How to really change Firefox search engine plugin's name?

Question

I tried to change the search engine plugin's name (displayed in the drop down menu when you're switching search engines) but to no avail.

I changed the os:ShortName tag in the search plugin xml file under "..my plugin folder..\searchplugins", but after restarting FF still displays the old name. I'm using FF 3.6.10.

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

I just upgraded to Firefox 4, and when changing os:ShortName didn't work turned to the internet. My search plugin does not have an update mechanism embedded, and yet after multiple browser restarts I still get the old name.

EDIT: Problem solved! It turned out that Firefox somehow caches its search engines. All you need to do is:

• Move the offending search plugin file somewhere else.
• Start Firefox for it to take notice of a folder change, prompting it to reinitialise the search plugin cache.
• Close Firefox.
• Move the file back where it belongs

And voila, done! All your plugins should now be named exactly as YOU want them to :-)

Answer 2

in your Firefox/Profiles//searchplugins/blah.xml change the field os:ShortName and remove UpdateUrl to disable it from getting an updated XML from source.

EDIT: create a new file with the following xml

<SearchPlugin xmlns="http://www.mozilla.org/2006/browser/search/" xmlns:os="http://a9.com/-/specopensearch1.1/>
<os:ShortName>blahblah</os:ShortName>
<os:Description>asdad</os:Description>
<os:InputEncoding>UTF-8</os:InputEncoding>
<os:Url type="text/html" method="GET" template="http://www.imdb.com/find?q={searchTerms}&amp;sourceid=mozilla-search">
</os:Url>         
</SearchPlugin>

I have tested this with Firefox4 :)