Adding Integration with your Favorite Search Engine

RSS Bandit supports integration with a wide variety of search engines for searching the web. The default installation includes Google, Feedster, and MSN. Some search engines (such as Feedster) can return results as as RSS feed, which RSS Bandit displays in a special Search result folder within the Special Feeds folder.

To use search, simply enter a phrase in the search bar and click on the icon with the magnifying glass over the globe (see figure 1).

Web Search
Figure 1: Web Search text box.

This will search the web for the phrase you entered using your default search engine(s) by opening a separate Document Tab for each of the default engines. Click on the little down arrow next to the globe to select a different search engine (figure 2). This will initiate a search with that search engine only:

Web Search Engines
Figure 2: Web Search Engines.

To change the order of the search engines, or to add or remove a search engine, go to Tools | Options and select the Web Search tab. It should bring up the dialog shown in figure 3.

Web Search Options
Figure 3: Web Search Options.

The default search engines are all engines, that have the checkbox checked on. Engines with a unchecked setting are not included in your default search (a click on the icon with the magnifying glass over the globe).

You can reorder the search engines by selecting an engine and clicking Move Up or Move Down. To add a new search engine, click the Add button. This will bring up the properties dialog for a search engine as in figure 4.

Add Search Engine Dialog
Figure 4: Add Search Engine Dialog.

The URL field requires the URL for the search engine. Note that the URL cannot simply be the URL to the front page of the search engine's web site. For example, you cannot simply enter http://google.com/. In order for RSS Bandit to integrate with the search engine, it needs to communicate the phrase you wish to search to it. Most search engines have some facility for communicating the search phrase via the query string.

For example, to search for "RSS Bandit" with Google, you can use the following URL:

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=RSS+Bandit

When adding the URL to the search engine, use "{0}" (sans quotes) where the search term belongs. If you look at the properties for the Google search engine, you'll see that the URL is

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q={0}

Every search engine is different, so you'll have to check with the search engine. Some search engines requires the search term encoded different than UTF-8, e.g. Yahoo Japan (euc-jp) http://www.yahoo.co.jp/ . So the parameter placeholder can also have a format like this:

{0:<encoding>}

<encoding> can be of euc-jp, Shift_JIS. See also at: MSDN. Examples: {0:euc-jp} or {0:Shift_JIS}.

The Title field is the text displayed in the list of search engines (as seen in figure 2).

The Description field is used to provide extra information when viewing the list of search engines within the Options dialog (as seen in figure 3). This is not displayed elsewhere.

The Picture field allows you to browse for a 16 x 16 pixel image or icon that will represent the search engine. It will be displayed next to search engine as in the hastily created icon for Google in figure 5.

Google icon
Figure 5: Google now has an icon.

If the search engine returns results as RSS, check the checkbox labeled Search result will be returned as RSS. This will place the results within the special Search result folder mentioned earlier.

Check the checkbox labeled Merge the resultset with items returned by a local search to have the search result folder also contain results from a local search.