Question

Is there a way to get an MSDN search bar in Firefox which will autocomplete .Net class and member names (and preferably also Win32 API methods) and take me directly to the MSDN page?

Google toolbar with Shift+Enter (I m feeling lucky) will usually go directly to the msdn page for a .Net class, but it doesn t have targeted autocomplete. Also, since I m too lazy to type site:msdn.microsoft.com, it doesn t always take me to MSDN. (eg, Graphics)

Answer 1

This search plugin (from the list flyfishr64 linked to) works quite well (suggestions and everything).

Answer 2

There are several msdn search providers available.

Answer 3

You could create a bookmark with a wildcard %s and the msdn keyword by using the following url for the bookmarked page:

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/search/en-us/?query=%s

Now in the address bar, when I type "msdn StringBuilder" it brings me to this result page: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/search/en-us/?query=StringBuilder

I did the same with the stackoverflow keyword and the http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/%s url.

EDIT: as @AgentConundrum pointed out, using the http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=%s%20site:msdn.microsoft.com url will restrict Google search to the msdn.microsoft.com site.

Answer 4

I ended up editing this search plugin from Shog9 s answer and changing the search URL to Google s I m Feeling Lucky.

Here s the XML:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<OpenSearchDescription xmlns="http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/" xmlns:moz="http://www.mozilla.org/2006/browser/search/">
    <!-- Created on Thu, 07 Jan 2010 15:11:13 GMT -->
    <ShortName>MSDN</ShortName>
    <Description>Search MSDN documentation</Description>
    <Url type="text/html" method="get" template="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&amp;q={searchTerms}+site%3Amsdn.microsoft.com&amp;btnI=I"/>
    <Url type="application/x-suggestions+json" template="http://services.social.microsoft.com/search//Data/AutoCompleteTerms?t={searchTerms}&amp;b=Msdn&amp;l=en-US&amp;m=10&amp;rf=oss10"/>
    <Image width="16" height="16">http://mycroft.mozdev.org/updateos.php/id0/msdn_schnore.ico</Image>
    <Developer>Schabse Laks</Developer>
    <InputEncoding>UTF-8</InputEncoding>
    <moz:SearchForm>http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Search/en-US/</moz:SearchForm>
    <Url type="application/opensearchdescription+xml" rel="self" template="http://mycroft.mozdev.org/updateos.php/id0/msdn_schnore.xml"/>
</OpenSearchDescription>

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