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Spider
08-09-2012, 03:37 PM
Hi, everyone.

Has anyone discovered a way to add a search box to IE9? There is no search box on this browser and the address window serves a dual purpose. Trouble is it doesn't always know if you are searching for a search term or trying to connect to a website.

It is very easy to add individual search engine toolbars, but I switch serch engines for different purposes - Google for people, Bing for images, Ixquick for general information, Ask when I have a question, and others for different reasons. Short of having 10 toolbars above the content window, I cannot see how to have these SEs available in a separate dialog box. I need one searchbox for many SEs (Just like IE8 and before.)

Any help would be appreciated.

Harold Mansfield
08-09-2012, 03:49 PM
I use Firefox as my main browser, and the search box add on in my tool bar as the option of adding all of your search engines to a drop down. You just pick from the drop down which you would like to search with.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/add-to-search-bar/

If you just want to stay with IE as your default browser, I think this is what you are looking for:
Search with the Internet Explorer 9 Address bar (http://windows.microsoft.com/en-ZA/windows7/Search-with-the-Internet-Explorer-9-Address-bar)

Scroll down to the "To add a search provider" section.

billbenson
08-09-2012, 04:49 PM
Chrome acts the same way. I don't find it inconvenient though. just don't put http or www in the box and its searches whatever search engine.

Spider
08-09-2012, 05:58 PM
Thanks, Harold and Bill,

Harold - Those links (and quite a few others provided by Microsoft) don't apply to this. MS are clear that the address bar - now called One Box - serves for both search and for addresses. The answer "Search with the Internet Explorer 9 Address bar" explains searching with the address bar, not a separate search bar. And the "To add a search provider" section explains how to add a search provider to the list of SEs that will search in the address bar window. (Makes you wonder what's going on in some people brains, huh?!) I was rather hoping someone might know of a proprietory task bar that had a multi-engined search bar. I can add a Yahoo task bar and a Google task bar, and a IxQuick task bar and a Bing taskbar .... but I'll finish up with more taks bars that content area!

Bill - I tried it a few times and sometimes the browser searched when I expected it to add "http://www" and go to a site, and sometimes the browser added "http://www" when I wanted it to search. The bar is so damned long now, I cannot imagine why they wanted to combine these two entirely unrelated functions when there is ample room to keep them separate. I guess there is a redundancy of programmers at Microsoft!

I'm sure there must be a way round this, though. Thank you both for your replies.

billbenson
08-09-2012, 10:15 PM
I don't have IE on this computer, but Chrome appears to make you select a default search engine and not a drop down for individual searches. I primarily use G anyway, so its not a big issue, but I see your point.

Spider
08-10-2012, 05:00 PM
Likewise, IE9, Bill, as to selecting a default SE. I like Ixquick for general information searches, Google for peoples' names, Bing for images, Ask when I have an actual question, Wikipedia when I want real facts, Amazon when I'm looking for a book, Youtube for..... and so on. I rather need that drop-down menu in IE8, or some other means of accessing the different SEs. IE9 is good in that respect - the different SEs are listed horizontally on the drop down panel that shows previous sites visited.

I have solved the original problem, now, actually. I found another hangup with IE9 that was far more irritating - the IE9 browser kept hanging when opening my creation files (the Notepad-html files that produce the website when uploaded to the host's server.) IOW, the browser would not show my website in the browser window from my harddrive. I'm sure this is not supposed to happen but it did and I was blocked from working on my html code. This was solved by unistalling IE9 and reverting to IE8 --- which solved the initial problem, too.

As my friend Will Shakespeare said, All's well that ends well!

Have fun!

billbenson
08-10-2012, 07:58 PM
You could actually put all of those in a favorites folder. That would be the equivalent of a drop down.

jamesray50
08-10-2012, 08:41 PM
I use Firefox. Why do they change things that are working? Ten years ago I welcomed new things, enjoyed learning new features about different software I was using. Now I just want everything to stay the way, I don't want to learn how to do something different.

billbenson
08-10-2012, 10:29 PM
Well, in the case of using the address bar for searches as well, people get confused. If I told my mom to put something into the search bar or the address bar, she wouldn't know what the difference is. I suspect this change is better for most people although I don't understand why they would remove the possibility to have a search bar with the possibilities of selecting a search engine. There may very well be a way of configuring it like that that I don't know of??

Manufacturers are always trying to improve their products. Sometimes they screw up, sometimes its a better product. Sometimes its better for some and worse for others. You can't please everybody!

I'm glad the Apple II isn't still my only option for a PC!

Harold Mansfield
08-14-2012, 09:10 AM
I'm afraid I just haven't used IE as a browser in so long that I just don't know anything about it anymore.

I know the Firefox option works because I use it everyday.

I agree with Bill too. Many times I've told people to type into the search bar, or URL bar and they don't know the difference or what I'm talking about. I'm going to guess that they saw that people were typing search terms into the URL bar and decided to just screw it and make it all one.

And that's the way it is on mobile devices.

socialme82
08-15-2012, 09:55 PM
Drop IE and in the long run you will be much happier. Not only does Microsoft fail to maintain compatibility standards with W3C but they also tend to fail at extendability features. Firefox and Chrome are much better for these purposes. Firefox especially from a technical standpoint while some media runs way better on Chrome, or so I have found.

Matt121
10-17-2012, 12:51 AM
IE can lag my laptop so much. I prefer using Chrome or Firefox as my main browsers instead; plus these two browsers are a lot easier to use than IE9 IMO.