Adding EDN Search to your browser

This page lets you quickly add the ESRI EDN Search to your FireFox 2 or Internet Explorer 7 browser. It does this through a link in its header pointing to an OpenSearch definition document. More information can be found on the OpenSearch website, though there are limitations on how well both browsers support some of the more complex features.

To add this search to either browser from this page is pretty easy (moreso in Firefox).

• Firefox
   
  1. Click on the glowing search button in your search bar and choose Add "ESRI EDN Search"
     
      
  2. Type in your search
      
• Internet Explorer
   
  1. Click on the glowing search button in your search bar, hover over Add Search Providers, and click on ESRI EDN Search
     
      
  2. Accept the confirmation dialog
     
      
  3. Select EDN Search from the dropdown list
     
      
  4. Type in your search

This is pretty easy to set up; basically I stole the XML generated from the Microsoft Add Search Provider site (used the View XML option in the Create Your Own area), saved it to this directory, and then created aan HTML page with the following in the head section:

<link rel="search" type="application/opensearchdescription+xml" title="ESRI EDN Search" href="http://www.jasonbirch.com/files/ednsearch/ednsearch.xml">

Really, there is no excuse for reference websites to not provide this facility themselves. It's easy to do and offers a great service to their users.

-J