Firefox Search Extensions

Note: this documentation is fairly old, and may be out-of-date. I've given up on using the extensions documented below, as I mostly use Chrome these days.

Here are a few tips to make Firefox built-in searching even cooler.

Make the search bar wider

First, you might want to make the search box larger. Do this by modifying userChrome.css. Place this CSS snippet at the bottom of the file:

/*
 * Make the search bar wider.
 */

#search-container, #searchbar {
   width: 350px !important;
}

I found this tip on the Digital Inspiration Blog.

Where do you find userChrome.css?

On a UNIX platform, it will be in your chrome directory, typically something like this:

~/.mozilla/firefox/<profile>/chrome/userChrome.css

On a Windows platform, it will be in a directory something like this, where the specific directory is controlled by your user configuration

C:\Documents and Settings\pronovic\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\wjq3e2uy.default\chrome

In either case, you may need to create the file based on userChrome-example.css, often found in that directory.

You can look at this sample userChrome.css, if you want.

Put a Google Maps search option into the searchbar list

Download maps.google.com.src and maps.google.com.png, and put them in your searchplugins directory. Restart Firefox and the new search entry will appear.

On a UNIX platform, this is typically something like:

~/.mozilla/searchplugins.

On a Windows platform, it will be a directory something like this:

C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\searchplugins

I found this tip at TechnoTaste. I slightly modified the .src file to remove the "auto-update" feature, since I don't want or need firefox to check periodically whether an update is required.