Custom Search Accelerator

One of the new features of Internet Explorer is Accelerators, where you can right click on an element of the page and work with that element immediately. One of the more popular type of accelerator are the search engines - which allow you to select text and search elsewhere for that text.

This page shows how to build and deploy one for Google for your own country, and is based on code provided by Google for their Canadian site. In this example the UK site is used.

Base Code

To make things easier, we shall start with the completed code, and there are some notes below on what to change - although most of it is fairly self explanatory.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <os:openServiceDescription xmlns:os="http://www.microsoft.com/schemas/openservicedescription/1.0"> <os:homepageUrl>http://www.google.co.uk/</os:homepageUrl> <os:display> <os:name>Search with Google UK</os:name> <os:description>Search with Google UK</os:description> <os:icon>http://google.com/favicon.ico</os:icon> </os:display> <os:activity category="Search"> <os:activityAction context="selection"> <os:execute action="http://www.google.co.uk/search" method="get"> <os:parameter name="q" value="{selection}" type="text" /> </os:execute> </os:activityAction> </os:activity> </os:openServiceDescription>

1. To change the country, modify the following - so http://www.google.de/ for example




 

2. Next, change the name and description to the country that you are going to use.

<os:name>Search with Google UK</os:name> <os:description>Search with Google UK</os:description>

Change both of those lines to the same thing - so "Search mit Google DE" for example.
 

3. Finally, change the URL in this line for the country again.

Once you have completed the customisations, save the file with an xml ending - so GoogleDe.xml for example.

Deployment

Deployment of the custom search accelerator requires a web server. You cannot just double click on the file in Internet Explorer.
Therefore put the file on to a web page and then click on the link.

What about Google Custom Search?

You can use the same code with Google custom search, although a few more changes are required.
This is code for our custom search engine that simply searches Google - but without the tracking of the results that are done if you search through google.com.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <os:openServiceDescription xmlns:os="http://www.microsoft.com/schemas/openservicedescription/1.0"> <os:homepageUrl>http://dosprompt.info/</os:homepageUrl> <os:display> <os:name>Search with dosprompt.info</os:name> <os:description>Search Google and dosprompt.info</os:description> <os:icon>http://dosprompt.info/favicon.ico</os:icon> </os:display> <os:activity category="Search"> <os:activityAction context="selection"> <os:execute action="http://dosprompt.info/google/results.asp" method="get"> <os:parameter name="q" value="{selection}" type="text" /> <os:parameter name="cx" value="017849389901990921035:d98hlx_mh5w" type="hidden" /> <os:parameter name="cof" value="FORID:11" type="hidden" /> </os:execute> </os:activityAction> </os:activity> </os:openServiceDescription>

1. The first thing you need to change is the home page for the site that is hosting the search engine.




 

2. Give a decent but short description of the what the custom search engine is searching for.
 

<os:name>Search with dosprompt.info</os:name> <os:description>Search Google and dosprompt.info</os:description>
 

3. Change the URL to point to your favicon location. In our tests, we couldn't use any Google icon, but had to use one on the same site as the home page.

   
    

4. Change the URL to point to your results page. This will depend on whether you are using a results page embedded in your own site, or elsewhere. 

   
    

5. Finally, change this line to match the ID of your custom search engine.  

   
    

Once you have completed the customisations, save the file with an xml ending - so customsearch.xml for example.

Deployment

The same instructions for deployment apply to this customisation as well, so you will need to use a web server. If you have built the custom search engine for your own site, then host it there.