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I'm torn, which Custom Search do you prefer?


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I'm torn, which Custom Search do you prefer? Both are free and work with or with out JS.

 

http://www.visibilityinherit.com/projects/search.php this one seems more custom and personalized, and you never leave the page your on!

 

http://www.visibilityinherit.com/projects/google-search.php this one is Google, but you leave the page your on to view the results, and I get paid for the ads that are placed on the results page (how much - probably pennies). You "can" have the results plopped into your own site, but, the width has to be at least 800px - that's 80px wider than my site. And you "can" do on over lay (sort of like the one above), but, the shadow over your site (like light boxes) only works in IE.

 

Votes...

Edited by Eric
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I would go with a hosted search solution.

 

I've heard good things about Perlfect, which seems to be pretty commonly used these days, and in active development.

 

I've used ht://dig in the past, and it works great. In fact, I'm using it now on a 30k page intranet. That said, it seems to be a dead project, so support would be an issue. I believe it also requires that you have command-line access and a root or sudo account, so you can add the indexer to cron. Alternatively, you could index manually when you change something.

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Thanks for looking! I lean towards the first one also I think.

 

"feels like not part of site"

Really? Even though I'm not actually leaving the page, it still feels disjointed and not part of the site? I was thinking that not having to leave the page you were on was sort of a nifty feature. And the popup box is dragable and resizable.

 

I settled on those two because they were the ones with the least amount of ads. All the other free ones have their branding next to the search input box. Hmmm... I'll look into that Perl one and see if I can find one that out puts the results on my own site, and in it's own page. That would probably look more professional uh?

Edited by Eric
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I think there are a couple of things that make it feel disjointed.

 

First off, is the thick black header. It feels a bit out of place. Second it the scrollbars - that tells me "this is from somewhere else" - I may be the exception to this, though.

 

Finally, there is about a 200px gap of the right side of your search area.

 

I don't think its a bad choice, to be honest - I'm just partial to search engines that output into your template. They are more trouble to set up, but feel part of the site because they *are* part of the site.

 

One more, offtopic question - why is the "male" symbol on your page rotated 45deg clcokwise? I've always wondered that :)

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I think there are a couple of things that make it feel disjointed.

 

First off, is the thick black header. It feels a bit out of place. Second it the scrollbars - that tells me "this is from somewhere else" - I may be the exception to this, though.

 

Finally, there is about a 200px gap of the right side of your search area.

 

I don't think its a bad choice, to be honest - I'm just partial to search engines that output into your template. They are more trouble to set up, but feel part of the site because they *are* part of the site.

 

One more, offtopic question - why is the "male" symbol on your page rotated 45deg clcokwise? I've always wondered that :)

 

Thanks Lyndsy for your thoughts! Ya, I didn't really like the black header either. I just quickly changed it from it's default blue color. Scrollbars - ya I see what you mean. 200px gap, hmmm - I don't have that on mine. But I'm going to keep looking for a free solution that out-puts the results on my page.

 

The male symbol - I just thought it matched up better (with the female one), in the space they reside in, with it pointing down. I rotated it - just thought it looked better that way. Normally I'd say something immature like, "I don't do things because others say it should be done that way". But that idea directly goes against this whole post. So I guess that's not all-together true then - sometimes others opinions are important to me...

Edited by Eric
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I think there are a couple of things that make it feel disjointed.

 

First off' date=' is the thick black header. It feels a bit out of place. Second it the scrollbars - that tells me "this is from somewhere else" - I may be the exception to this, though.

 

Finally, there is about a 200px gap of the right side of your search area.

 

I don't think its a bad choice, to be honest - I'm just partial to search engines that output into your template. They are more trouble to set up, but feel part of the site because they *are* part of the site.

 

One more, offtopic question - why is the "male" symbol on your page rotated 45deg clcokwise? I've always wondered that :)[/quote']

 

Thanks Lyndsy for your thoughts! Ya, I didn't really like the black header either. I just quickly changed it from it's default blue color. Scrollbars - ya I see what you mean. 200px gap, hmmm - I don't have that on mine. But I'm going to keep looking for a free solution that out-puts the results on my page.

 

The male symbol - I just thought it matched up better (with the female one), in the space they reside in, with it pointing down. I rotated it - just thought it looked better that way. Normally I'd say something immature like, "I don't do things because others say it should be done that way". But that idea directly goes against this whole post. So I guess that's not all-together true then - sometimes others opinions are important to me...

 

I was just wondering if the rotation of the symbol was a statement of some kind that I wasn't getting, is all. There's nothing at all wrong with it, I still understood what it meant.

 

If it helps, I'm viewing the site in Chrome 1.0.154.36. I tested in Firefox 3.0.5, and it shows the same -- just a space between the right edge of the text and the scrollbar.

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I found all these free perl scripts also http://www.webdevelopersnotes.com/resources/website_search_script.php3

 

This one looks like the easiest install of the bunch http://www.kscripts.com/index.html

 

And I asked to be included in there hosted program - we'll see. http://www.perlfect.com/freescripts/search/

 

And when I say "easy" I mean it seems somewhat "hard". Maybe I've just never messed with Perl, so all the things they are talking about sound totally greek to me. Any suggestions? Thanks!

Edited by Eric
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Holly-comolly-guacamoley that took a long time. Long story short - I couldn't get the perl scripts to work (not enough clear directions anywhere). But I did get this to work. Fully validating. This is what's you call - pixel perfection! I "could" remove the scroll bars completely by making the window 1250px tall, but that has it's draw backs too.

 

I also added the "Move Window", and the "Resize Window" tooltips. And check out how the Move Window disappears when you hover over the "Close Window" link - that took a little while. And the custom search box came out pretty nice too. I'm very happy with with it...

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Quick comment... might be nice to change the cursor to a pointer when the mouse hovers over the "Close Window" option. That would help reinforce that it is a link.

 

It does. Or it should be doing that at least. What browser/OS were you using? Works in all mine.

 

Edit - I'm going to have to step it up - looks like your only 60 posts or so behind me. I think that's a loosing battle though...

Edited by Eric
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