Is there an IE Search Provider for stackoverflow.com?

Question

The IE Search box allows one to configure search providers, and swap between them with a click. I can search amazon, Wikipedia, google, or live.com by clicking an icon.

Anyone can "install" a new search provider into their IE, from the published list available at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/searchguide/en-en/default.mspx .

Is there one of these for Stackoverflow? I think not.

If not, there should be an easy way to produce and publish one.

Answer 1

There is an easy way to produce one. Go to the page I referenced and key in a few things and it gives you this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<OpenSearchDescription xmlns="http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/">
  <ShortName>Stackoverflow.com</ShortName>
  <Description>Stackoverflow.com provider</Description>
  <InputEncoding>UTF-8</InputEncoding>
  <Url type="text/html" template="http://stackoverflow.com/search?q={searchTerms}" />
</OpenSearchDescription>

Anyone can click on the link on that page and "install" this into their own IE.

But to publish this on the list of available providers, the owners of stackoverflow.com need to go to http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc848862(VS.85).aspx and follow the steps.

I don't think the community can do it.

Answer 2

You can create your own here:
http://www.ieaddons.com/en/createsearch.aspx

This is the site that IE links to if you use the "Find more providers" option. It will let you add the created provider directly to your search bar.

Here's the xml it generates for Stack Overflow, if anyone knows how to do something interesting with it:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?> 
- <OpenSearchDescription xmlns="http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/">
  <ShortName>StackOverflow</ShortName> 
  <Description>StackOverflow provider</Description> 
  <InputEncoding>UTF-8</InputEncoding> 
  <Url type="text/html" template="http://stackoverflow.com/search?q={searchTerms}" /> 
  </OpenSearchDescription>

Personally, google does such a good job indexing Stack Overflow that most of the time I would find such a provider limiting — if Stack Overflow has the answer, then great. But the web is a big place, and there are a lot of good answers out there on other sites, too. That said, a quick test shows that this seems to work with things like tag searches and search operators, which is pretty awesome.