Search questions

[1992casey]

I have some search questions.

 

1. When I search the forums, I run into a situation with white text on a white background. I know the text is there because it appears when I select it. Is there a CSS issue with the search results? I know it isn't a matter of reloading the page or clearing my cache; this has gone on for a while. I'm getting the same effect in three different browsers (Firefox, Safari, and IE?all Mac).

 

Here are two pictures. I'll provide links rather than using up bandwidth.

 

Screen capture: without selected text

 

Screen capture: with selected text

 

2. Is there a means to search the articles, transactions, etc. on the Brewerfan.net portion of this site? I thought there used to be one but I'm not finding one now. Maybe I'm just crazy or blind? http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/eek.gif

 

3. Have you ever considered writing Firefox/Mozilla plug-ins to search this site? It'd be really cool to see Brewerfan.net drop down from the search box, one for the forums and one for the rest of the site.

 

I've looked at the directions for creating these things. I almost understand them; that's kind of scary. http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif It tells me, though, that the task might not be very hard for someone who knows what he's doing. (Note: there's a big chunk of white space near the top of the directions page; scrolling down gets you to the content.)

 

The only restriction seems to be that these plug-ins seem to need to use the "GET" method, whatever that means. It's easy to look at examples. Do a search for 'google.src' on your hard drive and you'll find the folder containing the engines you already have installed. They can be opened in any text editor.

 

Here are a couple source codes online:

 

Google Baseball-Reference.com

 

Thanks! http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif

[squarepusher]

[ 1. When I search the forums, I run into a situation with white text on a white background. I know the text is there because it appears when I select it. Is there a CSS issue with the search results? I know it isn't a matter of reloading the page or clearing my cache; this has gone on for a while. I'm getting the same effect in three different browsers (Firefox, Safari, and IE?all Mac). ]

 

I'll look into it.... Although i'm really displeased with ezBoards's search functionality in the first place. The results it produces seem inconsistent to me.

 

[ 2. Is there a means to search the articles, transactions, etc. on the Brewerfan.net portion of this site? I thought there used to be one but I'm not finding one now. Maybe I'm just crazy or blind? ]

 

There used to be a search box on the site, but in never really functioned properly. Maybe i'll add that back to my to-do list, as I don't think it'll be THAT hard to implement.

 

[ 3. Have you ever considered writing Firefox/Mozilla plug-ins to search this site? It'd be really cool to see Brewerfan.net drop down from the search box, one for the forums and one for the rest of the site. ]

 

Wow, looking at those two source files (if that's all there is to it), it does look pretty easy. I'll add that to my to-do list as well....

[1992casey]

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Maybe i'll add that back to my to-do list, as I don't think it'll be THAT hard to implement.

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I have no clue if this would be a good route to go, but I thought pass this information along for Google's Free Site Search. (It's the third option offered on the page.) Besides being free, it offers the options of being customizable and 'site flavored'.

 

There are restrictions, though. The terms of service would have to be read. I don't believe you're allowed to remove Google's web search function, for instance, and they want their logo used according to rules. One thing I don't like is that there are two radio buttons included underneath, with the default set to search the web. I figure I already have plenty of ways to search the web. I'd like to see the default set to search whatever site I'm visiting.

[berniebrewer4life]

Quote:

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Wow, looking at those two source files (if that's all there is to it), it does look pretty easy. I'll add that to my to-do list as well...

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That would be cool as heck.

[squarepusher]

Search functionality now available at:

www.brewerfan.net/ViewSearch.do

 

It currently only indexes players and articles, but soon i'll have it index daily brews and much of the rest of the content on the site.

 

The Mozilla search plugin should be forthcoming tonight or tomorrow....

[1992casey]

Slick. I'm looking forward to it. http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/happy.gif

 

Maybe the plugin will be an impetus for a lot more Firefox/Mozilla usage among visitors to this site.

 

Have you noticed browser stats?

[squarepusher]

Currently, firefox makes up 7.28% of our hits.

[1992casey]

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I wrote: When I search the forums, I run into a situation with white text on a white background.

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It's not a fix, but I found a workaround for this situation: the Text-Bgcolor Fixer extension for Firefox.

 

Excerpts from its description:

...Many times, www developers assume that users are using black text on a white background color, and forget to specify both colors. For example, very often websites will specify a white background, and leave the text color to your browser's default...

 

Here is what the extension currently does:

? If only body bgcolor is specified, specify a black text color.

? If only the body text color is specified, specify a white background color.

? If neither of these body colors is specified, and the page contains table cells with bgcolors, specify black text on a white background.

? If the text color of form elements is declared to be black, but the background color is omitted, use a white background color.

 

Usage: Ctrl-Shift-T to cycle the settings

When the user switches settings, the changes show up in the status bar at the bottom of the Firefox window until the bar is needed to display something else.