Teaching Opera to Sing

[Michael Ballai]

I've been trying to persuade some of the powers that be to add or update search engines or extensions for Firefox and the new version of Safari for some online bibles. I use online bibles a lot. It's fairly easy coding, but I don't know what's involved, so I haven't taken a shot at them myself. However, I felt inspired this morning to take a look at Opera. Opera is a very good browser, but it doesn't get as much respect as it should. Adding a search engine is fairly straightforward, but it takes some patience to get the right syntax. I'm happy to report that I came up with two online bible search hacks this morning. I tested these in both Mac and Windows versions of Opera.

Adding an engine to Opera is very easy.

1. Open Preferences
2. Select the Search Tab
3. Click Add
4. Enter the desired Name in the Name Textbox
5. Enter the desired Keyword in the Keyword Textbox
6. Enter the Search String in the Address Textbox
7. Click OK.

The two strings I wrote are below.

For the ESV the code is as follows:

"http://www.gnpcb.org/esv/search/?q=%s"

I would use the keyword e, if it's available, for the ESV.

For BibleGateway the code is as follows:

"http://www.biblegateway.com/quicksearch/?quicksearch=%s"

I would use the keyword b, if it's available, for BibleGateway.

Leave the quotation marks out of the syntax! They were added for display on this web page. I strongly recommend that you copy and paste the strings into the address textbox to avoid adding any errors from typing. If they don't work for you for some reason, you can just delete them from your search engine selections.

I hope these bless Opera fans who love God's Word.

Late breaking news: I found a working string for the text of ESV Online:

"http://www.esvonline.org/search/{searchTerms}/?q=%s"


And still two more for good measure (don't forget to remove the quotation marks):

NETBible:

"http://net.bible.org/search.php?search=%s"

BibleStudyTools:

"http://www.biblestudytools.com/search/?q=%s"

Copyright © Michael Ballai 2010

[Christoph Fischer]

Actually, with Opera (amazing browser!), there's an even easier way to accomplish this. Just go to the site you want to search, right-click on the search input box and choose "Create Search..." from the context menu. A settings window will pop up, but, usually, the default settings work. Confirming your settings will make a new search engine show up in your search box at the top right-hand corner.

[Michael Ballai]

True. Except that I didn't know that until afterward. Nor does it always work. I hacked these from scratch and/or from Firefox extension XMLs.

[Jessica Harmon]

Thanks for these! They all work in Google's Chrome browser as well. Just go to Options>Basics>Manage Search Engines>Add, and put in the name, keyword and URL like in Opera.

[Michael Ballai]

That's interesting to know. I know Chrome allows importing search engines from a Firefox setup.

Opera just went to 10.6 today. It's faster than ever. Go Opera!