Recommended Posts

Recently stumbled across an article detailing Windows 7's OpenSearch technology, which basically adds search capabilities into explorer.

Article

Decided to cook one up for Neowin, with this little .osdx file you'll be able to search Neowin's forums from within Explorer. :)

Download - 1KB

Blog post with additional OpenSearch providers.

Edited by -Hiroshi-
Link to comment
https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/717288-opensearch/
Share on other sites

Again, another feature not many people know about and certain people disregard when saying Windows 7 should be a service pack to Windows Vista :rolleyes:

Thanks for notifying everyone of this -Hiroshi- :) I remember this from one of Long Zheng's blog posts where he incorporated Flikr into Windows Explorer - very nice! :)

Link to comment
https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/717288-opensearch/#findComment-590360456
Share on other sites

Again, another feature not many people know about and certain people disregard when saying Windows 7 should be a service pack to Windows Vista :rolleyes:

Thanks for notifying everyone of this -Hiroshi- :) I remember this from one of Long Zheng's blog posts where he incorporated Flikr into Windows Explorer - very nice! :)

No problem, I'm working on a few others from various different websites like Arstechnica and Activewin. :) I'll post them if anyone wants them.

Link to comment
https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/717288-opensearch/#findComment-590360478
Share on other sites

No problem, I'm working on a few others from various different websites like Arstechnica and Activewin. :) I'll post them if anyone wants them.

Well I'm sure I'll find them useful (for many of the sites I visit, including Neowin) for when I finally install Windows 7. So, thank you in advance :D

Link to comment
https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/717288-opensearch/#findComment-590360528
Share on other sites

Is it time consuming making these scripts? Or are they flexible with different sites?

Takes me half a minute to create a new search, only restraints is that the page needs to support RSS. What it basically does is that the websites themselves don't support OpenSearch, but Windows Live Search does, and so it uses Live Search to search the pages which feature RSS.

Brandon already created one for Deviantart, you can find it in the article.

Made a Wikipedia one.. - Download

I could be wrong, or it could be a bug in firefox, but it doesn't look like Wikipedia has RSS but it still works..

Edited by -Hiroshi-
Link to comment
https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/717288-opensearch/#findComment-590360542
Share on other sites

Oh wow, is that the feature you were appointed to develop? Or one that you helped think up? etc. (I don't know how Windows development works :p )

Using OpenSearch was my idea and I built the original prototype, but not without some crucial help from a couple other brilliant folks :) Because of that work I'm the dev owner of the feature for Win7. Of course it takes a lot of work from people all around the Find & Organize team to actually make it happen. Lots of pieces had to come together to pull it off.

Link to comment
https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/717288-opensearch/#findComment-590364450
Share on other sites

Using OpenSearch was my idea and I built the original prototype, but not without some crucial help from a couple other brilliant folks :) Because of that work I'm the dev owner of the feature for Win7. Of course it takes a lot of work from people all around the Find & Organize team to actually make it happen. Lots of pieces had to come together to pull it off.

Well I don't know how often this happens in Microsoft, but you must be proud that the idea you thought of (and later built a prototype of) was implemented into Windows and will become a very handy feature? :) (obviously when Windows 7 RTMs and is adopted by more people).

My dream job would be to work in Microsoft on one of the Windows teams, in the future, after I've learnt much more and graduated university... I can only dream though :p

Link to comment
https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/717288-opensearch/#findComment-590364476
Share on other sites

I hope you guys have tried the Flickr and DeviantArt osdx plugins that are out there.

http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/12/30/a-...rch-connectors/

Opening DeviantArt images directly inside Explorer and setting them as your background wallpaper really shows you how cool / effective this feature can be. Unfortunately I couldn't find cool uses for it beside image stuff just yet -- most plugins are just searches for web pages on websites which I am quite fine with doing on the browser. I'm not part of an enterprise with Sharepoint where I would get utility out of searching for Office docs on a company share. Obviously you can't have stuff like YouTube videos looking like regular video in Explorer (or can you? Someone please do this).

If Federated Search can do such a good job with images, can we also interact with other files in Explorer instead of just finding the containing webpage?

Link to comment
https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/717288-opensearch/#findComment-590366064
Share on other sites

Is it like the Keyword feature in Firefox ?? Just a question because I still don't understand it

Not sure what you're referring to. Most browsers use OpenSearch Description Files to add custom search providers to their search boxes. This is a bit different, as the browser just takes you to the HTML view of the results. In our case, we use OpenSearch to add the location and then RSS or Atom to enumerate the results and display them in a rich client view, the same view we use for desktop search results. There's also a lot of fancy behind the scenes work to make the items work as if they were local or on a network share (so you have drag-and-drop, open / right-click, previews, etc).

We're working on an in-depth blog post, so keep an eye on the E7 blog over the coming weeks.

Link to comment
https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/717288-opensearch/#findComment-590366502
Share on other sites

Wow Brandon, I love this feature (:

Very cool. If I wanted to add a website, would it need to support RSS or Atom, for it too work?

Yeah, the site will need to expose the results as either RSS or Atom. Either that, or you'd need to write a proxy that can generate the RSS or Atom feed, as Long Zheng did with his Flickr prototype.

Link to comment
https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/717288-opensearch/#findComment-590368894
Share on other sites

Yeah, the site will need to expose the results as either RSS or Atom. Either that, or you'd need to write a proxy that can generate the RSS or Atom feed, as Long Zheng did with his Flickr prototype.

Hmm... How does the wikipedia one work? S:

Anyway, thanks for the info. :)

Link to comment
https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/717288-opensearch/#findComment-590370236
Share on other sites

Nice.. it would've been cool if you guys had posted the scripts I had made up on the front page, instead of stealing the links from my first post that I spent some time investigating for...

I am not a regular visitor of forums and I noticed this thread only after you posted the link in the comments. Will keep an eye on the forums :)

And FYI I did not steal the links, Google will anyhow take you there ;)

Link to comment
https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/717288-opensearch/#findComment-590373494
Share on other sites

Awesome feature :)

Loving the DeviantArt Connector

www.istartedsomething.com seems to be down so can't get the Flickr Connector yet.

Would it be possible to make a YouTube Connector that only searches for videos that are HD, and also have the option to download? That would be sweet. :)

Link to comment
https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/717288-opensearch/#findComment-590373774
Share on other sites

This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
  • Posts

    • Microsoft updates Visual Studio Code with chat cost tracking and multi-agent chats by Paul Hill Microsoft has just launched Visual Studio Code 1.126, its latest weekly release. This time, the company has focused on letting you see the total cost of chat sessions to spot expensive conversations; enabling multiple chats per session that run side-by-side in one agent host Copilot session; and letting you browse new folders safely in restricted mode. We have now reached the stage where free AI in IDEs is coming to an end. To help you keep track of your costs, VS Code now lets you see the entire cost of a chat session, rather than just individual turns. This should give you more transparency about which sessions consume the most credits, so you can better manage your usage over time and spend less. For those of you using the Agents window, you know it is possible to run and manage multiple agent sessions at once. In this update, a Copilot session started from an agent host can hold several chats at once. Explaining how this feature works, Microsoft writes: Finally, from this update forward, Microsoft will remove the pop-up when opening an untrusted folder. When you open a new folder now, it will automatically open in Restricted Mode. You will see a banner that lets you manage the trust level of the folder. Microsoft has made this change so that it’s easier to start inspecting code without giving it trust right away. If you have VS Code, you can check for updates within the app now to get this new version. Otherwise, you can download it from the Visual Studio Code website.
    • Anthropic accuses Alibaba of using 25,000 fake accounts to copy Claude's capabilities by Karthik Mudaliar Anthropic has accused Alibaba of using nearly 25,000 fraudulent accounts to extract capabilities from Claude on a huge scale. According to a report from Reuters, Anthropic told US lawmakers that operators linked to Alibaba and the company’s Qwen AI team generated 28.8 million exchanges with Claude between April 22 and June 5, 2026. That is a lot of Claude conversations, but Anthropic says this was not ordinary chatbot use. The company believes the accounts were part of a coordinated effort to collect answers that could help train or improve rival AI systems. The alleged campaign reportedly focused on some of Claude’s most valuable skills, including software development, multi-step reasoning, and agentic tasks. In practical terms, that means getting an AI model to plan and complete work across several stages rather than simply answering a single question. This is called 'distillation,' where AI companies use outputs from a larger model to train a smaller and cheaper one. The smaller model learns to imitate useful parts of the more capable system without needing the same amount of computing power. The distillation process isn't automatically suspicious, but the problem comes when one company gathers another provider's outputs without permission and at an industrial scale. Also, this does not mean Alibaba obtained Claude’s source code, model weights, or original training data. Instead, Anthropic claims the accounts repeatedly asked Claude carefully designed questions and collected the answers. Those answers could then be used as training material for another model. Anthropic has made similar accusations against DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, and MiniMax earlier this year. As Neowin previously reported, Anthropic said those three companies collectively generated more than 16 million Claude exchanges through roughly 24,000 accounts. Anthropic says the new campaign produced almost twice as many exchanges in a matter of weeks. Anthropic reportedly told lawmakers that the campaign could help Chinese AI developers approach the capabilities of its Mythos Preview model. Mythos is focused on advanced cybersecurity work, including finding and exploiting complex software vulnerabilities. via Reuters | Photo via DepositPhotos.com
    • An Indian manufacturer that assembles roughly one-third of Apple's iPhones and supplies semiconductor components to Tesla confirmed Monday that attackers had stolen and publicly published a 630-gigabyte cache of confidential files — including engineering blueprints stamped "TRADE SECRET," a 52-page quality inspection document for iPhone circuit board components, and cryptographic certificates that security experts say could be weaponized in follow-on attacks. https://www.techtimes.com/articles/319019/20260624/apple-tesla-supplier-tata-electronics-confirms-630-gb-data-theft-iphone-specs-dark-web.htm
    • I don't think it was ever a big question. In fact, I don't think anyone ever asked about how clocks work on Mars.
  • Recent Achievements

    • Rookie
      krychek57 went up a rank
      Rookie
    • Grand Master
      Jaybonaut went up a rank
      Grand Master
    • One Year In
      Philsl earned a badge
      One Year In
    • Dedicated
      Scoobystu earned a badge
      Dedicated
    • First Post
      Tom Schmidt earned a badge
      First Post
  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      441
    2. 2
      +Edouard
      176
    3. 3
      PsYcHoKiLLa
      133
    4. 4
      Michael Scrip
      79
    5. 5
      Xenon
      77
  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!