Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Google Custom Search Bar

New search bar on this blog


I've added a Google Custom Search that's available from Blogger in Draft. It's at the top of the page just under the Prairie Bluestem title. (You've probably noticed it already.)

This search is not a hack . You don't have to go into the HTML of the template and change anything. This is a widget that you can add to your blog in the "Page Elements" of Blogger in Draft.

The search is very cool. The results pop right into the main column of the blog. It searches 4 unique sources (just click the tab you want to display):

  • This blog
  • The blogs in my blog-roll (listed in the left sidebar)
  • Internet sites linked to by this blog
  • The entire internet


Please let me know if the search doesn't work right for you, or if the search-bar's position in the column looks wrong to you (maybe it's covering something else or it doesn't seem to be "all there"). It seems to be fine when I look at it on my system and in web renderers, but only you can tell me if it doesn't look right on your system.

Some may remember a similar search bar on Prairie Bluestem before I made the switch to the new Blogger. I got it from a different branch of Google, but it used the same AJAX technology. It looks like the Blogger development team intends to make this search available as a widget for every Blogger weblog.

Oh, one other thing. I've read (here's one place) that it's not illegal to remove the Blogger navigation bar at the top of the page, so I have dared to do it. Removing the navbar does require a small hack of the HTML, but it's very easy to do.

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5 comments:

Michael Leddy said...

Hi Genevieve,

With Ubuntu (Dapper Drake) and Firefox 1.5.0.12, the page loads endlessly, without the search box appearing. If I then hit "Stop," the box appears, and then everything seems fine.

Genevieve Netz said...

Well, that's a problem. I'll turn that in to the Google techs. I'll wait to see if I get any other negative feedback before deciding whether to take it down.

Genevieve Netz said...

I don't know if it will make any difference, Michael, but I did uninstall and reinstall the widget tonight. I thought there was a small chance that I might have corrupted it. I had expanded it to see if I could tweak its margins.

Anonymous said...

Not working with custom domain!

Genevieve Netz said...

Well, I hope you get it working. It is a very cool search. I would like to keep it, but Google runs ads on it and the website owner doesn't get paid for them. Since I have ads on this page, I'd like to have the revenue, if any, that a search bar generates. I have kids in college!

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