Problem with Google Images and Firefox 3.6.8

EDIT: Solution here.

In my holidays house I cannot search Google Images. Recently Google changed the design of its image search engine and I have been experiencing a problem with Firefox and other browsers on Ubuntu and Windows.

If I try to search Google Images, Firefox hangs loading the results, no image is shown at all and Google related sites are unreachable for a little while (it's still possible to browse other sites) :

I think it's impossible to revert Google Images to its old design, so I  thought to use Google Mobile to search images because I can browse it with my smartphone without problems.

It's quite easy to use Google Mobile to search images: we can use a string formatted in this way:

"http://www.google.com/m/search?site=images&q=" + search terms

for example:

http://www.google.com/m/search?site=images&q=firefox+ubuntu

I wrote a simple search plugin for the Firefox Search bar to search images with Google Mobile.

Copy this text:


<OpenSearchDescription xmlns="http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/"
xmlns:moz="http://www.mozilla.org/2006/browser/search/">
<ShortName>Google Mobile Images</ShortName>
<Description>Search images with Google Mobile</Description>
<InputEncoding>inputEncoding</InputEncoding>
<Image width="16" height="16" type="image/x-icon">data:image/x-icon;base64,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</Image>
<Url type="text/html" method="GET" template="http://www.google.com/m/search?site=images&amp;q={searchTerms}" />
</OpenSearchDescription>


and paste into your preferred text editor, save as gm.xml in

~/.mozilla/firefox/xxxxxxxx.default/searchplugins

Restart Firefox and the plugin will be added to pre-loaded search engines:

It's possible to use it on windows too (Shortcut Win + R --> %appdata%\mozilla\firefox\profiles).

A best solution comes from my brother, Massimo: It's possible to bypass the problem using an anonymous web proxy like anonymouse.org. A bookmark with a link like this:

http://anonymouse.org/cgi-bin/anon-www.cgi/http://www.google.com/imghp

speeds up the process and works fine.

Best regards