Quick Search Bar

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

Using Quick-Search

There is a button at the left end of the quick-search bar. You can click the button or its drop-down arrow to access the drop-down menu listing all available engines. You can right click on a menu item and select "delete" to remove an engine or a folder. The menu items correspond to the engine definition files. All the engine definition files (*.qseg) are stored under the folder $profile\Application Data\$ProductName\quicksearch. $Profile is your profile folder. You can create sub-folders inside "QuickSearch" folder for better organization. 

How to Search?

Method 1
Enter keywords in the keyword field and then press ENTER key or click the green arrow button to search in the currently selected engine. 
Method 2
If you have turned on the option "Search At Select", you can enter the keywords and then choose an engine from the drop down menu to start searching in the selected engine. 

Sorting Engines

To sort the order of engines shown on the menu, click the "Favorites" button on the toolbar or select "View->Explorer Bar->Favorites" to show "Favorites" explorer bar. Go into the "QuickSearch" sub-folder. Re-order the engines by mouse drag-and-drop in the Favorites explorer bar.  

Open From Windows Shell or Explorer

You can put an engine definition file (.qseg file) on windows desktop or any other folder and then double-click on the file. SlimBrowser will open the engine definition file and prompt you for the keyword to be searched for. 

Extract Search Engine Data Automatically

$ProductName can help you extract search engine data from the current web page automatically. To do automatic extraction, observe the following steps:

  1. Open the search engine homepage like http://www.google.com 
  2. Place the blinking caret inside the edit box where you are going to input the keyword (i.e., whatever you want to search for).
  3. Select "Tools->Extract Search Engine Data..." from the menu. You will see a dialog showing the extracted data
  4. Review the data and make modifications if necessary.  Click "Save As" button to save the data as a quick-search engine definition file (*.qseg).
  5. The new search engine will be immediately available from the drop-down menu of engines.

Understanding Quick-Search Engine Definition Files (Advanced)

Each engine definition file contains the following fields,

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. 

Sometimes automatic search engine data extraction may fail to work. In this case, you may add your own search engine manually by reading the source code of the html page and web form. If the form method is GET, search for a keyword like "test" in that engine. Then copy the URL of the result page from the address bar into the URL field of the engine definition file. But you need replace "test" with "$key", which is a special variable for later substitution. If the form method is POST, you have to manually compose the query string as if the form is submitted with GET method.