Make a Duck Duck Go, Bing or Google search box for your desktop

You may have seen the Bing search box that you would put on your desktop whenever you started your PC. It's easy to make something similar. 
Open Microsoft Visual C^# 2010 Express. If you don't have it, it is free and you can get it here. Click on "New Project" and select "Windows Forms Application."

When it loads, this should come up:

Change its width to suite you, but leave its hight the same. Set form border style to "none,"text to anything you like and Locked to true.

Then set the transparency key to "blue" which is under them "web" tab that comes up when Transparency Key is clicked. 

Go to any free web site host that allows the uploading and viewing of HTML files. I suggest Webs and Yola will not work. Log in or create an account. Then open Notepad and enter this code:
If you want Google search enter this code

<body bgcolor="blue">
<!-- Begin Google Search Code -->
<form id="searchform" method="get" name="searchform" action="http://www.google.com/search" target="_blank"><input onfocus="searchfield_focus(this)" type="text" id="as_q" name="as_q" value="Search"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><input type="submit" value="Search" title="Search" style="font-family: verdana, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; height: 22px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "></form> <!-- End Google Search Code -->

If you want a Bing search box:

<body bgcolor="blue">

<!--search from Bing-->
<form method="get" action="http://www.bing.com/search">
<input type="hidden" name="cp" value="1252" />
<input type="hidden" name="FORM" value="FREESS" />
<table bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
<tr>
<td>
<a href="http://www.bing.com/">
<img src="http://www.bing.com/siteowner/s/siteowner/Logo_51x19_Dark.png" border="0" ALT="Bing" />
</a>
</td>
<td>
<input type="text" name="q" size="30" />
  <input type="submit" value="Search Site" />
  </tr>

</table>
</form>
<!-- Search from Bing -->

If you want a Duck Duck Go search box:

<body bgcolor="blue">

<script type="text/javascript" src="/d895.js"></script>
<style type="text/css">
html{overflow:hidden;}

#search_form_homepage {
float:none;
margin:0;
width:406px;
}

#logo {
float:left;
display:none;
}

#search_form_input_homepage {
width: 350px;
}

#search_wrapper_homepage {
width:42px;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>

<form onSubmit="return searchb()" id="search_form_homepage" name="x" action="http://duckduckgo.com/" target="_blank">
<img id="logo" src="/assets/logo_icon60.v101.png">
<div id="sxd"></div><div id="search_wrapper_homepage"><input id="search_button_homepage" type="submit" value=""/></div><input type="text" autocomplete="off" name="q" id="search_form_input_homepage" onFocus="if ('rc' in window) {nua('nro',rc)};fq=1;" onBlur="fq=0" onclick="if (this.value=='put search terms here') {this.value='';this.style.color='#000000';}" value="">
<script type="text/javascript">
var tracking=new RegExp('[\?\&]t=([^\&]+)');
if (tracking.test(window.location.href)) {
document.write('<input type="hidden" name="t" value="'+RegExp.$1+'">');
}
var karr = new Array('a','b','c','d','e','f','g','h','i','j','k','l','m','n','o','p','q','r','s','t','u','v','w','x','y','z','1','2','3','4','5','6','7','8','9','aa','ab','ac','ad','ae','af','ag','ah','ai','aj','ak','al','am','an','ao','ap','aq','ar','as','at','au','av','aw','ax','ay','az');
for (var i=0;i<karr.length;i++) {
var kre=new RegExp('[\?\&]k'+karr[i]+'=([^\&]+)');
var ktmp='';
if (kre.test(window.location.href)) {
ktmp=decodeURIComponent(RegExp.$1);
if (ktmp.length<11) document.write('<input type="hidden" name="k'+karr[i]+'" value="'+ktmp+'">');
if (karr[i]=='n'&&ktmp&&ktmp=='1') d.x.target='_new';
}
}
</script>
</form>
</div>

<script type="text/javascript">
var width=new RegExp('[\?\&]width=([^\&]+)');
if (width.test(window.location.href)) {
YAHOO.util.Dom.setStyle('search_form_input_homepage','width',RegExp.$1 + 'px');
YAHOO.util.Dom.setStyle('search_form_homepage','width',(parseInt(RegExp.$1)+58) + 'px');
}

var duck=new RegExp('[\?\&]duck=([^\&]+)');
if (duck.test(window.location.href)) {

var tmp_add = 75;

if (RegExp.$1=='small') {
d.getElementById('logo').src='/icon.v102.small.png';
tmp_add = 34;
} else {
YAHOO.util.Dom.setStyle('search_wrapper_homepage','margin-top','10px');
YAHOO.util.Dom.setStyle('search_form_input_homepage','margin-top','10px');
}

YAHOO.util.Dom.setStyle('search_form_homepage','width',(parseInt(YAHOO.util.Dom.getStyle('search_form_homepage','width'))+tmp_add) + 'px');
YAHOO.util.Dom.setStyle('logo','display','block');
}

var site=new RegExp('[\?\&]site=([^\&]+)');
var ssearch = '';
if (site.test(window.location.href)) {
ssearch = RegExp.$1;
}

var prefill=new RegExp('[\?\&]prefill=([^\&]+)');
var prefill_text = '';
if (prefill.test(window.location.href)) {
prefill_text = RegExp.$1;
prefill_text = prefill_text.replace(/%20/,' ');
// alert(val);
// console.log(val);
var search_form_input_homepage = d.getElementById('search_form_input_homepage');
search_form_input_homepage.value = decodeURIComponent(prefill_text);
YAHOO.util.Dom.setStyle(search_form_input_homepage,'color','#999999');
eval("search_form_input_homepage.onclick = function() {if (this.value=='" + prefill_text + "') {this.value='';this.style.color='#000000';}}");
}

var focus=new RegExp('[\?\&]focus=([^\&]+)');
if (focus.test(window.location.href)) {
window.onload = function() {
YAHOO.util.Dom.get("search_form_input_homepage").focus();
YAHOO.util.Dom.get("search_form_input_homepage").onkeydown = function(){
if (this.value == prefill_text) {
this.value = '';
}
this.style.color = '#000000';
};
YAHOO.util.Dom.get("search_form_input_homepage").onkeyup = function(){
if (this.value == '') {
this.value = prefill_text;
this.style.color = '#999999';
}
};
};
}

var bgcolor=new RegExp('[\?\&]bgcolor=([^\&]+)');
if (bgcolor.test(window.location.href)) {
if (RegExp.$1 === 'none')
YAHOO.util.StyleSheet('DDG').set('html', {background: "transparent"});
else
YAHOO.util.StyleSheet('DDG').set('html', {background: "#" + RegExp.$1});

} else {
YAHOO.util.StyleSheet('DDG').set('html', {background: "transparent"});
}

function searchb() {
if (ssearch) d.x.q.value += ' site:'+ssearch;
return true;
}

if (document.location.protocol=='https:') {
d.x.action='https://duckduckgo.com/';
}
</script>

Save as "myfile.htm" and upload to the site host. Visit the file, copy the URL. Then drag a "web Browser" control to your form. In the URL section, enter the URL you copied. Set "display errors" to false, and debug and build. Move to starup folder on your PC, then you are done. If you want an example, you can try Fireburst Desktop.

Two page, more customizable GCSE for Blogger

Google Custom Search is a powerful tool to search websites. You can get a Blog search from the layout and gadgets section of Blogger.The downside of this is that it isn't that customizable. This will show you how to add your own GCSE to Blogger and have a separate page for results. It's simple.

Log into Blogger, and select "pages" of the blog you want to add search too. Make sure its set to "don't show pages." Then create a new page and name it "search" or "search results."  When the editor comes up click publish and go back to page list. Click "view" and copy the URL. The page section should look like the image at left. Go to Google Custom Search and click "make new search engine."

In "name" enter any thing, and in "sites" enter the URL of your blog. Make sure you select the free option and that you agree to the terms of use. Click next, choose a style, which you can customize. Then click next. DO NOT COPY THE CODE. Go to the sites tab and exclude the URL of your search results page.

Then go to "look and feel" and select the "two page" option. 

Then click "save and get code." In the box where it tells you to specify the URL where the search results are to appear, enter the URL of "search" or "search results."

Copy the code. Go to blogger, then go to "pages" of the blog you are adding search to, and click edit. When you get the code you will have to remove some of it for cross browser compatibility so it will work with Firefox and Opera. This is the search results code. The text highlighted in red you must remove:

<!-- Put the following javascript before the closing </head> tag. -->
<script>
(function() {
  var cx = 'Your Search Engines ID:ak7ru-numse';
var gcse = document.createElement('script'); gcse.type = 'text/javascript'; gcse.async = true;
gcse.src = (document.location.protocol == 'https:' ? 'https:' : 'http:') +
'//www.google.com/cse/cse.js?cx=' + cx;
var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(gcse, s);
})();
</script>

<!-- Place this tag where you want the search results to render -->
<gcse:searchresults-only></gcse:searchresults-only>

CLick HTML in the post editor and paste the code there. It should look like this: 

Click save. Now go to layout, and click "add gadget." Paste the code for the  search box there, click save and you're set!

images: HTML

Images are so easy. There are all sorts of things you can do with images in HTML. The basic code is:
<img src="image url"> 
The most popular code customizes what you see when the image can't load, or images are disabled in the browser. Here it is:

<img src="image url" alt="tag">

tag is the text that's displayed when the image doesn't load or images are disabled. Sometimes search engines use it to define image search. 

Defining the width and hight
If you want to change the size of the image, you may tell the browser how to size it:

<img src="image URL" alt="tag" width="400" height="400">

Customizing the border
You can create a border around images with a simple code. This is not in HTML 5 so I'll post about images in CSS later. 

<img src="image URL" alt="tag" border="5">

or you could use this code:

<img src="image URL" alt="tag" width="400" height="400" border="5">

lots of HTML image attributes are deprecated in HTML 5.  Luckily, CSS provides these and so much more. In the future, use CSS for your image effects. 

Links, part 3: Colors & CSS

In a previous post I explained the link. In this post I will go into how to change link colors, add hover effects and visited colors. The first will be changing the link colors by some basic HTML in the body. Insert this code between the <body> and </body> tags.
<body link="#C0C0C0" vlink="#808080" alink="#FF0000">
body link is when the link is displayed on the page. #COCOCO is the blue you see everywhere. vlink is the visited color. #808080 is the purple you see on most pages when you revisit a page after clicking a link. #FF0000 is red, and alink is the hover color. 

Link color in your CSS stylesheet

Its easy, and you can do even more, like making a link suddenly underline when hovered over. Here's the code:

a.nav:link {color: blue; text-decoration: none; }
a.nav:visited {color: purple; text-decoration: none; }
a.nav:hover {color: green; text-decoration: underline; }
a.nav:active {color: red; }
Multiple Link effects through CSS stylesheet
You can make "classes" of link effects in CSS that will make links in each class act differently. For example, you could make a class called nav for links in the body, and a class called foot for links in the footer. Here is the code: 
a.nav:link {color: blue; text-decoration: none; }
a.nav:visited {color: purple; text-decoration: none; }
a.nav:hover {color: green; text-decoration: underline; }
a.nav:active {color: red; }

a.foot:link {color: red; font-size: 14pt; font-weight: bold; }
a.foot:visited {color: green; font-weight: bold; }
a.foot:hover {text-decoration: underline; background-color: blue; }
a.foot:active {color: orange; }Using the classes
It's much simpler than individually changing every link that you want different from the settings you put. 

For the class nav use this code: <a href="URL" class="nav">Link Text</a>

For the class foot use this code: <a href="URL" class="nav">Link Text</a>

How to tell users IE is incompatible

Internet Explorer is Microsoft's web browser. It's the second most popular in the world, but unfortunately, its web standard support is extremely limited. Fortunately, its easy to tell users to upgrade. 
For IE6
IE 6 supports almost nothing, so don't be afraid to tell users to upgrade. It doesn't support Google CSE, or any advanced CSS. Here's how to tell users to upgrade IE 6. I know it says IE 7, but it won't do any warnings in IE 7. Insert this code between the <head> and </head> tags.

<!--[if lt IE 7]> <div style='border: 1px solid #F7941D; background: #FEEFDA; text-align: center; clear: both; height: 75px; position: relative;'> <div style='position: absolute; right: 3px; top: 3px; font-family: courier new; font-weight: bold;'><a href='#' onclick='javascript:this.parentNode.parentNode.style.display="none"; return false;'><img src='http://www.ie6nomore.com/files/theme/ie6nomore-cornerx.jpg' style='border: none;' alt='Close this notice'/></a></div> <div style='width: 640px; margin: 0 auto; text-align: left; padding: 0; overflow: hidden; color: black;'> <div style='width: 100px; float: left;'><img src='http://www.ie6nomore.com/files/theme/ie6nomore-warning.jpg' alt='Warning!'/></div> <div style='width: 275px; float: left; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;'> <div style='font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; margin-top: 12px;'>You are using an outdated browser</div> <div style='font-size: 12px; margin-top: 6px; line-height: 12px;'>The browser you're using is slow, cumbersome, and outdated. <a href="http://opera.com">Click here</a> to get an up to update your browser easily or choose one of the links at right.</div> </div> <div style='width: 100px; float: left;'><a href='http://www.opera.com' target='_blank'><img src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYSwsZe3Taot9flGWq3Tka26n4SiWRFTHkse5dLsk19wwCkFjJb_JfrhNAdwnnPuktxNnYz6YWGJZDRmvq49IzYfUkAVUOb8YcocPzBhg1ekHDDHnUe__bRCx58FgRzcow-ViOU2XQFvk2/s1600/opera.jpeg' style='border: none;' alt='Get Opera 12'/></a>or get <a href="http://maxthon.com">Maxthon</a> <a HREF="http://mozilla.org/firefox">Firefox</a> <a href="http://dragon.comodo.com">Comodo Dragon</a> <p><a href="http://apple.com/safari">Safari</a> <A href="http://coolnovo.com">Coolnovo</a></div> </div> </div> <![endif]-->

For All Versions of IE NOT RECOMMENDED.

Insert between the <head> and </head> tags

<!--[if lt IE 9]> <div style='border: 1px solid #F7941D; background: #FEEFDA; text-align: center; clear: both; height: 75px; position: relative;'> <div style='position: absolute; right: 3px; top: 3px; font-family: courier new; font-weight: bold;'><a href='#' onclick='javascript:this.parentNode.parentNode.style.display="none"; return false;'><img src='http://www.ie6nomore.com/files/theme/ie6nomore-cornerx.jpg' style='border: none;' alt='Close this notice'/></a></div> <div style='width: 640px; margin: 0 auto; text-align: left; padding: 0; overflow: hidden; color: black;'> <div style='width: 100px; float: left;'><img src='http://www.ie6nomore.com/files/theme/ie6nomore-warning.jpg' alt='Warning!'/></div> <div style='width: 275px; float: left; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;'> <div style='font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; margin-top: 12px;'>You are using an outdated browser</div> <div style='font-size: 12px; margin-top: 6px; line-height: 12px;'>The browser you're using is slow, cumbersome, and outdated. <a href="http://opera.com">Click here</a> to get an up to update your browser easily or choose one of the links at right.</div> </div> <div style='width: 100px; float: left;'><a href='http://www.opera.com' target='_blank'><img src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYSwsZe3Taot9flGWq3Tka26n4SiWRFTHkse5dLsk19wwCkFjJb_JfrhNAdwnnPuktxNnYz6YWGJZDRmvq49IzYfUkAVUOb8YcocPzBhg1ekHDDHnUe__bRCx58FgRzcow-ViOU2XQFvk2/s1600/opera.jpeg' style='border: none;' alt='Get Opera 12'/></a>or get <a href="http://maxthon.com">Maxthon</a> <a HREF="http://mozilla.org/firefox">Firefox</a> <a href="http://dragon.comodo.com">Comodo Dragon</a> <p><a href="http://apple.com/safari">Safari</a> <A href="http://coolnovo.com">Coolnovo</a></div> </div> </div> <![endif]-->

HTML text

Html is an old programming code used quite often in webpages. This post is to show you how to write rich text in HTML. HTML is supported by all browsers. This does not include color, however. 
1. Fonts
Fonts are the way the text looks. the most common fonts and their code are:
Times New Roman: <span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">
Arial: <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
Verdana: <span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">
Helvectica: <span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
Georgia: <span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">
Courier New:<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">
Trebuchet: <span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">
When you want a font to end and display the browser's defaut font, use this closing tag: </span> You can get many more fonts and their codes at the Google Web Fonts Directory'
2. Size
So how do you get your font size to change? Simple. The size tags. They are <h1></h1> <h2></h2> <h3></h3> <h4></h4> <h5></h5> <h6></h6> 
<h1> is the largest, and I do not know how far the fine print goes down. </h1> is the closing tag. 
3. Effects
The italics tag is <i>, while the closing tag is </i> example: This is Italics.
The bold tag is <b> with the closing tag of </b>
The underline tag is <u> while the closing tag is </u>
The strike through tag  is <strike> while the closing tag is </strike>
_{The Subscript  tag is _{and the closing tag is}
The ^Superscript tag is ^{while the closing tag is}
<marquee> makes the text roll.example </marquee> is the closing tag. example 
<blink> makes the text blink in Firefox. </blink> is the closing tag.} 

How to creat a custom Ace Explorer theme

Ace Explorer is a free browser with lots of great functionalities. Unfortunately, for those who like to customize their browsers look and feel, there are no themes. In this tutorial we will do a simple hack so as to customize Ace a little. There is no coding involved. 
Right click the ace Explorer icon and select "properties". 

Launch Windows Explorer and navigate to "C:\Program Files (x86)\Ace Explorer"

Then open the "skins" folder. Select the skin you want to edit, say in this case "green."

 

You may edit the images, but DO NOT TOUCH THE OTHER FILES.
Mine looked like this in the end: