Oxford Dictionary search plugin for Firefox

2011-02-07: The Oxford Dictionaries website has changed its query method, so that the method of building a search plugin below is no longer valid. The reader may install the Oxford Dictionaries add-on for remedy, however.

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In my first ever blog entry, I have demonstrated how to create a Cambridge Dictionary search plugin for Firefox in four easy steps. Back then I didn't realise that Oxford Dictionary also offered an online search. So, this time we will go through these four steps again to make friend with the Oxford Dictionary.

Like the Cambridge Dictionary website, AskOxford.com offers not only English dictionary search but also other search facilities as well. For example, the First Names Dictionary is very useful for those Asians (like me) who are confused with the short forms of some English names (for the record, I was so ignorant that I didn't even know Chris actually means Christopher until I graduated from university >_< ). Still, in what follows I'll mainly focus on the English dictionary search, coz it's my most frequently used dictionary search option. Here we go: 1) Locate the folder where Firefox stores the search plugins. On my computer it is C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\searchplugins

If you are not sure about this, search your hard drive for the file google.xml (I presume you haven't manually removed the Google search plugin).

2) Type or cut and paste the following code in notepad. Save this file as oxford.src in the above-mentioned plugin folder.

<search version="7.1"
name="Compact Oxford Dictionary"
description="Compact Oxford Dictionary"
action="http://www.askoxford.com/results/"
searchForm="http://www.askoxford.com/results/"
method="GET" >
<input name="view" value="dict">
<input name="branch" value="13842570">
<input name="textsearchtype" value="exact">
<input name="freesearch" user="">

3) Right-click this icon of AskOxford.com and save it as oxford.png in the same folder.

4) Restart Firefox and done.

If you do not reside in HK, the above code may not work (pls tell me if it doesn't). In this case this is probably because the value "13842570" for "branch" (country code?) in step 2 is incorrect. It's rather simple to fix this. First, go to AskOxford.com. Search for the meaning of any word in the Compact Oxford Dictionary from the pull-down menu or from the search box for the English dictionary (see the figure on the right; in this example I want to look up the meaning of the word "derivative"). After the website has returned an explanation for the word, you can look up the value of "branch" in the address bar (see the figure below).


Alternatively, you can simply delete the line containing "branch" in oxford.src, but then you'll be searching the whole AskOxford.com website (including e.g. the First Names Dictionary) instead of the English dictionary alone.

By the way, Firefox has a context search add-on. With this add-on you can highlight any word on any web page, right-click it, and choose the search engine (Google, Oxford Dictionary, etc.) from the contextual menu. So when you read a web page and encounter a word that you don't understand, there is no need to type it into Firefox's search box.