[whatwg] SearchBox API

> If this is meant to be vendor-neutral, there needs to be some way for
> arbitrary search engines to advertise support for this feature to
> supporting browsers. ?In the experimental Chrome implementation, does
> it just not work if the search engine isn't Google? ?If Bing wanted to
> make use of this too, how would they do it? ?If advertising support is
> necessary, then OpenSearch seems like the way to do it.

This is a good point that wasn't in the initial API proposal. The page
needs to advertise support for instant. But the decision is more
complicated that simply "provider A supports it and provider B
doesn't." The Google SERP determines on a case-by-case basis whether
instant is supported. For instance, for users with a high RTT time, we
don't advertise instant support because it would be a bad experience.

The simplest way to address this is probably to advertise support via
an agreed upon meta tag. e.g.
<meta name="NavigatorSearchBoxSupport" content="true">

The UA populates the API only if the page advertises support via the
metatag. Otherwise, it works as it does today.

>
> But I might be misunderstanding something here, since the proposal
> only gave an API, and didn't explain conformance requirements for UAs.
> ?So maybe my inferences from the demo video are wrong.
>

Yes, the API requires a bit of imagination at this point. I'll write
up conformance requirements in more detail, but thought it worthwhile
to get high level feedback and gauge interest first.

Received on Thursday, 14 October 2010 16:53:40 UTC