love cool stuff and this IE7 feature belongs to that category.  IE7 has a search feature and you can add Search providers to enhance your usage.  Initially when I saw the feature I used to wonder how is this tiny little box going to change the world of search.  But now I know it's a killer feature. 

 

What is so exciting about it? Huh! you can add your favourite search engine there?

Not just that but more! From my experience working in support I found search to be part of my life (I know it's become part of everyone's life). I'm sharing the feeling of my peers in IT world who uses search (any search engine) to find solutions to thier technical issues. Microsoft Knowledge base has tons of articles but I guess we didn't do a good job on indexing in the past to make it easily discoverable. But now that has changed by integrating Windows Live Search and now let us leverage it using IE7 built-in search.

 

So let us focus on "Topic Search" and steps for creating your own search provider for Microsoft Support Knowledge Base.

Here are simple instructions you need to follow, yea it's really simple.

  1. Goto the following link (you can get this link from "Get more search providers" option from IE7 search box
    Add Search Providers to Internet Explorer 7
  2. Goto "Create Your own" section
  3. Provide name as "MS KB Search" in the box for 4th point
  4. This is main portion of the trick
    1. Goto http://support.microsoft.com
    2. Enter "TEST" (without quotes) in the box below "Search Support(KB)" and hit ENTER
    3. Once the results come up, copy & paste the url into 3rd point on "Create Your own" section in the provider page
  5. Now click "Install" and bingo it prompts you to add the provider you just created to IE7 search bar.

Next time you wanna search something on Microsoft Knowledge Base you can do it right inside IE7 search and select the new search provider you just created called "MS KB Search"

Read more about AddSearchProvider in IE7 here

 

The idea of Search Providers are not restricted to web search... I have found Domain name search provider on godaddy.com website!