When you use the "Add Engines" command to add new search engines to the Firefox search bar, you’re taken to a page that gives you the option to add a number of lovely search engines, including one for Wikipedia.
But then when you click to install it, it really installs something called "Wikipedia&Google" which isn’t the same as Wikipedia search at all. To demonstrate, if you type in a common phrase like "Berlin Wall" into real wikipedia search, you’re taken straight to the Wikipedia topic for the Berlin Wall. If you type the same phrase into this "Wikipedia&Google" abomination, you’re taken to a page of Google search results, which you then have to sort through.
Maybe this isn’t "evil" (who do I ask for a refund from first, Wikipedia or Firefox?) but certainly unexpected and unwelcome. This is particularly bad since it’s not easy to uninstall search engines you add to the Firefox search bar.
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Whilst I agree it not perhaps what you expect when the “Wikipedia” search is actually a site restricted Google search, in practice this does seem to be more usable that the true Wikipedia internal search.
The true Wikipedia internal search does NOT take me direct to the page – instead I get a page of results (just as in the site search hybrid) – except the results are less usable, since they don’t contain any contextual snippets.
Compare:
The true Wikipedia internal search:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=berlin+wall&fulltext=Search
The Wikipedia hybrid site search:
http://www.google.com/search?q=site:wikipedia.org&q=berlin+wall&sourceid=mozilla-search&start=0&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8
Dude, did you even try doing what I suggested? Go to wikipedia. Type in “berlin wall”. Bang, you’re taken right to the page. Not so with this google thing. If I wanted Google search, I’d have asked for it.
We seem to be talking at cross purposes here.
If you go to Wikipedia, and do a search, then you are not taken directly to the top result, but are given a list of matches as I illustrated.
If however you dont do a search but use the same entry box, and then press the GO button (rather than the SEARCH one) then you do indeed go straight to the best matching page. So the wikipedia offers the same choice as Google does with its “I’m feeling lucky” option.
My point was that the Google search results are laid out in a far more usable way than the wikipedia search results are.