Back in the IE7 days, I built a simple Search Provider Builder that allowed IE users (and later users of other browsers) to add custom search engines to their browser without any changes to the site. Trivia: This hour-long little prototype soon led to a formal effort to put this tool on the IEAddons site; the PM for that project was a new hire who eventually married me. :-)
Microsoft Edge has decided to change course and break the AddSearchProvider API used to add custom search providers based on user-initiated actions. The API works in IE7-IE11, Firefox, and Chrome, but not in Edge. Instead, search providers can only be “discovered” by sites that advertise them. (For the avoidance of doubt, let me say explicitly that I think this is terrible; if you agree, vote here).
For now, you can workaround the Edge browser limitation by visiting this page: Install Edge Search Providers for Google, DuckDuckGo, Wikipedia, and Amazon.
Two other changes were made as a part of the Edge search changes:
- Search provider URLs must be HTTPS (yay!)
- Search providers may not provide Search Suggestions. All Search Suggestions now come from Bing (boo!) over HTTPS (yay)
-Eric Lawrence
Update: Feb 6, 2017 — This post is still accurate for the very latest Microsoft Edge Insider’s Build 15025.
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