Last modified: 2010-07-04 17:19:40 UTC
The mini search form in the sitebar uses a view URL for Special:Search as the form submission target/action. This tends to produce a final URL like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=fooey&go=Go While pretty, it has the distinct disadvantage that it frequently collides with "pretty URL" configurations whose rewrite rules don't pass on the original query string... So for instance the incoming URL fragment: /wiki/Special:Search?search=fooey&go=Go might get rewritten into: /index.php?title=Special:Search and our actual search parameters are gone. We then get bug reports, mails, or IRC visitors asking why search doesn't work on their wiki. The sidebar form should instead use the script target, the way Special:Search's form does: <form id="search" method="get" action="/w/index.php"><input name="title" type="hidden" value="Special:Search" /> this produces a URL which will work on any configuration, and will reduce the incidence of surprises. AFAIK we don't explicitly create any other URLs where we append parameters to a view URL in this way, and we should be avoiding it here too.
Done in r47773
