Easy searching on heise Security

Readers interested in security can now integrate a search of heise Security directly into their browser search bar or personal toolbar. Heise offers a search extension for heise Security which makes use of the OpenSearch format, supported by both Firefox 2 and Internet Explorer 7. Clicking on "install" on the search page adds the heisec search below Google, Yahoo & Co to the search provider list in the search field of the browser. Thereafter you can use this search wherever you are in the web. Installation requires Firefox 2 or IE 7 with JavaScript enabled: the installation link will not be visible at all in other browsers or with Javascript disabled.

This search plugin offers a nice little extra by returning links which point directly to the articles found, rather than being diverted via result.xhtml like the normal heise search. This is made possible by using the undocumented search parameter nm=1 which switches off highlighting of the pages found. This parameter is persistent, so it remains set for subsequent searches in that window.

As an alternative, Firefox users can save [javascript:Qr=document.getSelection();if(!Qr){void(Qr=prompt('Searchfor?',''))}if(Qr)voidwindow.open('http://www.heise-security.co.uk/search.shtml?nm=1&T='+escape(Qr),'heisec') this heisec/UK bookmarklet] as a bookmark and, for example, add it to the personal toolbar to search heise Security's web pages. It requests the search term using JavaScript and displays the results in a new window. If text is highlighted in the active browser window it will search for the highlighted term. The following [javascript:void(Qr=prompt('Searchfor?',''));if(Qr)location.href='http://www.heise-security.co.uk/search.shtml?nm=1&T='+escape(Qr) bookmarklet] works with Internet Explorer 6, but does not use highlighted text and displays results in the current window.

(mba)