Add Wikipedia search to Internet Explorer
The latest versions of Internet Explorer introduced quite a few features when it comes to extending the web browser's core capabilities (things like "accelerators" and custom search providers), and the ability to use multiple search engines from within Internet Explorer itself, by changing your default search provider, or switch on-the-fly from one search engine to the other. And Internet Explorer now also includes a detection mechanism for some websites or web pages that are recognized as search providers. One such example is Wikipedia, and this tutorial shows you how to add Wikipedia search directly to Internet Explorer.
Search Wikipedia from within any Internet Explorer window
Follow these steps to get Wikipedia to your Internet Explorer search box: before we proceed, let's just have a look at the default search box in the top right corner of any Internet Explorer 8 or Internet Explorer 7 window, and notice how the dropdown arrow is transparent:
- Start by opening Internet Explorer if it is not already running; then go to any page on Wikipedia, past the landing page. Here is a sample link of a page on the Wikipedia website (opens in a new window - make sure to open it in Internet Explorer).
- Now that the Wikipedia main page has loaded in a new Internet Explorer window, look again at the search box in the top right corner: it is now highlighted in orange, and this is how Internet Explorer notifies you that the website or web page you are visiting includes special search functionality that you can add to as "search provider":
- Now click on the orange dropdown arrow, and you will see Wikipedia added to the list of available search providers for your web browser:
- If you click on "Wikipedia (en)" in the dropdown menu ("en" stands for "English", i.e., the English version of Wikipedia), Internet Explorer will temporarily add it as your search engine for the text box in the top right corner, but without changing your default search engine settings: notice that Wikipedia is now visible inside the search box.
- If you want to make Wikipedia permanently available as search provider, and just for this browsing sessions (until you close Internet Explorer), click again on the dropdown menu, select the "Add Search Providers" submenu, and click on "Wikipedia (en)".
- To prevent websites from arbitrarily adding themselves as search providers, Internet Explorer will first display a confirmation message before adding Wikipedia:
- If you just want Wikipedia to be available as an Internet Explorer search provider from the dropdown menu, click on the "Add" button.
- If you want to make Wikipedia the default search engine in Internet Explorer (from the search text box in the top right corner), first check the "Make this my default search provider" checkbox, and it will replace (but keep) your current search engine:
- If you leave the "Use search suggestions from this provider" checkbox checked, as shown above, Internet Explorer will use Wikipedia's database to offer popular searches as you type inside the search box and based on your previous searches:
...And this is how easily you can add Wikipedia search to Internet Explorer 8 / IE 7!