• Tuesday May 13th 2008
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Mycroft

	Users:	Home | Search | Uninstall | Requests | Contact | Hosting plugins
	Developers:	Contribute | Submit Plugins | Judge Plugins | Broken Plugins | Mailing List | Bugs
	Related Projects:	Add to Search Bar | OpenSearchFox | Dictionary Search | Context Search | ConQuery | NeedleSearch | Google Toolbar

Contribute to Mycroft

So you want to help out?
Whether you are a surfer who wants to add a search engine to your browser or the owner of a search engine, welcome.

Creating a Search Engine Plugin is not too difficult if you're happy using the internet. Once you know how it works, you'll be creating search plugins for every search engine...
You can access a list of the plugins you have created by entering your email here:

Background information

The Mycroft Project currently hosts plugins in two specifications. These are Apple's Sherlock format and the more recent OpenSearch syntax which is now preferred as it is supported by both Firefox (2+) and Internet Explorer (7+).

While the implementation of Sherlock in Mozilla-based browsers only supported GET requests, the introduction of OpenSearch has also allowed POST requests to be used but unfortunately this is not currently supported in IE7.

What you need to do

The submission systems for Sherlock and OpenSearch are different. While the submission form for OpenSearch includes an integrated generator the Sherlock submission form relies on uploading a file that has already been written.

• For Sherlock, use the documentation to write your .src file which can then be submitted.
• For OpenSearch, simply go straight to the generator/submission form and fill in all of the fields as necessary before generating and submitting the .xml description.
  There is detailed documentation at OpenSearch.org and with reference to Firefox at the Mozilla Developer Center.

Plugin ideas

If you would like some ideas please check out the requests page and also the list of broken plugins.