Firefox (or Opera, Safari?) introduced a very handy feature: A little searchbox for all your favorite search engines. Microsoft added this in the Internet Explorer 7:
But how can I create my own plugin? The search provider should be installed with only one click.
The little search box and its provider relies on the "OpenSearchDescription" format.
I added a search provider for this blog - here is the XML:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<OpenSearchDescription xmlns="http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/">
<ShortName>Code-Inside International Blog</ShortName>
<Description>Blogging about .NET, ASP.NET, AJAX, Silverlight</Description>
<Image height="16" width="16" type="image/x-icon">https://blog.codeinside.eu/favicon.ico</Image>
<Url type="text/html" method="get" template="https://blog.codeinside.eu/?s={searchTerms}"/>
</OpenSearchDescription>
The most important tag is the "Url"-Tag with the "searchTerm" template to create later such an URL: https://blog.codeinside.eu/?s=AJAX
Add the search provider to you browser
- You could use Javascript:
<a href="#" onclick='window.external.AddSearchProvider("https://blog.codeinside.eu/browserplugin.xml");'>Code-Inside International Blog</a>
The javascript "AddSearchProvider" method invoke the browser to promt such an interface:
- The browser get noticed about the "search plugin"
You can tell the clients browser that you offer an search plugin - just add this in the head section of your site:
<link rel="search" type="application/opensearchdescription+xml" href="https://blog.codeinside.eu/browserplugin.xml" title="Code-Inside International Blog" />
You reference your XML file and (for example) the firefox "search provider icon" show us a glow effect:
One click - and you be done:
The same process with the Internet Explorer 7:
Simple & very usefull for each "search" site :)
