One of the rarely talked about new features in Windows 7 is federated search. This not only allows you to search for files on SharePoint servers or the company intranet as if they were stored locally on your PC, it also lets you search public websites from within Windows Explorer. 

Right now you’re probably asking why on Earth you’d want to search websites in Explorer when you’ve got a perfectly good web browser and Google for such purposes? Well, there are several advantages. First, Windows Explorer starts searching websites as you type, just like it does with locally-stored files, meaning the page you’re looking for often crops up before you’ve even finished typing the search terms. It’s blisteringly fast too – often quicker than the website’s own search engine.

What’s more, you can get a full page preview of the website without even opening the browser, and print the page with nothing more than a right click on the search results. So, for example, you could search for and print out the review of the Samsung NC20 netbook you saw on PC Pro  last week in about five seconds flat.

SEARCH CONNCECTORS

To search a website from within Windows 7 you need a small piece of code called a Search Connector. You’ll find connectors for several leading websites – including Flickr, YouTube and Wikipedia – in the Connectors Pack provided by the Redmond Pie website.  To install a search connector, simply unzip the Connectors Pack, double-click on the Connector of your choice and it will automatically install itself in your Windows Explorer Favourites.

ROLL-YOUR-OWN CONNECTOR

You can also create a connector to search any website you like – be it your personal blog, your company’s website or just one of your regular haunts. 

This requires a minor bit of fiddling with HTML code in a text editor such as Windows Notepad or the ever-reliable TextPad.

Copy and paste the following code into your text editor:

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?>

<OpenSearchDescription xmlns=”http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/” xmlns:ms-ose=”http://schemas.microsoft.com/opensearchext/2009/”>

<ShortName>PC Pro</ShortName>

<Description>Search PC Pro using Windows 7 Federated Search</Description>

<Url type=”application/rss+xml” template=”http://api.search.live.com/rss.aspx?source=web&query={searchTerms} site:www.pcpro.co.uk&web.count=50″/>

<Url type=”text/html” template=”http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q={searchTerms}+site:www.pcpro.co.uk“/>

</OpenSearchDescription> 

You’ll need to replace the code marked in bold with your own title, description and URLs. When you’ve made the edits, save your code in the All Files format and add the .osdx extention to the filename, so that Windows 7 recognises it as a Search Connector. 

Once saved, you can email the Connector to friends and colleagues, or upload the file to your website and allow readers to download it.

You can download the PC Pro Search Connector here. 

(Note: it might well be possible to replace Microsoft’s Live Search with an alternative search engine – can’t think who – although we’ve been unable to find the relevant API. Let us know if you find one, although the Windows Live Search worked perfectly in our tests).