14 DAY TRIAL // Last week the Android Developers team released into the wild the SDK for Android 1.6, which is expected to become available on mobile phones starting with October this year. There are a wide range of novelties that the new platform flavor is expected to deliver both to users and to developers, among which the team highlights Quick Search Box for Android, which is said to offer users the possibility to perform fast searches, while receiving results both from their devices and from the web.
Here's what the Android Developers say about it: “One of the new features we're really proud of in the Android 1.6 release is Quick Search Box for Android. This is our new system-wide search framework, which makes it possible for users to quickly and easily find what they're looking for, both on their devices and on the web. It suggests content on your device as you type, like apps, contacts, browser history, and music. It also offers results from the web search suggestions, local business listings, and other info from Google, such as stock quotes, weather, and flight status. All of this is available right from the home screen, by tapping on Quick Search Box (QSB).”
As stated above, users will not be the only ones to benefit from the new feature of the Android operating system, but developers will have a reason to rejoice as well. According to the team, they will have the opportunity to “leverage the QSB framework to provide quicker and easier access to the content inside your apps.” What users will receive through QBS is suggestions that will come from third-party applications as well, so that the content of a software solution can be accessed from outside the application itself.
A recent post on the Android Developers Blog offers detailed specifications on what third-party developers would have to do in order to add their application to the Quick Search Box and to allow it to search the content of their software solutions. The one thing that should be noted here is that users will have the opportunity to choose whether QBS will provide suggestions from a certain application or not. The application's settings menu would have to include the option of enabling suggestions. A series of “shortcuts” have been also included in the equation, it seems, and you can find more details about them here.