I prefer Network Solutions' WHOIS service over others because it appears to be one of the more complete and accurate WHOIS services available. Because I use this WHOIS search service a lot, I decided to put together a quick yet complete search plugin/provider for Firefox and Internet Explorer 7 (as shown in the screen shot to the left).
Add to your Firefox or IE7: Click here to add my Network Solutions WHOIS search provider to your Firefox or IE7.
In fact, building your own search plugin/provider for Firefox and IE is relatively simple. All you need is a small XML file that defines a few details about the provider, and a little JavaScript to trigger the install process. My Network Solutions WHOIS search plugin XML can be found here; note that this XML works for IE7 and Firefox. If you need to Base64 encode an image/x-icon for the provider XML, I suggest using this converter. With regards to the JavaScript that triggers the search plugin installation in the browser (addEngine), take a look at this JavaScript example ...
Add to your Firefox or IE7: Click here to add my Network Solutions WHOIS search provider to your Firefox or IE7.
In fact, building your own search plugin/provider for Firefox and IE is relatively simple. All you need is a small XML file that defines a few details about the provider, and a little JavaScript to trigger the install process. My Network Solutions WHOIS search plugin XML can be found here; note that this XML works for IE7 and Firefox. If you need to Base64 encode an image/x-icon for the provider XML, I suggest using this converter. With regards to the JavaScript that triggers the search plugin installation in the browser (addEngine), take a look at this JavaScript example ...
function addEngine(xml,icon,provider,cat){
if((typeof window.sidebar=="object")&&
(typeof window.sidebar.addSearchEngine=="function")){
window.sidebar.addSearchEngine(xml,icon,provider,cat);
} else {
try {
window.external.AddSearchProvider(xml);
} catch (x) {
if(70==(x.number&0xFFFF)){
alert("For security reasons, you must use the mouse" +
"\n(or the Enter key) to click the Install button.");
} else {
alert("Unable to add search provider. " +
"[" + (x.number & 0xFFFF) + "]");
}
return false;
}
}
}
The call to window.sidebar.addSearchEngine() is for Firefox. The call to window.external.AddSearchProvider() is for Internet Explorer.FOLLOWUP 3/30/09:
Special thanks to Network Solutions for featuring my WHOIS browser plugin on their Network Solutions Labs homepage!
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