Thursday, July 12, 2007

Metalink Search In Your Browser Search Box

This is an example of good news spreading fast...

Catching up on my research last night, I noticed an article at Steven Chan's blog about a new search browser plug-in for Oracle Metalink users. Steve's article pointed me to the Oracle AppsLab blog, where Jake Kuramoto has written about a nifty Metalink search plug-in for Firefox and IE.

Why do I think so highly of Jake's plug-in? Three reasons:
  1. It's built on the OpenSearch standard, which means it will behave just like the other search tools in my browser's search box.
  2. Because my browser is Firefox 2, I can perform context-sensitive searches in Metalink without disrupting my E-Business session.
  3. Jake developed this plug-in and is freely sharing it just to make life better for the user community. The blog article actually includes pointers and instructions for installing and using the plug-in, including a path to a screencast demo. Folks, this is the spirit of Web 2.0 at its best.
This little plug-in is turning out to be a great productivity tool and the "cool" factor is pretty high - just today, I've had several people in my shop look over my shoulder and ask how they can get the plug-in for their own use. I'm grateful to Jake for building and sharing, and to Steven for bringing this plug-in to my attention. So, stop reading here and go get the plug-in yourself!

1 comment:

Jake said...

Floyd,
Thanks for kind words. I'm glad you find the little guy useful. My plan is to mine the collective intelligence of our development and find more tools like this that can help our customers and are free/open/etc.
Jake