Creating Searchable Documents
Another extensible form of an HTML link that does not use
the <a> tag is one that causes
the server to search a database for a document that contains a
user-specified keyword or words. An HTML document that contains such a
link is known as a searchable
document.
The <isindex> Tag (Deprecated)
Before it was deprecated in both the HTML 4 and XHTML
standards, authors used to use the <isindex> tag to pass keywords along
with a search engine's URL to the server. The server then matched the
keywords against a database of terms to select the next document for
display. Today's authors mostly use forms to pass information to the
server and supporting programs. See Chapter 9 for details.
When a browser encounters the <isindex> tag, it adds a standard
search interface to the document (rendered by Internet Explorer in
Figure 6-8):
<html> <head> <title>Kumquat Advice Database</title> <base href="cgi-bin/quat-query"> <isindex> </head> <body> <h3>Kumquat Advice Database</h3> <p> Search this database to learn more about kumquats! </body> </html>
Figure 6-8. A searchable document
The user types a list of space-separated keywords into the field provided. ...
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