[whatwg] SearchBox API

[Tab Atkins Jr.]

On Thu, Oct 14, 2010 at 9:23 PM, Robert O'Callahan <robert at ocallahan.org> wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 15, 2010 at 12:53 PM, Tony Gentilcore <tonyg at chromium.org>
> wrote:
>>
>> 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.
>
> How would that work? The browser can only get that metadata by fetching the
> search page. So the browser should fetch the search page when the user
> starts typing in a search query, and if the page doesn't advertise "instant
> search", the browser just throws that page away? If so, presumably you'd
> want some kind of back-off to avoid lots of useless traffic.

A periodic poll, or perhaps just waiting for the user to occasionally
visit their default search provider's page themselves, seems like it
would be sufficient.  Querying on every search is pretty obviously
suboptimal.

~TJ