Search Federation on Window 7

  • Article

Using Windows 7 there’s an easy way to integrate search results from various search engines into the windows explorer. By default the “Favorites” group only has entries for “Desktop”, “Downloads” and “Recent Places”:

clip_image002

To add a new “Favorite” to that list e.g. to run your search queries against www.live.com just copy the following XML into a file, save it as live.osdx.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<OpenSearchDescription xmlns="https://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/">
<ShortName>Live Search</ShortName>
<Description>Use live.com to search the web index.</Description>
<Tags>Web</Tags>
<LongName>Live.com Web Search</LongName>
<Image width="16" height="16" type="image/gif">https://search.live.com:80/s/rsslogo.gif</Image>
<Query role="example" searchterms="seattle"/>
<Developer>Microsoft Corporation, Live Search Development Team</Developer>
<SyndicationRight>open</SyndicationRight>
<InputEncoding>UTF-8</InputEncoding>
<OutputEncoding>UTF-8</OutputEncoding>
<Url type="text/html" template="https://search.live.com/results.aspx?q={searchTerms}"/>
<Url type="application/rss+xml" template="https://api.search.live.com/rss.aspx?source=web&amp;query={searchTerms}&amp;web.count=50&amp;mkt={language?}"/>
<ms-ose:ResultsProcessing format="application/rss+xml" xmlns:ms-ose="https://schemas.microsoft.com/opensearchext/2009/">
<ms-ose:LinkIsFilePath>True</ms-ose:LinkIsFilePath>
<ms-ose:PropertyDefaultValues>
<ms-ose:Property schema="https://schemas.microsoft.com/windows/2008/propertynamespace" name="System.PropList.ContentViewModeForSearch">prop:~System.ItemNameDisplay;System.DateModified;~System.ItemPathDisplay;~System.Search.AutoSummary;System.LayoutPattern.PlaceHolder;System.LayoutPattern.PlaceHolder;System.LayoutPattern.PlaceHolder</ms-ose:Property>
</ms-ose:PropertyDefaultValues>
</ms-ose:ResultsProcessing>
</OpenSearchDescription>

After double-click that file you’ll get this message:

clip_image004

Click “Add” and you’ll get “Live Search” as a new entry in your “Favorites”:

clip_image006

Now you can run your search queries using Live Search directly from your Windows 7 explorer:

clip_image008

Enjoy,
thomas