[Pkg-mozext-maintainers] Bug#739395: shipping a javascript-free interface to duckduckgo

Mon Feb 24 04:40:50 UTC 2014

On 02/23/2014 09:10 PM, Mike Hommey wrote:
> If we start doing this for ddg, we'd need to do this for all the others
> where it's possible. Multiplying the number of search engine and
> creating confusion to users is not the best use of resources imho.
> 
> That being said, that's something ddg should be fixing themselves. If I
> disable javascript and use the default search engine, i still get
> results. With ddg, i get a useless result page. Actually, with every
> search engine we ship by default i get results, except ddg.

The two paragraphs above kind of contradict each other -- while the
separate plugin is necessary for ddg, it is *not* necessary for the
other providers, so it's unlikely that adding one would lead to a
duplication of all the other providers.  That said, i understand why you
might think DDG would want to take care of it on its own.

I've asked the duckduckgo folks to weigh in on this ticket; hopefully
they can provide some feedback here.

It was pointed out to me that https://duckduckgo.com/html has the
following information in its <head>:

  <link title="DuckDuckGo (HTML)"
type="application/opensearchdescription+xml" rel="search"
href="/opensearch_html.xml">

and the referenced searchplugin at
https://duckduckgo.com/opensearch_html.xml varies from the handcrafted
one i submitted to this bug report.

iceweasel 27.0 shows this as a new search provider option in the search
box pulldown menu (below a separator) as 'Add "DuckDuck Go (HTML)"' when
i visit https://duckduckgo.com/html

So this is a possible solution for folks who use the same browser
profile regularly without HTML, if they know to look in that pulldown
from the non-js HTML page.  However, it still doesn't work for folks
using throwaway profiles, whereas having it installed in /etc would make
that a permanent option, even across a new browser profile instance.

	--dkg

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