Add Blogger search box

The Google Navigation bar at the top of your Blogger blogs has an
embedded search box. However, you may want to include a similar box in
the main body of your blog (like what I have done), or the sidebar.
Other than the convenience for users, the added advantage is that
unlike Google search box, the search results of this Blogger.com search
box appear in the main body of your Blog.



Under
Template->Page Elements tab, click “Add a Page Element” at the place
where you want your search box to appear. Select “HTML/JavaScript”.

There are several HTML codes posted on the net. I tried a few, and found the one that works as follows:-

<p align="left">
<form id="searchthis" action="YOUR BLOG URL/search" style="display:inline;" method="get">
<strong>NAME OF YOUR BLOG<br/></strong>
<input id="b-query" maxlength="255" name="q" size="20" type="text"/>
<input id="b-searchbtn" value="Search" type="submit"/>
</form></p>


Remember to change YOUR BLOG URL to the URL or web address of your Blog. Also, change the NAME OF YOUR BLOG
to that which you want to call your site. For instance, if your Blog
Name is long, you may want to write something like “Search Here” or
“Search this site”.

You can also change the “Search” button to say, “Hit” or “Go”, by changing the Value.

Save
the code and refresh your page. If you want a longer or shorter search
box, you can play around with the size. The above example of a width size="20" and value="Hit" will give you good results:-

Whereas a width size="30" and value="Go" will give you different:-

The
size of the search box is a matter of appearance. You may have noticed
that the maxlength="255". This indicates that a user may enter up to
255 characters in the search box, which I think is sufficient and need
not be altered.

Image instead of Search button

Just
for the fun of it, if you want readers to click an image instead of a
button, you will first need to do up a small picture. You can also
resize a picture you already have with photo editing tools like Google's Picasa. After creating a picture, upload it onto a free server like GooglePages or Google Groups, or other free hosts that offer direct links to the image files. Take note of this IMAGE URL.

The HTML code to insert is this:-

<p align="left">
<form id="searchthis" action="YOUR BLOG URL/search" style="display:inline;" method="get">
<strong>NAME OF YOUR BLOG<br/></strong>
<input id="b-query" maxlength="255" name="q" size="20" type="text"/>
<input id="b-searchbtn" type="image" src="IMAGE URL" align="top"/>
</form></p>


Remember to insert into the code the IMAGE URL,
where your picture is uploaded. You can align the image to the top,
bottom or set a horizontal space between the bar and the image by using
a hspace tag. For more examples on alignment of images, you may refer
to the article Hyperlinks and Image Links (II).

While it is alright to replace the button of your Blogger search box, you may not want to do that with the Google search box since their T.O.S. disallows any alteration of their code.