Windows Search Guide

Windows Search Guide – a (very beta) page is up for adding search engines to the search box in Internet Explorer 7. Note that at the time of this writing the OpenSearch Description files they’re using are in v1.1 draft 1, which they’ll hopefully upgrade appropriately. Also they’re declaring that the results are in RSS, when they are actually in HTML.

Anyhow, now that there are two browsers (okay, so IE7 hasn’t been released yet…) that support adding search engines via javascript, here’s a single javascript function that handles both of them. It assumes you have three files – .src plugin file and a 16×16 icon, and an OpenSearch Description file. There’s a .src to OpenSearch Description file converter I wrote on A9.com.

function addEngine() {
  try {
    window.sidebar.addSearchEngine('http://example.com/plugin.src',
      'http://example.com/plugin.png', 'Example Search Engine', 'Category Name');
  }
  catch (e) {
    try {
      window.external.AddSearchProvider('http://example.com/opensearch.xml');
    }
    catch (e) {
      alert('Internet Explorer 7, Firefox, Mozilla, Netscape 6 or higher,
        or Camino is needed to install a search engine.');
    }
  }
}

personal notes for later:

Opera:
Manually Editing Opera Searches using search.ini
Opera Search.ini Editor 1.25

Safari
Add Mozilla-like keyword functionality to Safari’s search bar (a hack)
AcidSearch 0.61