No easy way to change default search engine

There is currently no easy way to do that (i.e. no UI to add/remove search engines). There might be a UI for it in the future. In the meantime, XML files contains OpenSearch descriptions of search engines can be dropped in ~/.local/share/webbrowser-app/searchengines/, where they will be found by the browser’s settings UI. If two or more descriptions are found, the settings UI allows switching between the various available search engines.

Unfortunately we don’t ship any additional description by default, so this piece of UI is hidden until the user manually adds files. But this is being addressed by https://code.launchpad.net/~osomon/webbrowser-app/systemwide-search-engines/+merge/257830 which ships a number of default search engine descriptions, installed system-wide. This will hopefully land soon, and would then become part of OTA-4, planned for the end of the month.

Thanks for the info.

In the default search engine list, could Lilo be added ?
This is a French project where half the benefit generated by the search contributes to develop social and environmental projects, and with privacy protection.

If you want to see more, the page of the project is here : http://www.uselilo.org/ and the search template is https://search.uselilo.org/searchweb.php?q={searchTerms}

A couple of questions regarding Lilo:

 - Does it have an API for live search suggestions (most search engines have a suggestions URL template that returns JSON data for search suggestions based on what the user has typed) ?

 - Is its interface exclusively in French? I’ve tried the little flag at the top-left of the search results page to set it to e.g. Spanish, but I was getting the same results, and the interface remained in French. Ideally, the interface would be presented in the language set by the Accept-Language header.

I understand the questions.
Unfortunately, I am not involved in this project, only a simple user, and I don't know much about it :)
It's just that I find that it is a nice concept that could be helped.

For the first question, I saw on their main page (https://search.uselilo.org/) that some suggestions appear, but it does not seem to be present on the results page search box. For the second one, it seems to be only in French as for now.
And after testing it on my phone, they don't seem to have a mobile version either.

I would understand if those points lead you to choose not to include it for the moment and wait it to be more mature.

Those three points (the availability of a mobile version is key too) are pretty much blockers for a default inclusion. Unfortunately at the moment there is no mechanism to install localized search engine definitions, so the defaults will be available to all users, and a search engine in French only will at best be of little interest to non-French speaking users, and most likely will make for a confusing experience.

That said, please ping me back if those points are ever addressed! More choice is good, especially when there are ethics behind the project.

No problem.
I will remember to tell you if those things evolve.

I finally chose to point on the devel-proposed branch for my phone and created the config myself to set this as my default search engine, so I assume this would not be so hard to include it later if possible.

Thanks for your time !
Adrien

Hi again,

I also use another search engine that is much more mature and that respects the privacy, is scalable for mobile, has typing suggestions, and exists in many languages and with the option to choose the region used to search : https://www.qwant.com/
Maybe it can be added with a better result than what I proposed with lilo

Thanks again for your time !
Adrien

There is an opensearch description for qwant here: https://www.qwant.com/opensearch.xml

If relevant, we can surely add it to the list of default search engines.

If you read French, there is an interesting return on experience article from French blogger Korben : http://korben.info/qwant-mon-retour-apres-1-mois-de-test.html

There you go: https://code.launchpad.net/~osomon/webbrowser-app/qwant/+merge/259571

Hi,

What is the expected json format for the suggestions ?

I saw that qwant provides something like that :
["fna",["fnac","fnac.com","fnac.fr","fnaim","fnac spectacle"]]

and I tried with some request for lilo but I received that, with no good result :
[ {"id":"0","label":"fnaf 4","value":"fnaf 4"}, {"id":"1","label":"fnaf","value":"fnaf"}, {"id":"2","label":"fnaf 3","value":"fnaf 3"}, {"id":"3","label":"fnaf movie","value":"fnaf movie"}, {"id":"4","label":"fnaf wiki","value":"fnaf wiki"}, {"id":"5","label":"fnaf song","value":"fnaf song"}, {"id":"6","label":"fnaf 4 trailer","value":"fnaf 4 trailer"}, {"id":"7","label":"fnaf 3 song","value":"fnaf 3 song"}, {"id":"8","label":"fnaf 3 trailer","value":"fnaf 3 trailer"}, {"id":"9","label":"fnaf 3 demo","value":"fnaf 3 demo"}, {} ]

Thanks in advance !

The expected JSON format is indeed an array with two entries: the first entry is the partial text entered by the user, the second entry is itself an array containing corresponding suggestions as simple strings, like the qwant example you provided.

See http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~phablet-team/webbrowser-app/trunk/view/head:/src/app/webbrowser/SearchSuggestions.qml#L55 for the code that parses the response.

I believe this was written based on empirical tests with various suggestion engines. Not sure whether there is a well-known standard format for this. If there is one, or if the lilo format is also well-accepted, we could surely add conditional code to ensure responses are correctly parsed.

I don't know if there is a standard or anything.

To be sure not to lose te info, here is the link I used : https://search.uselilo.org/search.php?term=fna
I am currently in touch with the lilo team to know if there can be in the future an "official" suggestion API or an official opensearch description

Thanks for the info !

This URL doesn’t seem to be for search suggestions, it looks more like a pure search URL, which doesn’t really match with the results returned. Anyway, please keep us posted with lilo’s updates.

These results are given when typing some research in the front page of the engine (http://search.uselilo.org/), like in the attached screen (I got this call by looking at the trafic with the developper tools F12 on firefox)