Searching is better in Beta 2!

Article
02/07/2006

In a previous post, I introduced our Beta 1 search functionality and mentioned we would soon ensure you can add search providers to IE without executable code or a masterful knowledge of the registry. Now that we’ve released the Beta 2 Preview I’d like to take a few minutes to describe the two separate extensibility mechanisms we’ve introduced to make this happen: window.external.AddSearchProvider, and Search Discovery.

window.external.AddSearchProvider()

In Beta 2 any site can run a simple function prompting the user to add a search provider to IE. This script call will open a dialog giving the user control over what is included in their Toolbar Search Box.

Add Search Provider dialog

Add Search Provider dialog

As you can see we’ve given an option on this dialog to make this provider your default. The default provider will be the one used from both the address bar and will also be the search provider we default to in the Toolbar Search Box when IE is launched.

Here’s the API:

window.external.AddSearchProvider(“URL”)
“URL”: Link to the OpenSearch Description file for your search provider.

To use this, a site can simply include a call to AddSearchProvider and point it at an OpenSearch XML file:

<INPUT TYPE="button" VALUE="Provider" onClick='window.external.AddSearchProvider("https://<yoursite>.com/Provider.xml");'>

Example

A site can simply include a call to AddSearchProvider:
<INPUT TYPE="button" VALUE="Provider" onClick='window.external.AddSearchProvider("https://<yoursite>.com/Provider.xml");'>

The XML file could look something like this.

A site cannot automatically open this prompt. It will be locked down in the same way our pop-up blocker locks down websites. This essentially means that launching the dialog has to be the direct result of a user action. Also, if you are creating an XML file for your own provider make sure that the file actually loads in IE by itself without any errors. One trap people fall into is not escaping the “&” symbol in their XML file with “&” (Do a “View Source” on the example XML file to see how to do this properly).

Search Discovery

The Beta 2 Preview also allows sites to advertise additional search providers that might be interesting to users. This works in a similar way to Feed Discovery.

When IE detects search providers via Search Discovery the Toolbar Search Box lights up to indicate there are more providers to see in the dropdown (we will offer the option for a sound notification as well – off by default). When the dropdown is opened up the suggested providers appear. Users can then add these providers permanently to the browser, or simply search to try out the provider first. We limit the number of discovered providers to a maximum of 3 providers not already installed on the machine.

A provider is discovered!

Search button when a provider is discovered

The format for this is to use the <link> element in HTML:

Windows Search Guide

The other thing we are introducing in Beta 2 is the Windows Search Guide. This is a page where you can go and add providers yourself (we link to this site directly from the Toolbar Search Box dropdown – Click on “Find More Providers…”). So go download IE 7, check out the search guide, and try it out!

That’s it for today! I’m really excited to see sites start to support our new extensibility options! Until next time: Keep browsing!

- Aaron Sauvé

Comments

Anonymous
February 07, 2006
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Anonymous
February 07, 2006
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Anonymous
February 07, 2006
Just remember: If the search provider is CoolWebSearch, DON'T USE OR ADD IT.

Smart surfers are safe surfers.
Anonymous
February 07, 2006
Google has already implemented this. Works pretty well.
Anonymous
February 07, 2006
Any chance you could update <a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/09/14/466186.aspx">this earlier post</a> that incorrectly specifies the xmlns as xmlns="http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearchdescription/1.1/" when it should be xmlns="http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/" ?

Using the incorrect xmlns breaks the IE7 search provider functionality.
Anonymous
February 07, 2006
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Anonymous
February 07, 2006
Ryan,

As a general rule, we do not go back and update previous posts for changes in URLs and the like. Aaron and I spoke about this earlier and the link is accurate for when the post was written. For the present, you should use the links in this post, not in one written months ago.

- Al Billings [MSFT]
Anonymous
February 07, 2006
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Anonymous
February 07, 2006
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Anonymous
February 07, 2006
Alt+D still works to focus the address bar, mocax. Not sure if there's a Ctrl key for it.
Anonymous
February 07, 2006
Noticed an issue in IE7 Beta2,just wanted to know if this really is an issue or iam missing something.

- I have this wordweb installed on my machine.Whenever a text higlighted and wordweb is invoked it comes with the meaning of the highlighted text.But this is not happening in IE7.

Thanks,
kiran
Anonymous
February 07, 2006
How come Yahoo! Search is the default search engine, not MSN Search? and Google isn't included with installation but Yahoo! Search is?

Thanks,
Sam
Anonymous
February 07, 2006
<How come Yahoo! Search is the default search engine, not MSN Search? and Google isn't included with installation but Yahoo! Search is?>

Probably because you had the Yahoo! toolbar installed.
Anonymous
February 07, 2006
Will there be an option to supress window.external.AddSearchProvider if you want to make sure sites don't bother you with that?
Anonymous
February 07, 2006
Please include an option to highlight the search arguments on the page when doing a CONTROL-F.

And consider adding Wikipedia to the search provider list.
Anonymous
February 07, 2006
One annoyance I have, is that the AddSearchProvider method, auto-discovery and opensearch description files only accept absolute URLs.

Is there a reason why relative URLs are not allowed?
Anonymous
February 08, 2006
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Anonymous
February 08, 2006
Don't like it, another method for malware sites to annoy people.
Anonymous
February 08, 2006
I urge the IE team to focus more on IE7 UI problems - the interface is worse than ever, cluttered with buttons everywhere, on the left, on the right, below the address bar, anywhere - than to introduce special bonus features (almost) only accessible via scripts.

By the way, the IANA provides special example domains as specified in RFC 2606 [1].

[1] http://www.apps.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2606.html
Anonymous
February 08, 2006
I urge the IE team to focus more on IE7 UI problems - the interface is worse than ever, cluttered with buttons everywhere, on the left, on the right, below the address bar, anywhere - than to introduce special bonus features (almost) only accessible via scripts.

By the way, the IANA provides special example domains as specified in RFC 2606 [1].

[1] http://www.apps.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2606.html
Anonymous
February 08, 2006
Is there a way to detect if my search engine is added?

- I do not want to always have an IE7 add search button visible
- I do want to make it visible if they are IE7 and don't have the engine added
- I do not want to use a cookie to track it, cookies have their purposes but not for this.
Anonymous
February 08, 2006
Woah! Nice feature!

Firefox should implement it too.
Keep the good work guys. And don't forgot the CSS 2.1 compatibility :)
Anonymous
February 08, 2006
I forgot to mention what a fine browser update this is turning into. I wouldn't know that without the developers posting.

keep up the good work. :)
Anonymous
February 08, 2006
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Anonymous
February 08, 2006
"Will there be an option to supress window.external.AddSearchProvider if you want to make sure sites don't bother you with that?"

BINGO. Should be in a checkbox, like Internet Options->Advanced (or Privacy?) tab->"Allow sites to recommend new search providers".

Those dialogs CAN be annoying to some, and unacceptable in a workstation environment. (At least they DO prompt first.)
Anonymous
February 08, 2006
Please tell me that this will only prompt the user, if a direct user interaction event has fired.

e.g. onclick() for a button, link, image, div (NOT BODY!)

if this fires onload(), or just by calling it... every site on the planet will attempt to install spyware^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hsearch engines in users browsers.

Thanks
Anonymous
February 08, 2006
"Any chance you could update <a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/09/14/466186.aspx">this earlier post</a> that incorrectly specifies the xmlns as xmlns="http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearchdescription/1.1/" when it should be xmlns="http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/" ?

Using the incorrect xmlns breaks the IE7 search provider functionality."

Indeed. The correct URI goes to the OpenSearch spec, while your (Microsoft's) recommendation goes to a 404. Fix this.
Anonymous
February 08, 2006
"Please tell me that this will only prompt the user, if a direct user interaction event has fired.

e.g. onclick() for a button, link, image, div (NOT BODY!)

if this fires onload(), or just by calling it... every site on the planet will attempt to install spyware^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hsearch engines in users browsers.

Thanks "

I second that. Standard form should be to wait for USERS to click a link, then the dialog shows, THEN we approve it. onload() adds will waste bandwidth anyway, since a page of some sort has to be, well, loaded.
Anonymous
February 08, 2006
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Anonymous
February 08, 2006
Perhaps you can get someone to update the page at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/ie7/devwebchecklist.mspx so that they are directed to this blog entry instead of the older one with the incorrect xmlns string.

I only mention this because I wasted a lot of time trying to get AddSearchProvider to work with the old xmlns.
Anonymous
February 08, 2006
I agree taht calling it via onLoad() shouldn't be allowed as the last thing I need is every site under the sun prompting me to install their search engine.

A preference would be nice too.
Anonymous
February 08, 2006
>>How come Yahoo! Search is the default search engine, not MSN Search? and Google isn't included with installation but Yahoo! Search is?>
>Probably because you had the Yahoo! toolbar installed.

Correct, we migrate your IE 6 address bar autosearch provider (the provider IE would search with if you mistyped an address) when you upgrade to IE 7. In this case your provider was Yahoo!, likely because you had the toolbar installed at some point.
Anonymous
February 08, 2006
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Anonymous
February 08, 2006
yay, another spyware vector! Now every malicious site will just say "Click here and hit Add Provider to gain access" instead of click here and say Yes.
Anonymous
February 08, 2006
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Anonymous
February 08, 2006
Hello IE Team.
I'd just like to say well done on the work so far, all us developers really appreciate it.

If its not too much trouble could you could sort out these bugs before the final release....

http://www.quirksmode.org/bugreports/archives/explorer_7_beta_2/index.html

thanks
Anonymous
February 08, 2006
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Anonymous
February 08, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
February 08, 2006
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Anonymous
February 08, 2006
> Perhaps you can get someone to update the page at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/ie7/devwebchecklist.mspx so that they are directed to this blog entry instead of the older one with the incorrect xmlns string.

We've got it in the queue for updating. Thanks Ryan!
Anonymous
February 08, 2006
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Anonymous
February 08, 2006
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Anonymous
February 08, 2006
excuse the multiple comments here, just type'n as i think of it... but is it strictly tied to "Provider.xml", or could i designate another file, such as "search_provider.cfm", for instance?

also, i like how it tells you that you've already added it to your list of search providers if you've already done so... the down-arrow doesnt turn orange for me either after adding it, which is kewl.
Anonymous
February 08, 2006
Once again... it would be nice if the search bar could be gotten rid of all together and the address bar allowed to do "double duty" like TweakUI allows you to do (except built-in). The two could even be "connected" so that typing "goog firefox" in the address bar would be the same as typing "firefox" in the "google" search bar.
Anonymous
February 08, 2006
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Anonymous
February 08, 2006
I like the web-search functionality, now I know the shortcut key to focus it. However, the functionality for "find on this page..." falls a long way behind Firefox.

The find-as-you-type feature in Firefox, neatly contained in the toolbar at the bottom of the window, is so much more powerful than the little find dialog in IE. It would be great if you could eventually replace the Find dialog - the fewer dialog windows the better!
Anonymous
February 08, 2006
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Anonymous
February 08, 2006
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Anonymous
February 08, 2006
I have added "Search Discovery" to CSUpdate. I think your search button should have lighted up by now,...
Anonymous
February 08, 2006
Good job with IE7, in http://www.solphone.com.ar/ you can see one of our dev sites running our NBP app and supporting opensearch. You can test it searching by example "conflicto"

Just a question, why when we navigate a site with opensearch autodiscovery, the IE autodiscovery icon goes to orange also in the appended sites.
Anonymous
February 08, 2006
A bit off topic, but has anyone been able to find or add a search provider for Wikipedia?
Anonymous
February 08, 2006
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Anonymous
February 08, 2006
Firefox should support this, too.
Anonymous
February 08, 2006
@SurrealLogic

Just cut and paste into a .reg file:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftInternet ExplorerSearchScopesGoogle]
"DisplayName"="Google"
"URL"="http://www.google.com/search?q={searchTerms}&sourceid=ie7&rls=com.microsoft:en-US&ie=utf8&oe=utf8"

[HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftInternet ExplorerSearchScopesWikipedia]
"DisplayName"="Wikipedia"
"URL"="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search={searchTerms}&go=Go"
Anonymous
February 08, 2006
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Anonymous
February 08, 2006
There should be the ability to delete added search providers.
Anonymous
February 08, 2006
Thanks for spamming your blog on a digg thread. Couldnt have simply posted your comment, that would have been to complicated eh?
Anonymous
February 08, 2006
@heaths: Please provide a repro URL? The only time I've seen the item fail to select is when the provider has a typo (e.g. uses the wrong xmlns, for instance).
Anonymous
February 08, 2006
@abc

There is a possibility to remove the search providers.
1) pull down the search menu
2) Choose change search defaults
3) Remove the selected provider.

I agree that it's not intuitive.

@IE team
It would be nice if you could right-click on the search provider and delete them.
Anonymous
February 08, 2006
How I customized by blog even with limited ability to support auto-discovery of OpenSearch descriptions.
Anonymous
February 08, 2006
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Anonymous
February 08, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
February 08, 2006
It would be nice if you could add your own search provider to the list without having to find a link on a site somewhere. For example Wikipedia does not have a link yet, it seems. Why not add an "Add" button to the "Change search defaults" dialog which allows you to do that?
Anonymous
February 09, 2006
I agree with the comments that this will likely just be another abused feature by companies such as CoolWebSearch.

Be prepared for a barrage of pages from misspelt domains and such which "helpfully" ask you to install search providers...
Anonymous
February 10, 2006
I'd like to see improved searching of the current document in the new version of IE. FF and Google toolbar have the features and are extremely helpful when trying to do research. The ability to highlight those searched items in the document is also desired. Keep up the good work.
Anonymous
February 10, 2006

We recently updated the blogs.msdn.com to the latest version of Community Server. While they got...
Anonymous
February 10, 2006
Several parties have made claims about how search works in IE7. I think those
claims are awfully confusing,...
Anonymous
February 10, 2006
Sweet.....I missed out getting asked to help out in the Beta but found the link for the preview......Love the look so far...Search is soooo easy to use!.....Hoping to make Beta 2 in Vista so as to be able to enjoy more of this!
Anonymous
February 10, 2006
go to ie7.com
Anonymous
February 10, 2006
implementing the "Search as you type" feature, like those in mozilla, would be nice.
And pressing F3 should repeat the search without opening the search dialog.
Anonymous
February 11, 2006
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Anonymous
February 15, 2006
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Anonymous
February 16, 2006
Hi. Got shareware app to let you maintain IE's Search settings, SearchURLs and SearchScopes. (sorry beta version in VB6 - runtimes included). View screen shots and download from http://www.iecustomizer.com/iesearchdownload.htm

On that page you will also find downloads for SearchURLs.reg and SearchScopes.reg
Anonymous
February 16, 2006
I agree with the comments made about the find dialog. The FireFox find feature is way cool. One suggestion I would like to make is to remove the system font and colors formatting in the dialog so that it appears the same as the users stylesheet and accessibility preferences.
Anonymous
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Anonymous
June 16, 2006
So, today, I enabled the OpenSearch spec on my blog. I doubt people come here to search, but it&#8217;s good technology that I think should be out there more often. If you&#8217;re using IE7, you&#8217;ll notice that when you&#8217;re
Anonymous
June 16, 2006
So, today, I enabled the OpenSearch spec on my blog. I doubt people come here to search, but it&#8217;s good technology that I think should be out there more often. If you&#8217;re using IE7, you&#8217;ll notice that when you&#8217;re
Anonymous
August 31, 2006

Last time I posted about search I talked about our new extensibility mechanisms: window.external.AddSearchProvider,...
Anonymous
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Internet Explorer 7 prinaša številne novosti, med drugim tudi priročno iskalno vrstico v zgornjem desnem...
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October 19, 2006
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
October 19, 2006
IE7 was released yesterday. If you're a web site owner, developer or designer, and find that your site or application is encountering problems, fret not. Here is a list of resources for you: Read the Checklists Download the IE7 Readiness...
Anonymous
October 19, 2006
IE7 was released yesterday. If you’re a web site owner, developer or designer, and find that your site or application is encountering problems, fret not. Here is a list of resources for you: 1. Checklists 2. Download the IE7...
Anonymous
October 19, 2006
From now on, we have to test our web application on another version of browser. Source: http://dotnet.csdn.net/n/20061019/96467.html Microsoft IE7已于今日正式发布。微软在网站上公布了开发者和Web制作人员要注意的一些事项。翻译如下：确认你的程序中关
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The comment has been removed
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Searching is better in Beta 2!

window.external.AddSearchProvider()

Search Discovery

Windows Search Guide

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