Tune Your Browser with Custom Search and Plugins

Lost over the weekend was a del.icio.us link from Rich to PeopleSoft Search. ChiliJoe has put together a sweet combination of a Google Custom Search Engine and OpenSearch plugins to make it easier to find PeopleSoft technical content. Eddie Awad has a custom search engine for his OraNA news aggregregator as well.

A Google Custom Search Engine allows you to restrict your search to certain sites of interest, instead of the entire internet. This is a way to use the Site Search feature of Google for multiple sites. ChiliJoe and Eddie have done all the legwork for you, collecting all the relevant sites, so all you need to do is use their custom search engines to find Oracle and PeopleSoft information.

On top of that, ChiliJoe created an OpenSearch plugin you can install in your browser and use, just like the MetaLink plugin I blogged about last week. Search engine plugins will really save you time. I’m in the process of getting a new batch of Oracle-related plugins approved, so look for those in the coming weeks.

I love how simple this is. I installed ChiliJoe’s plugin, looked at the plugin’s XML and had a working custom search engine and plugin of my own built in less than an hour. Behold the power of open source. Oh yeah, and I’m not a developer.

Anyway, kudos to ChiliJoe and Eddie Awad and everyone else out there building stuff like this that makes us more productive. Let me know about other examples in Comments.

An update on the MetaLink plugin: I realized that PeopleSoft and JD Edwards customers have not yet been migrated to MetaLink, so I’m working now to build equivalent plugins for you. Then I need to get them approved. Fingers crossed, I hope to get them out before the end of Summer. We’ll see.