Let’s Do The Time Warp

I decided to try my hand at hack­ing Fire­fox. I’m a big fan of the Way­back Machine and after check­ing out the list of Fire­fox search plu­g­ins, I noticed one for the WM was miss­ing. See­ing how they give you instruc­tions on how to cre­ate one of your own, I fig­ured I’d give it a go.

An hour or so later, here’s the result.

<OpenSearchDescription xmlns="http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/"
                       xmlns:moz="http://www.mozilla.org/2006/browser/search/">
<ShortName>Wayback Machine</ShortName>
<Description>Browse through 85 billion web pages archived from 1996 to a few months ago. To start surfing the Wayback, type in the web address of a site or page where you would like to start, and press enter. Then select from the archived dates available. The resulting pages point to other archived pages at as close a date as possible. Keyword searching is not currently supported.</Description>
<InputEncoding>ISO-8859-1</InputEncoding>
<Image width="16" height="16">data:image/x-icon;base64,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</Image>
<Url type="text/html" method="post" template="http://web.archive.org/archive_request_ng">
  <Param name="collection" value="web"/>
  <Param name="url" value="{searchTerms}"/>
</Url>
<moz:SearchForm>http://web.archive.org/</moz:SearchForm>
</OpenSearchDescription>

Saved the code as an XML file in the search­plu­g­ins folder, restarted Fire­fox, and amaz­ingly it worked! That said, here’s a much more feature-rich exten­sion called Cache View that pretty much blows my effort out of the water.