Hunting Season

There are two types of search in Android: local and global. Local search searches within the current application; global search searches the Web via Google’s search engine. You can initiate either type of search in a variety of ways, including the following:

• You can call from a button or menu choice, which will initiate a local search (unless you override this method in your activity).

• You can directly call to initiate a local or global search, including optionally supplying a search string to use as a starting point.

• You can elect to have keyboard entry kick off a search via , for either local search () or global search ().

In either case, the search appears as a set of UI components across the top of the screen, with your activity blurred underneath it (see Figures 36‑1 and 36‑2).

Figure 36‑1. The Android local search pop‑up

Figure 36‑2. The Android global search pop‑up, showing a drop‑down with previous searches