Windows 7 - Windows 7 Federated Search Providers

**dmex** · **OPTION ONE:**

Windows 7 Search Federation Providers

Information

With the demonstration of Windows 7`s OpenSearch Providers by Long Zheng (Flickr Search Connector for Windows 7 Search Federation)

I have created these providers for Searching Youtube, Google, Google News, GoogleBlogs, MSN and Yahoo and more coming soon!

Note

Digg - Windows 7 Search Providers - Windows 7 Forums

Please feel free to post your own or links to others and I will credit and update the list of available Federation Providers

RELATED LINKS:

OPTION ONE:
Installation and Usage

1st Step: Click on a icon below to install the Search Provider.

Advanced Search Connectors:
These Search Connectors export Additional properties like Thumbnails, Videos, Documents, Images and other files for use directly from explorer!
Youtube:

Flickr Search: (by Zong Zheng) Flickr Search Connector for Windows 7

ISOHunt.com Search

Deviant Art

Yahoo Image Search

Yahoo Video

TechNet-Edge

Msdn Channel 9

Basic Search Connectors:
These Search connectors only show web page results without additional properties like Thumbnails, Videos, Documents, Images and other files...
Bing:

Yahoo:

MSNSearch:

Google:
Google claim support for RSS based OpenSearch will be Implemented late 2010-2011, I have asked Google for more specific Information but their response was no comment (Recent conversations suggests they never will allow rss based searches)

An Alternate solution has been created by Dan Bugglin, You can read the full story here: OpenSearch Google in Windows 7 (Nicely done, Thanks Dan!)

Google News:

Google Blogs:

SevenForum`s Search:

ebay Search:

Amazon Search:

Digg

Technet

Techrepublic

Wired

2nd Step: Open Windows Explorer. You will see you new Search Provider listed under Favorites or under C:\Users\<username>\Searches

OPTION TWO:
Create Your Own Standard Basic Search Provider:

Note

Most websites do not support OpenSearch however a little feature of Microsoft`s Live Search allows you to create your own basic Search Provider for any Website and make it able to search that site directly from Windows 7

1st Step: Open Notepad and paste this code:
Code:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<OpenSearchDescription xmlns="http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/" xmlns:ms-ose="http://schemas.microsoft.com/opensearchext/2009/">
<ShortName>Sevenforums</ShortName>
<Description>OpenSearch SevenForums via Live Search using Windows 7 Federated Search</Description>
<Url type="application/rss+xml" template="http://api.bing.com/rss.aspx?source=web&amp;query={searchTerms} site:sevenforums.com&amp;web.count=50"/>
<Url type="text/html" template="http://www.bing.com/search?q={searchTerms}+site:sevenforums.com"/>
</OpenSearchDescription>
2nd Step: Replace the red text with a Shortname you want to call the Search Provider, A description and then replace sevenforums.com URL with the website URL you would like to use for Searching using Windows 7

3rd Step: Click File> Save As and change the "Save as Type" to all files (important!), then under filename use (filename.osdx) to allow Windows 7 to recognize the Search Provider osdx extension

4th Step: Open your newly created Search provider to begin searching the website you specified using LiveSearch`s webite RSS Search Feature

.

**garysgold** · 11-30-2008

Thanks Steven.

Gary

**johngalt** · 12-01-2008

I finally got around to installing Windows 7 x64 on my older WD 250 GB HD - I am impressed thus far. More about that in a different post.

I've got these downloaded - now to try them out .... So, it is my understanding that the one for Windows 7 forums is still not 100% active?

**dmex** · 12-01-2008

Quote: Originally Posted by johngalt

So, it is my understanding that the one for Windows 7 forums is still not 100% active?

Hey JohnG,

Yeah we have one, just copy and save the text from Step1 under "Create your own Personalized Search Provider"

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><OpenSearchDescription xmlns="http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/" xmlns:ms-ose="http://schemas.microsoft.com/opensearchext/2009/"> 
<ShortName>Sevenforums</ShortName> 
<Description>OpenSearch SevenForums via MSN using Windows 7 Search.</Description> 
<Url type="application/rss+xml" template="http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q={searchTerms}+site%3asevenforums.com&amp;num=10&amp;format=rss"/> 
<Url type="text/html" template="http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q={searchTerms}+site%3asevenforums.com&format=rss"/> 
</OpenSearchDescription>

It uses a trick with Microsoft`s Live Search to display results in OpenSearch RSS format for any website you specify

We are working on our own SevenForums Search Provider without using LiveSearch and it works but has some search result issues at the moment so the LiveSearch trick will have todo until we have a more reliable one for public release

**NormCameron** · 12-01-2008

We previously touched upon how you could add Flickr Search to the Windows 7 Search Federation. dmex over at SevenForums went on to create even additional providers that you can experiment with. A few of the search providers available for download drew their sources from Youtube, Google News, and Yahoo. Of course, the one everyone wants is a Google Search implementation, but apparently, OpenSearch cannot be used with Google Search just yet.

Windows 7 Center

**garysgold** · 12-01-2008

Been playing around with this a bit. Very

Gary

**BrandonLive** · 01-18-2009

Hey guys! Great to see all this excitement around my feature

Just wanted to let you guys know that instead of hosting the OSDX file in a .zip file, you can link to it directly. If the server it's on is configured to return .OSDX files with the appropriate "application/opensearchdescription+xml" MIME type, the install will happen automatically when you click on the link!

Most hosting providers provide a configuration UI to add file extensions and MIME type associations. If you can't find it, check the help documentation (probably just search for "MIME").

Happy searching!

**z3r010** · 01-18-2009

Thanks Brandon, I have now added the MIME type to the server....now to make an install button.

Great feature BTW

wooh · 01-19-2009

Anybody have the programming skills to make a plugin for seeqpod?

They have open search implemented, and an API for retrieving results, however, instead of getting back a rss feed, it returns a xspf file (open source xml playlist format.) Windows 7 doesn't seem to recognize anything besides an rss feed, so I guess you would need to use an xsl transformation to convert the xspf to rss, but I think that should work.

wxwoo · 01-22-2009

Here's a quick and simple one I made for isoHunt: http://win7.bluerok.net/isohunt.osdx