One of the nicest features of modern browsers like Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Internet Explorer is the search bar in the upper right corner.
With this tool you can quickly search any number of websites without having to first visit their search page.
This functionality is most commonly used to search the Internet using search engines like Google or Live.com. I recently was reading
Scott Hanselman's blog and found an
interesting entry on how to let your visitors add your website to their search bar. In a nutshell, you need to provide information on how to search
you site in an XML file according to the OpenSearch standard. Next, reference this file in the
<head> element on each web page in your site via a <link> tag. When a user visits your site their browser detects
this information and allows the user to add your site to their browsers search bar.
Using this technology you can create a custom search provider for your website that your visitors can add to their browser search bar. Once added,
users can search your website directly from their browser search bar, just like they can search Google or other search engines from the same interface.
This article shows how to create an XML file that conforms to the OpenSearch standard and how to link to it from pages in your website.
Read on to learn more!
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