|1-How to include a Search
|1-on your Web page...
by D!ck
There are ways and means to do everything, one of the most useful
aspects of the internet is the ability to use search engines to hunt
down a specific topic, and it would enhance your page no end if you
could give people the option to search from it for pages of similar
interest.
Take, for example, Jenny Powell (oh shut up you lot, just because I
*like* Jenny Powell okay?), I have an Jenny Powell section on my page,
so it would be cool if I could add a gadget that would search the
internet for other occurrences of our Jen, right?
OK, bad example, there isn't an awful lot of Jenny Powell out there, but
this IS only an example after all!
First of all, decide which search engine you're going to use, for the
purposes of the example we'll use Yahoo UK, many people will be familiar
with it so it's a good place to start.
Create the link for your search engine, you can make it a fancy gfx link
if you want, but for now we'll stick to a text link:
Search on Yahoo For Jenny Powell
This won't do anything, obviously, because there's no URL to link to
just yet, we'll get that now.
Go to Yahoo, that's www.yahoo.co.uk for us, and do a search for "Jenny
Powell" (include the quotes). You'll notice a few answers come up but
that's not what you're interested in.
Look at the top of the page where the URL is, instead of what you've
just typed in you should see...
http://av.yahoo.co.uk/bin/query_uk?p=%22Jenny+Powell%22&hc=0&hs=0
This is a call to Yahoo with loads of parameters, you can drop this into
any browser at any time and it will perform a search on Yahoo for "Jenny
Powell" (in quotes, so you won't get Jenny Agutter and Enoch Powell by
mistake).
All you have to do no, is chop that entire line out of the URL box and
paste it between the quotes in your Text Link (in HREF="") and save your
document. Upload your HTML onto the net and try it out online, you
should jump to a Yahoo page that has just conducted a search for you.
The handy bit here is that you do not have to keep updating a set of
links, just point your user in the direction of Yahoo or any other
search engine (repeat the above process for any you want to include) and
they will be presented with a list of sites mathching the query, and
Yahoo will have kept it updated, not you.
If you use this idea, please credit me by inserting the following line
of text into your site document (I've split it up to fit on the screen
but you can stick it all on one line) somewhere:
Search idea by
D!ck
Feel free to visit my site - always under construction - and ask about
anything that interests you there.
Dick
.-------------------------------------------------.
| Visit D!ck's webpages, the D!crosoft Dimension, |
| http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Bay/2020 |
| and Bodyshop Central: http://www.qcs.co.uk/bsc/ |
|-------------------------------------------------|
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`---------------------------------------oOO(_)OOo-'
[Most users of the internet that consider themselves more experienced
with searching will recommend AltaVista (www.altavista.digital.com)
because it searches 90% of the internet (Web and USENET). It's run by
DEC (Digital Electronics Corporation) and powered by their DEC Alpha
machines which are supplied to Yahoo as well. If you want to get more
out of searching the net then I recommend this book:
The AltaVista Search Revolution : How to find anything on the internet
Osborne McGraw-Hill 1997
ISBN 0-07-882235-1
Kei]
end