Microsoft have posted a KB article to manually create ADM and ADMX files which will allow you to manage the search providers in Internet Explorer 7’s Search Box.
This can be very useful for admins who only want certain sites to be searchable across their domain (such as an intranet!)
After when deploying Internet Explorer 7 around your site through a service such as WSUS, there are immediate considertaions that have to be dealt with. The main one being configuring settings for IE7.
It is possible to download the Internet Explorer Administration Toolkit (IEAK), but when dealing with IE7 that has been installed on computers automatically – that’s not what you want to hear.
After installing IE7 on one of our servers, I went to the group policy to see if there were any new settings. As such, the important ones didn’t seem to exist:
Obviously, there are a number of settings that administrators would want to take control of.
Thankfully, there are two ways of getting these settings in group policy. The first is to simply install Windows Vista as a workstation and use the Group Policy Management Console (GPMC.MSC) which is bundled with Vista. This has all of the IE settings.
If you don’t have a Vista system, you can download an up-to-date MSI of the Administrative Templates for Internet Explorer 7 for Windows. This will install the inetres.adm file in the specified folder.
To apply it to the machine you are working on (pre-Vista, of course), copy the ADM file to %systemroot%\inf. Run gpedit.msc and navigate to User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Internet Explorer.
Some of the useful settings are:
Using the group policy configuration is a much more practical way of configuring IE7 than the registry hacks that I’ve seen floating around where people are struggling to find the group policy settings for IE7.
There are there! Honest!
After upgrading to IE7 in Windows XP, we found that non-admin users were once again seeing the Open File Security warning dialog box.
Once again, the issue can be resolved by visiting the group policy. Open up the appropriate policy file, and follow the path to:
User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Internet Explorer > Internet Control Panel > Security Page
All we have done here is added your domain to the Trusted Sites zone, which removes the file security dialog.
Well done, you.
In IE7, adding your own custom search is beautifully simple now that Microsoft have added the Create Your Own to the ‘Find More Providers…’ link in IE7
So, it seems sensible that your blog would want a piece of the action.
To that end, here’s a quick example of my own search provider. As IE7 uses the OpenSearch Specification, an XML document can be linked in your site which will make the search box glow. Users can then either use the search specification to carry out a search on the site, or additionally add the search to their list of search providers.
First of all, either create your XML file on Microsoft’s Add Search Providers page, or check out my XML file. The opens are documented on the OpenSearch.org website, I think that they are quite self explanatory.
Edit the XML file to include your site’s details and add any additional bits you’d like.
Upload the file to your website and then open the header.php file that your theme uses (or just your default webpage for non-Wordpress sites).
Within the < head> tag, add the following line (making the appropriate adjustments):
Now visit your website, and you should see that you can be added in Internet Explorer’s search list. If it doesn’t work, check that the XML file syntax is correct, and then restart Internet Explorer. After spending about 30 minutes trying to work out why my XML file wasn’t working, it turned out it was.
And now, if you click on the top right (you IE users, you!), then you’ll see bloggingIT in all its glory! Click on the Add Provider option, and you are greeted with:
All users have to do now, is click ‘Add Provider’.
Non-intrusive and easy to use. Great!
For people fed up with the CTRL+F search function in IE, there’s a handy addon that acts (almost) in the same manner as the Firefox find bar.
It’s now on version 1.3, which has resolved some tiny bugs that used to get me wound up.
It doesn’t integrate as nicely into IE7 as I would have hoped (visually, that is). But it is a vast improvement over the standard Find dialog box.
If you want a quick way to find content in webpages, this is the bad boy.
With IE7 on the prowl, I’m having to look at self-signing certificates again to make them work properly.
I found a nice straight-forward how-to on Eric Longman’s blog, which keeps it simple using a Linux box and Windows Server IIS.
Although I’ve fixed my certificates, there is still the problem with IE7 showing a big, bad, red page. As a resolution, I’ve found a blog with instructions for valid SBS certificates, but nevertheless puts me in the direction of GoDaddy for reasonable certificate prices.
Yeah!