Dan Ragle

Fri, 03 Nov 2006 18:58:36 GMT

I've updated this article with a new addEngine function, based on "try..catch" instead of interrogating the window.external.AddSearchEngine method as the previous addEngine did. There are two reasons for this change:

1.) The previous method flat out doesn't work in IE7; as IE7 will not allow you to test for the existence of the AddSearchProvider method. That is, this statement:

if (window.external.AddSearchProvider) {
   // do something based on the
   // existence of AddSearchProvider
}

generates an error in IE7.

2.) The latest Firefox release (2.0) supports and recommends (see this link) the use of the AddSearchProvider method (and hence, the OpenSearch format) as opposed to the Sherlock-based configuration file.

Thus, our new function uses try...catch to try the AddSearchProvider function first; and if it fails, tests for and tries the Sherlock-based mechanism for Firefox 1.5x. If this also fails, the alert message is provided for the user.

Unfortunately, this means that the function will cause errors in older browsers that don't recognize try...catch syntax; but a more graceful solution--that doesn't require ugly browser sniffing--escapes me at the moment. Feel free to drop us a comment if you come up with something more elegant!

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Dan Ragle