In October 2006 Google extended their Co-op platform with Custom Search Engine, which lets anybody create a specialised search engine (and earn money from it if they want to).

I'm aware of three custom search engines of interest for Web professionals:

• Eric Meyer's CSS Search
• Sébastien Billard's Ergonosearch
• Scott Bernadot's Sparkl

While custom search engines are an interesting concept I find myself somewhat wary of using them. Not because there's anything wrong with them, but because I can't help wondering if what I'm looking for is on a site that the custom search engine has not added to its index.

Only Ergonosearch has a list of indexed sites. You can see which sites are indexed by CSS Search, but only by creating a Google account and logging in. I can't find any way of finding out which sites Sparkl indexes.

I think giving visitors easy access to a list of indexed sites would remove most of that feeling of uncertainty and make me trust specialised search engines more.

Are you aware of any other Google CSEs related to Web development?

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Posted in CSS, Web Standards.

Raymond Chen has reasonably pointed out that most low-end users don't like using the search boxes that modern browsers provide in addition to address bars. I couldn't agree more.

The first thing I do with any new FireFox install, before loading up bookmarks or any of my favourite extensions, is to remove the search bar. Why?

1. Ease of use. I don't want to have to think about which box I'm going to use for a particular action, especially when the most common action is using Google: which works equally well in both boxes.
2. Address bar is faster. Any time you move your hands from the keyboard to the mouse, you lose a significant portion of time. I don't know if the search bar has a keyboard shortcut, but I know that the address bar does (Alt+d). Even if it does, how do I then quickly select a different search engine than the default?
3. The address bar is multi-functional. I can use it for URLs and google, but if I add some keyword searches to my bookmarks (replace the query string %s and add a keyword), then I can have any search engine I want at my finger tips.

This makes the search box dead space in a prime location. It's one (recent) saving is the addition of Google-style autocomplete. With a little more work this could, and should, be integrated into the address bar. At the very least, the option should be available.

So, what other things do I use the address bar quick search for?

• Javadoc - Look up any standard class with a quick 'jdoc Class'.
• Man pages - As with terminals, 'man [program]' works just fine for looking up UNIX stuff.
• Acronyms - Need to know what something means ASAP? 'acronym ASAP' would do.

I use it for dictionaries ('dic'), the thesaurus ('thes), torrents ('torr'), and just about any other common search because it is better. Give it a try.