Comments on: Firefox Search Bar tricks, changing the default Firefox search from US to UK

By: pail

pail — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 10:56:09 +0000

Thanks a lot. Worked like a dream.

By: BillyBobT

BillyBobT — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 20:47:20 +0000

Thanks, works perfect on XP.

By: Baldi Rich

Baldi Rich — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 12:27:11 +0000

Thanks for this, it’s been driving me nuts for a while in ubuntu and this gave me the clue I needed.

For anyone who wants to know the location of the xml files in linux (ubuntu, at least) they live in /usr/lib/firefox-addons/searchplugins

I started by editing the eBay.xml file changing the tag but it didn’t work, so maybe there’s more to it than that. Rather than mess about for ever, I renamed the searchplugins folder to searchplugins.old in my linux box and copied the same folder from a Vista installation on my laptop to my linux box. (In Vista all the search engines defaulted to .co.uk t from the start). This did the trick, minimum of fuss.

By: Hal

Hal — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 19:45:36 +0000

Hi Nat – yes, it’s pretty much the same thing in windows as on the mac, surprisingly. The search engine plugins are located here:

C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\searchplugins

all you do is find the one you want – I chose Google – and edit the XML file. For example. I changed the file to read ‘.co.uk’ everywhere it said ‘com’ and for fun I changed the short name near the top of the file to read ‘GoogleHM’, which now shows up in the search engine list and also in the search box when it doesn’t have focus.

As ever – keep a copy of the default file before changing anything, so you can at least revert back if it all goes horribly wrong!

By: Nat

Nat — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 17:39:00 +0000

Do you know how to do this for Windoze?