Ever wanted to do a quick search for a skin? I've always found it a bit of a pain - you have to go to WinCustomize, wait for it to load, scroll down to the search box, select the library from that dropdown box, type the word in and wait for the results to come back. Wouldn't it be nice if there were fewer steps in that?

One obvious solution is the WinCustomize SkinBrowser. If you find yourself repeatedly searching through the library, it's a good idea to grab a copy of that by subscribing to WinCustomize. But what if you just want to look for a skin every few days? It's a hassle having to start the skinbrowser up - it's probably faster to use the website, unless you want to do several searches.

Enter search plugins. These little babies integrate into the search box on your browser - you just have to select the plugin you want to use for a particular search, and then type in your search term, and it searches that library or forum for you!

(for those of you who don't yet have a browser with a search box, I advise you to get Firefox at this point )

So, how to get these plugins? Well, you'll be glad to know I've done all the hard work for you. Just go to this page and click the appropriate links for the search plugins that you want to install. They should then show up in your search box to select. I've thrown in some for the GalCiv libraries and forums (even the GC2 ones that don't actually have a search yet ), as well as one for JoeUser. If you like the idea and want one for another popular site, you might be able to find what you're looking for here.

Please note that they are not official tools and are liable to stop working if the method used to search changes. Having said that, I hope you find them helpful!

For any developers wishing to do something similar, I suggest you look at the Mozilla overview and the Apple docs.