Mojeek Focus: Introduction and How to set-up

[Josh]

This is the category for all things Mojeek Focus, the tool which lets you Search The Web You Want.

Old message

This is the Focus Testing category, used to discuss all things Mojeek Focus; you have been invited here because we want to involve you in this new development as early as possible, helping us to shape it into something that other people using Mojeek to search will find useful.

Mojeek Focus is a new tool which allows you to define and control your own search engines.
Further information on this can be found on this page.

Firefox and other Gecko browser instructions

To enable Mojeek Focus you will need the cookie:
FFID with value 34B7DA76 and path /

It’s important to note here that this cookie will possibly expire depending upon your browser setup, so be mindful of this and possibly change this column if needed.

Chromium instructions

Go to mojeek.com and then right click, developer tools > inspect

Then to Application

On Application you head to Cookies and click on the web address (mojeek)

Name and Value are the main things to change and the image above shows this, but also if you want to keep the cookie around you double click the Exp… and put something ludicrously far in the future like 2090-12-01 or similar

If you have any issues with accessing this then please let me know and I’ll do my best to help you out.

Once enabled, you will be able to access the Dashboard at: Mojeek Focus dashboard. At the start it should look something like this:

The Focus UI setting on the right-hand side allows you to hide or unhide the Focus UI elements, which will show in the search bar, as pulldown menu on the SERPs page (between Web and Images), and as a lightbulb icon next to results.

Once this is all set up, you can go ahead and create a search engine; to do so you name the engine and then select sites that you do, or do not, want to search. Once you’ve set up an engine you can also add or remove search results from the Search Engine Results Page, using the lightbulb icons which appear next to results:

This should be enough to allow you to try it out.

We will raise some open questions in this community Group, inviting your feedback. But please add any feedback you have in here by contributing to existing sub-topics, or creating new ones, which this Group can all read. If you need too, or prefer, you can contact me by direct message. Until we indicate otherwise, we would prefer if you did not refer any details about Mojeek Focus in the public parts of this community and wider.

[jasoncomely]

I’m supposed to be writing, but I really love this personalized search engine type feature, and how great the Focus menu looks, and being able to add more websites to the Focus search engine with a few clicks of a button. Just incredible. Please keep this feature.

Afterthought: I probably should’ve posted in one of the pre-existing subtopics. My apologies. Feel free to move my comment or delete.

[Josh]

This is great to hear @jasoncomely, and don’t worry about where the comment goes. Let us know any ways it supercharges your ability to find things, falls down, or could be better; we’re in a stage at the moment where we’re looking to absorb as much feedback as possible

[Colin]

@jasoncomely thanks for the kind and encouraging words. One very useful application of Focus is for word searches. I mentioned in a different thread we have two ways to tackle this and Focus is one of them. So now you are using it we can tell you about that.

Here is a Focus that I set-up called Dictionary. You can use the Restore function to upload it to your Focus dashboard.

{"Dictionary":"i=www.dictionary.com,www.thefreedictionary.com,www.urbandictionary.com,www.vocabulary.com,www.merriam-webster.com,www.synonym.com,www.thesaurus.com"}

It’s been working great for me so I use it quite a lot. Of course you can add and subtract other URLs to improve. It would be great to hear your feedback and/or suggestions for improving it.

[jasoncomely]

I’m unfamiliar with the restore function. Could you send instructions for Chrome/Brave?

[Colin]

It’s at the bottom of the Mojeek Focus dashboard https://www.mojeek.com/focus/dashboard as shown here. Click on the Restore button that shows there, copy the Dictionary definition above, paste in the box that appears and hit the second Restore button there.

[jasoncomely]

Thanks Colin. I thought it was something I had to do in the browser.

This dictionary search is fantastic, just what I need! And since I’m learning Ukrainian, I could also build myself the ultimate Ukrainian-English translation search

[gnome]

Something others might find helpful (this only applies to Firefox and Gecko-based browsers; Chromium browsers require different steps):

I wanted to search using the Dictionary Focus for Mojeek without needing to search, click the dropdown, and then select dictionary and search again. To do so, I first did a search with the Dictionary focus, and right-clicked the search bar and selected “Add a Keyword for this Search…”

Once added, I can use the omnibar to search Mojeek using the Dictionary focus with this keyword.

Very nice feature - I often found that finding definitions for words was more cumbersome on Mojeek, but Focus is a big improvement.

[Colin]

I tend to use Focus utilising the Search Bar. It then works on any browser; as far as I know. I use a variety. Of course at present, I need to set-up the Focus cookie on each one. But I can transfer the Focus definitions easily using Backup/Restore.

Here’s how it works.

1. Focus Settings turned on in the dashboard. Both “Results page” and “Search bar” shown bottom right:
   

   

2. Enter search query in the Mojeek search box and then click on the preferred Focus. Shown here selecting “Dictionary”:
   

   

[itsMe]

Until more sites are indexed, i’d like to suggest that 3rd party engines be made available in Focus

this could perhaps be done in the Sites to Search list by adding domains with a variable (%s for example) that would be replaced by the search terms…

search.brave.com/search?q=%s

[Josh]

@itsMe

Until more sites are indexed, i’d like to suggest that 3rd party engines be made available in Focus

Noted, Do you have any specific sites/pages you’re missing that sparked this. (can take them through DM or Contact if you’d prefer)

[itsMe]

@Josh

Do you have any specific sites/pages you’re missing that sparked this

yeah, but i respectfully decline to honor your request on the grounds that my answer may tend to incriminate me LOL!

here’s some video sites…

d.tube <-- appears only the index page was crawled
ugetube.com  <-- crawled a year ago, not many hits
voluntarytube.com <-- very few hits

and some torrent sites…

1337x.to
freshmeat.io
limetorrent.to
magnetdl.com
myklad.org
rargb.to
rutracker.org
rutracker.net

some of the video sites are important to me for research purposes, however there’s many more also and so i think that maybe adding the 3rd party thing to Focus would still be pretty valuable

[kvin27]

How do I import/use a focus from the github repo into my focus dashboard? Suppose I want to import the “factcheckers.focus” to my focus dashboard from the github repo. How do I do that?

[mike]

Welcome, @kvin27

There does not appear to be an official procedure.

However, I was able to create a “backup” of Fact Checkers which can then be imported.

• Visit Mojeek Focus dashboard This will take you to the Mojeek Focus Dashboard.

• Click the “Restore” button.

• Enter the following code into the text box:

{"Fact Checkers":"i=mediabiasfactcheck.com,snopes.com,www.politifact.com,fullfact.org,www.factcheck.org,checkyourfact.com,factcheckni.org,theferret.scot,leadstories.com,www.poynter.org,factmyth.com,www.newsguardtech.com,thedispatch.com,www.truthorfiction.com,usafacts.org,www.zebrafactcheck.com,www.politifactbias.com"}

• Click the smaller Restore button beneath the text box.

That should create a Fact Checkers Focus for you.

Note: If you have not used Focus before then you’ll also need to click the sliders for “Results page” and “Search bar” to turn Focus on.

Now, when you visit the Mojeek home page, you’ll be able to choose Fact Checkers from the drop-down menu under the search box.

More generally, you take the title and sites from the repository and fit them to the backup format as I did above.

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I’ll be away for a while. If you have additional questions then please leave a reply, and I will respond when I get home.

[kvin27]

@mike

More generally, you take the title and sites from the repository and fit them to the backup format as I did above.

Ok so you have to convert the focus file to a JSON format to import/use it in the dashboard.
So, do you convert the raw text from the repo to JSON format manually or is there another way to convert it? (cause I’m honestly lazy )
Thank you for taking the time to help me out.

[mike]

I am proficient in Vi Improved and regular expressions. So, I used that.

• Create a dummy Focus.
• Back up the Focus to create an example JSON object.
• Copy the .focus code from GitHub.
• Copy the title from the GitHub code into the example JSON.

Then I used commands specific to Vim:

• Use a visual block selection to delete the leading characters.
• Use :substitute to replace the newlines with commas.
• Manually trim the trailing comma.

Screen Recording

---

I used the following substitute command in the screen capture:

:'<,'>s/\n/,

where

• Colon : triggers a Vim command.
• Single quote and left angle bracket '< refers to the beginning of the selected sites.
• The comma , separates the selection range (cmdline-range).
• Single quote and right angle bracket '> refers to the end of the selection.
• s is short for the substitute command.
• Forward slash / separates the elements of the find and replace expression.
• Backslash n (\n) is the escape code for a newline.
• Forward slash / separates the elements of the find and replace expression.
• The final comma , represents a literal comma.

I would read this aloud as:

“Substitute commas for newlines within the visual selection.”

• Fact Checkers.focus | Mojeek | GitHub

[kvin27]

Hey thank you for including the commands as well. That is super helpful.