Devlog #11:

I changed the spacing on the program to make it look better and also made it so that the user can search if the “contains all of the following” field is blank, as long as the specific search field has some content.

If you’re wondering why it took me like an hour to do these simple changes, it because I had to package the extension and put it on GitHub (and the Mozilla store). I created two releases, and halfway through the second release, I realized that I forgot to change the version number in the manifest. Since I need an unique version number to put it on Firefox, I changed the release I was working on. And I just gave up on changing the already released on, since I’ve already spent like 17 minutes timelapsing, and wasn’t a fan of working 10 more minutes for something no one is actually going to see.

Devlog #10:

My UI still sucks. So, I searched for a website that looks good and easy to recreate. After about 15 minutes of searching with no avail, I realized that there was a really good website sitting right in front of me all this time: the Stardance website, which I’ve had open for like 5 hours atp. I proceded to use KColorChooser to get every single color on the Stardance website. I proceeded to make the extension look kinda like Stardance, except it is still noticeably worse.

Some of the changes I implemented in order to be more like Stardance also doubled as general quality of life improvements. One such improvement was changing the search button to not even being able to be pressed when query is empty. It now copies the Stardance UI by greying out the button, and changing the cursor to “not-allowed”. A popup also appears when you hover over the greyed-out button, also like Stardance.

The UI still needs some improvements probably, I hope I can get it done soon.

Devlog #9:

I wasted an hour trying to add time operators. Then I discovered that time and data operators are not universal across search engines, which means that it would take absolutely forever to implement it. Rather than waste more time, I just decided to cut my losses and quit before it consumes too much of my time. I still have several other projects I would like to start/finish, so yeah. TD;DR: spent an hour doing nothing (that I didn’t decided to undo).

Devlog #8:

When I shipped the project, the feedback from the reviewers was mostly positive, and there was only one real problem: the UI sucks. Which, for the record, I totally agree with. I don’t know what I was thinking, shipping a project that looks like someone made it in like 2004. Now, uh… the UI is like 10% better. Yes, it took me 5 hours to do it (I mean, some of the time was spent improving the README to be better). I went through like 10 different versions with different colours, fonts, and text box rounding. If you think one of the themes is better than the current one, please tell me, I need feedback.

Not really a devlog, but some IMPORTANT NOTES

first, FOR FURTHER CLARIFICATION:

• The live demo link is the web version
• The Firefox link is linked in the README
• Releases for both Chrome and Firefox are in the GitHub releases

The extension is now LIVE on the Mozilla Store, for Firefox-based browsers like Firefox, Librewolf, etc. Click here to download. For chrome users, well I’m not paying to put the extension onto the Chrome Web Store, so apologies. You can still try the web version or the manual installation.

Devlog #6 (final devlog before ship):

So I wasn’t that ready for shipping. I had to update the README and did some bugfixes.

The main bug was that you could not select an option to search all filetypes, you were limited to pdf, or limited to docx, or whatever. That’s fixed now, and also the advanced options are no longer considered when they are hidden.

(Screenshot is of the web page because I’m too lazy to install the extension again, since I use firefox I don’t think I can install permanently and last time I think I made a change that broke it)

Devlog #5:

I’ve been preparing for shipping, because the project already has all the required features.

I configured two separate manifest.json files, one for Chrome and one for Firefox. Since I’m not paying $5 for the Chrome Web Store developer license, the chrome extension is on GitHub, in both zip and crx format. And even though the mozilla store doesn’t require payment, it does take 24 hours to get approved, so yeah, the zip file is on GitHub also.

I’ll wait until it’s on the mozilla store to ship. In the meantime, this is probably going to be the last devlog.

Devlog #4:

Pretty massive overhaul.

I updated the manifest to not be AI since it was AI previously. I don’t know why, but as of now the searching actually works (it’s been like a month so i might not remember, but i don’t think it worked previously).

I also added 4 new (optional) search options:

• File type
• In title
• In URL
• In text
  I believe they work on all of the included search engines. I only tested on DuckDuckGo because that’s what I use.

The options remain hidden most of the time, unless you click the blue button, which makes them appear.

Devlog #3

So I finally turned advanced search ultimate into an Firefox extension. Right now, you still have to import the extension temporarily through about:debugging, but it works, and a popup pops up. I would show it in a screenshot, but it just does not show up on any of my screenshots. Probably an operating system issue.

Essentially, I just used MDN Web docs to create the basis for the extension. Unfortunately, I didn’t understand a lot of it, so I had to use AI interpret some of it.

I suppose I should make it compatible with Chromium, I don’t know how yet.

Devlog #2:

I finally fixed the code that redirects the user to the search page (as you can see in the attached screenshot).

I spent a while trying to add even more search operators, but I decided that most people wouldn’t use them anyway and focus on more urgent features like turning it into an extension.

Changes

• Clicking the search button now redirects the user to the search page instead of just copying it to keyboard
• README was updated to be better and include more things.
• Changed the font to Arial.

Devlog #1:

Ever since I switched from Google to DuckDuckGo, I’ve been annoyed by how there was no real way to easily do an advanced search. Google has an entire web page dedicated to making more precise searches pretty easy, but there’s nothing (that I know of) for other search engines.

So today I made the basic inputs fields using HTML and wrote some code to process it with JavaScript. Essentially, I collected the values as a single string for the website field and the “specific phrase” field, and used split(/\s+/) to make arrays out of the “contains all of the following” and “contains none of the following” fields. They are placed inside and object, and the contents of the object is then finally converted into the final query, which is copied onto the user’s clipboard.

I did try to directly bring the user to the search page, but it didn’t work so well, so pasting the query into an existing search engine will have to work for now.

I plan on turning this web page into a Chromium and Firefox extension after I’m done the webpage so that it’s even easier and more convenient to use.