BigSearch
3.5.7
English | 中文
Handily use / switch any one or multiple (uninterruptedly) search engines (or search any websites).
Friendly to novices, satisfying to experts. For daily, entertainment & work.
Includes basic features that a multi-engine web search tool should have:
and so on. Besides above basic features, it can also:
and so on... Go on for readme
Search everywhere ?️ for everything ?. Breadth & Focus.
Ways to use:
Browser extension (recommended)
Web App : For demo purpose. Web app can't function fully like extension. Web app can be used on mobile browsers.
| Use Extension | Breadth & Focus | UI style choosable |
|---|---|---|
| Context selection search | Different UI adaptions | Vem (Vimium-like) |
| Edit search engines | Special search methods, flexibility & extensibility | |
Video of full introduction & instructions (Youtube) (choose the chapter you want to watch):
Useful when e.g. want to translate article
- No in Firefox incognito mode (bug 1380812)
Ctrl+Alt+S Chrome & others:Ctrl+Shift+S
Ctrl+Alt+D Chrome & others:Ctrl+Shift+D
change on Firefox | change on Chrome:
chrome://extensions/shortcuts
If you've used !bang or omnibox, they require you to memorize codes.
While, Big Search's Vem mode visually gives you convinience & ability to use keyboard to (uninterruptedly) click different search engines' different buttons. Press Shift+Enter to enter Vem mode
| Key | Function |
|---|---|
Shift+Enter |
Finish input and enter Vem mode (used when not in Vem mode) |
Shift+Enter |
Opposite to above (used when in Vem mode) |
I |
Quit Vem mode and focus inputbox |
1 - 9
|
Switch catagory (in Vem mode) |
A - Z
|
Press corresponding button (in Vem mode) |
J & K
|
Scroll table down/up |
| more to be added ... |
Above key bindings are not formally determined. May change in the future according to user feedback
Note if new engines added, button sequence may change, so as button key (A - Z).
A:
General GET/POST search flow is:
Big Search's In-page-Ajax-render search is:
The In-page-Ajax-render search feature can be used to search websites that do not provide GET/POST search interface to public (e.g. SPA websites), or those who require random token assigned at a search entrance form.
"In-page-Ajax-render" is short for "In-page-submit-form-via-Ajax-then-XHR-gets-search-result-then-render-and-show-in-page-without-web-frame-navigation"
This part is also explained in the video description
60+ , currently. See list of build-in search engines
Comparison of open source web searching (multi-engines) tools
Experienced users may prefer intuitive horizontal comparison to quickly know what's special. (Also know about others btw)
Online GUI engine-editing tool (link 1) (link 2)
Generally, use above GUI editor. If you don't want to use GUI (e.g. you are advanced user and want to use advanced features), please go on and read below.
Big Search users can edit search engines programatically. Following paragraphs of this section are about JSON-format engine data specification. For both:
enginesdata.js)You only need to write very simple JSON and have basic HTTP knowledge on GET Method.
{
"Google": "https://www.google.com/search?q={0}",
"Yahoo Search": "https://search.yahoo.com/search?q={0}"
}Although above is simple and correct, if you're programmer it's not recommended to use display name as key. We should at least, for example:
{
"yahoo": {
"dname": "Yahoo Search",
"full_url": "https://search.yahoo.com/search?q={0}"
}
}Using full format you have opportunity to use all the features of this tool.
Also, mixing short formatted and full formatted elements is supported.
{
"yahoo": {
"dname": "Yahoo Search",
"addr": "https://search.yahoo.com",
"action": "https://search.yahoo.com/search",
"kw_key": "q"
},
"google": {
"dname": "Google",
"addr": "https://www.google.com",
"action": "https://www.google.com/search",
"kw_key": "q",
"btns": {
"search": {
"label": "Google Search"
},
"lucky": {
"label": "I'm Feeling Lucky",
"params": [
{"key":"btnI", "val": "1"}
]
}
}
},
"label_mbap" : { "lstr": "Cross-engine" },
"itunesapps": {
"dname": "iTunes Apps (Google)",
"addr": "https://www.apple.com/itunes/charts/free-apps/",
"btns": {
"search_apps": {
"label": "Search Apps",
"kw_format": "{0} site:apple.com/*app",
"use_other_engine": {
"engine": "google",
"btn": "search"
}
}
}
},
"label_usaj": { "lstr": "Search In-page-Ajax-render web" },
"chrome_ext_dev": {
"dname": "Chrome Ext Dev Doc",
"addr": "https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/reference/",
"action": "https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/reference/",
"ajax": ".search-box__input"
},
"label_many": { "lstr": "Many Engines at once" },
"many_once" : {
"dname": "Many Engines at once",
"btns": {
"gg_ddg": {
"label": "Google + DDG",
"use_other_engine": ["google", "duckduckgo"]
}
}
}
}This part is also explained in the video description
In JSON format.
Engine data in full format can contain following key-values (special search methods included):
// # Some key-value in the button can override the key-value in the engine name
{
"engine_name": {
"dname": "Engine display name",
"addr": "Homepage URL", // # optional
"tip": "Engine tip text", // # optional
"action": "form action url",
// # For example, https://search-engine.com/search?q=input_content,
// # The action is https://search-engine.com/search
"kw_key": "The key name of the keyword in the query string", // # In above example, it is q
"full_url": "http://www.example.com/search/{0}", // # optional. Only when GET method. Will override above two. The entire url
"method": "get/post", // # optional. default is get
"charset": "UTF-8/gb2312/gb18030/big5/iso-xxxx....", // # optional. default UTF-8 (NOTICE: full_url not compatible with this
"allow_referer": false, // # false(default)/true optional
"kw_replace": [[" ", "-"]], // # Optional, characters that need to be replaced in the search term. In this example, replace spaces with '-'
"kw_format": "formatted string with {0}", // # optional. {0} is like %s
"params":[ // # Optional, the key/value other than the keyword in the query string required for this operation. POST method may need
{"key": "key", "val": "value"},
// # For example, https://search-engine.com/search?q=input_content&option=searchall
// # so {key: "option", val: "searchall"},
],
"use_other_engine": { // # optional, use another engine to do the operation.
"dbname": "bigsearch/user/browser", // # Optional. Where the engines database come from (3 available databases): BigSearch build-in database (default) / User custom database / Browser-installed database
"engine": "engine name",
"btn": "button name" // # Optional. Absence will make fallback to the first button
// # this entire object can be simplified to an engine name string
},
// # (if use array here, then do many operations at once)
"ajax": ...... // # Optional. Read the In-page-Ajax-render websites instructions
"btns": { // # optional. If there is no such item, a "Search" button is displayed, and clicking the button will do the default action
"Button name": {
"label": "Button display text",
"btn_tip": "Tip text", // # optional
"..." : "..." // # here in a btn can be key-value pairs, which will override those in engine
},
....
}
},
}This part is also explained in the video description
Some websites doesn't provide GET/POST search (or not respond results in HTML). Visitor need to open their page then input, they then show results via Ajax on their page. (see FAQ)
Big Search can deal with such In-page-Ajax-render websites (by injecting js to your browser web, to automate inputting, clicking, form submitting). And easy to configure:
Eg 1: Specify the css selector of input box. It will automatically input search term and trigger pressing Enter event.
"ajax": "#search-box-input"Eg 2: Delay 2s -> Input -> Delay 1s -> Trigger clicking button event
"ajax": [2000, "#search-box-input", 1000, "#submit-button"]This part is also explained in the video description
We encourage user to submit their customized search engines data to source code after they format as JSON (submit to file
enginesdata.js)
This tool still can be improved to do something more:
Fast and lightweight: NO heavy framework or library dependencies. Although it has UI themes of both simplicify & fancy, all main features and UI are pure JS + CSS.
LZ-UTF8.js (38kB not minified. Data compression library, only for user-custom engines sync)
Copyright (c) 2021, Rotem Dan
Released under the MIT license.
Foggy Lake (37kB webp. Default background photo)
by Quang Nguyen Vinh
Unicons icon (svg)
Unicons by Iconscout
Because there are currently only 2 languages supported, no framework used yet, only a simple function to implement multi-language.
For strings that you want it to be multi-language (it's okay to leave it English only, also), use JS function i18n(), whose input parameters can be:
[0] is Chinese, [1] is English{zh: "This is Chinese, en: "This is English", fr: "This is French"}
It will return a string of the corresponding language
If you want to add a search engine that only targets users in a certain language, you can use visible_lang to make it visible only to a certain language.
A part of the code of this tool can be traced back to around 2008. Web app published to be usable to the public on Internet in 2015. Not until early 2020s, I found webExtension and JS standarized, so made this tool a browser extension and setup a Github repo for it. (Yes it's developed slowly and gently, not full-time.)
Some code has been ever (and may still getting) refactored. Although there's still some some aged parts, this tool has always been modern, handy & useful.
Code is licensed under AGPL.
Change log
