Adding a search provider for searching Gmail from the browser

Adding search engines to the browser (in the top-right search field in most browsers) may be done by creating an xml file containing an Opensearch description and then adding them with a javascript method call.

The below button adds a search provider for searching gmail:



The javascript call is

window.external.AddSearchProvider('http://fornwall.net/files/blog/gmail-search-provider.xml');

where the xml file is as follows:

<OpenSearchDescription xmlns="http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/"
                       xmlns:moz="http://www.mozilla.org/2006/browser/search/">
  <ShortName>Gmail</ShortName>
  <Description>Search Gmail</Description>
  <InputEncoding>UTF-8</InputEncoding>
  <Image width="16" height="16">https://mail.google.com/favicon.ico</Image>
  <Url type="text/html" method="GET" template="https://mail.google.com/mail/#search/{searchTerms}"/>
  <moz:SearchForm>https://mail.google.com/mail/</moz:SearchForm>
</OpenSearchDescription>