add your engines to TouchSearch 3 because the format used is not compatable with the version 2.2 format.

I already wrote the instructions for it, which you can see here for a little preview
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-Brent

Author of TouchSearch -- web searching software for Maemo 5.

Mobile Device lineage: Palm Z22 -> Palm TX -> Nokia N800 -> Nokia N900
 

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gordonshowers is offline gordonshowers
2010-08-03 , 19:55
Posts: 55 | Thanked: 18 times | Joined on Apr 2010 @ Pompey, UK
#146
BrentDC, thanks very much for this app, I use it many times a day.

I too have had to downgrade to 2.2 because I rely on my own search engines. I think they'd fall foul of your criteria because a couple of them are not very family-friendly ;-)

Looking forward to your next version!
 
Turkishflavor is offline Turkishflavor
2010-08-17 , 18:02
Posts: 194 | Thanked: 87 times | Joined on Jun 2010
#147
Hi,

i really like this widget, thanks for your great work! but i have a question:

is it possible to modify this widget? i don't want to tab to search, i just want the search widget right on my desktop, like this:



tough the 'Search'-text on the right and on the top should NOT be there, just the search-logos and the text-field.

all i have to do is right something in there and press 'enter' to search. that would be much easier to use and no extra tab is needed.

is this possible or is that app not customizable like that?!

thanks in advance.
 
aahatimy is offline aahatimy
2010-09-11 , 20:51
Posts: 9 | Thanked: 2 times | Joined on Feb 2010 @ London
#148
Really love the widget. One request though, is it possible to have the widget appear on more than one desktop?
 
stew-b is offline stew-b
2010-11-26 , 19:36
Posts: 215 | Thanked: 29 times | Joined on Feb 2010
#149
i still have the old version installed and use it loads...BUT i would love to be able to add 2 more search buttons next to the google one,prob wiki and amazon....is this possible?? i hope so!
here is what i have-
 
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ndi is offline ndi
2011-01-13 , 13:40
Posts: 2,050 | Thanked: 1,425 times | Joined on Dec 2009 @ Bucharest
#150
Touchsearch 3.2-1 no longer appears on my desktop. It was working before the lastes update. No amount of rebooting, killing hildon or any other tricks work. It is listed, I can add it, but that's it. Not on desktop, gone from the list. Ideas?
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