how open a web search

i can easily open a google URL to search for a desired string by parsing the address.

but:

how can i search the web with a user's default search engine?

i am trying to avoid 'terms of service' complications associated with favoring one particular search provider.

for example: if i submited beatles, it would search the web using MSN by default, or if they had set up thier search bar, google or yahoo.

can i specify some type of special URL to shellexecute, or will i have to make a webbrowser control to figure it out?

any help welcome!

Well if you look at the address in the search engine that will give you some idea of the format to ShellExecute.

Google search for visual basic

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en...G=Search&meta=

Yahoo search

http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=vis...&cop=&ei=UTF-8

Altavista search

http://uk.altavista.com/web/results?...ic&kgs=1&kls=0

So you can see where visual basic fits in. ;)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Keithuk

Well if you look at the address in the search engine that will give you some idea of the format to ShellExecute.

Google search for visual basic

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en...G=Search&meta=

Yahoo search

http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=vis...&cop=&ei=UTF-8

Altavista search

http://uk.altavista.com/web/results?...ic&kgs=1&kls=0

So you can see where visual basic fits in. ;)

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thanks for the reply.
i have no problem parsing urls, submitting, etc.
i was wondering if there is a generic search method i could use instead of specifying a particular engine.

in other words, i want to mimic the 'auto search' feature of windows, invoked when a non-url is typed into the address bar of an explorer window.

if it were up to me, i would just use google all the time, but i read recently about google suing M$ over Vista using MSN as the default search engine.
i figure if i could use the user's default, i would avoid any such problems arrising from favoring a particular site.

any ideas on how to invoke an auto search?

Give users the option to select the search engine out of a small list of better ones.

in IE use "GO keyword"