Quick-Search Bar

Quick Search Bar

Quick search bar provides easy access to search engines and look-up sites without connecting to their homepages first. SlimBrowser achieves this by a flexible interface and automatic form submission.

How to search?

Select a search engine from the drop down engine list on the search bar and enter the keywords. Press enter to start searching.

Add your own favorite search engines

All the search engines are defined in a configuration file named 'englist.ini' located under the installation directory of SlimBrowser. The configuration file includes a search engine definition in each line with the first line as illustrative header. A search engine definition consists of three fields in order: name, URL, method. These fields are separated by semicolons.

	name: An illustrative name of the search engine which will appear in the drop down engine list on the quick-search bar.
	URL: The address of the CGI (web form handler) together with the query parameters. No matter whether the method of query form is GET or POST, this URL should be written as if the form's method is GET. The keyword to be searched for is represented as $key in the URL. The standard format for this URL is like this: http://www.searchengine.com/cgipath?para1=value1&para2=value2...&parax=$key.
	method: the method of the web form, either 'GET' or 'POST'.

For example, the definition for google search engine is given below,

Google;http://www.google.com/search?q=$key;get

This defines the search engine name to be "Google" and the form method to be "Get". If you search for "goodie" via google, the query URL is http://www.google.com/search?q=goodie.

If you want to add your own search engine, view the source code of the query form. If the form method is GET, search for 'test' in that engine. Then copy the resulting URL into the search engine definition line but replace 'test' with $key. If the form method is POST, you have to get all the parameter names and values from the source code of the form.

If you know nothing about HTML and CGI but still want to add your own search engine, contact us.