Hi everyone, I hope you’re having a pleasant day.

Anyway, I recently switched to using DuckDuckGo HTML as my default search engine, which has been great so far. The only thing is I have this habit of using the right-click menu in Windows to highlight and search for terms – example.

The problem is, DuckDuckGo HTML is not able to be accessed this way, so it just returns a blank screen that says “forbidden.”

Now, this is really no big deal. I can adjust my habit, and I already have Firefox set up so that it always displays the unique search field in addition to the address bar, so it’s really easy to search for things, even if I want to search a URL or something like that.

I’m just curious if there is some way to remove the right-click search option altogether? This would be ideal since I keep accidentally trying to use it, due to force of habit. Would this be something I can disable in about:config?

  • igorlogius@lemmy.worldEnglish
    8·
    1 year ago

    The problem is, DuckDuckGo HTML is not able to be accessed this way,

    That sounds like a bug, and i can reproduce it with a new empty profile. Gonna analyse the issue and be back later.

    edit:

    seems to be an issue with the POST endpoint so something on DDG’s side or firefox is not sending the post request correctly, thats also an options, havent looked that deeply into the issue. But the GET endpoint seems to work fine.

    Here the steps to setup without using an addon

    1. open about:config and add browser.urlbar.update2.engineAliasRefresh as boolean with value true
    2. open about:preferences#search and click the Add button on Search Engine table.
    4. Set the new Engine as the default in the Default Search Engine section

    Thats it, now the right click search should work.

    Hope it helps.

    • LinkOpensChest.wav@lemmy.oneOP
      2·
      1 year ago

      Oh thanks! I’m afk now, but once I’m home again I’ll try your fix!

      Edit: No dice. It will open DDGHTML in another tab, but it fails to actually search for keywords

    • LinkOpensChest.wav@lemmy.oneOP
      2·
      1 year ago

      That URL does work in my browser, yes.

      So it works, but it requires an add-on? I never needed one for any other search engine, including SearXNG and mainline DuckDuckGo. Do you know the technical reason the strictly HTML version of DDG doesn’t work like the others? Just curious.

    • LinkOpensChest.wav@lemmy.oneOP
      2·
      1 year ago

      Update: The other solution the user suggested about adding something to about:config and then adding the search engine manually and setting it as default doesn’t work. It opens a page from DuckDuckGo HTML in another tab, but it fails to search for keywords. (More about this later.)

      I also tried adding the add-on you linked, and it’s opening a blank page with “forbidden” Example. That’s with a term selected. You can see it just shows the normal URL, but with the page saying “forbidden.” So even with the add-on, I’m unable to right-click and search. (I suspect that all the add-on does is add the search engine and set it as default.)

      But worst of all, I learned something disturbing during this whole process. The fix suggested by the other user doesn’t just open a normal DuckDuckGo HTML page – it actual does a search, but it searches for nothing. But here’s the thing: In the results for this generic search appears the name of the town where I’m located, multiple times! The whole reason I switched to DDGHTML is because I’ve been looking for a search engine that does not alter results based on location data from my IP, and my understanding from Privacyguides.org was that this one did not, which turns out to be false. So I’m no longer interested in this search engine, and my fruitless search continues…