DuckDuckGo Changes
I entered a search query into the Firefox search box. I selected the duckduckgo.com search engine. Instead of any useful results I was redirected to a blank html.duckduckgo.com/html. I had to repeat the search request.
I have been using duckduckgo for many years. Why the change?
Classic WTF.
I tolerated this behavior for some days and then dug into resolving the problem.
I suspected the problem would be resolved by editing the duck_duck_go.xml search engine file, but I hadn’t messed with Firefox search engines in a long time.
After poking and prodding I found my bearings. Updating was straightforward only because long ago — before the Mozilla developers moved to their pseudo proprietary mozlz4 compression nonsense — I preserved copies of my search engine XML files. Back in the day when creating XML search engine files was easy. All of my XML search engine files are stored in $FIREFOX_HOME/distribution/searchplugins/common/.
Editing the template= field in the duck_duck_go.xml file to use html.duckduckgo.com/html resolved the problem.
Posted: Category: Usability Tagged: Firefox
Next: Fixing Firefox Search Engines
Previous: Startpage.com Going Downhill