Ben Holliday

Open Search

I’ve got to admit that the Beta 2 version of IE7 I’ve been testing at work is impressing me and I was further sold after attending Chris Wilson‘s talk about IE7 at @media 2006. It was at this session I first came across the the term open search and I really like the idea.. although it must be said that it’s not actually a Microsoft idea at all (it’s actually an open format under a Creative Commons license) …in implementing open search Microsoft for once seem ahead of the game and I’m sure Firefox amongst others will follow suit. The idea that the search element of a site will be solely handled by the browser in a universal way appeals to me and for what it’s worth I’ve put in a open search feed into the new Central Sussex College site which feeds into the course search facility. I’ll be really interested once IE7 is launched if the open search feature gets much use over the normal search box in the page. If your interested in the code used for the XML that makes up the open search I’ve used I’ve posted it in the code section of this site.

This is my blog where I’ve been writing for 18 years. You can follow all of my posts by subscribing to this RSS feed. You can also find me on Bluesky, less frequently now on X (formally Twitter), and on LinkedIn.