if(this.is('input[type=text],textarea')) qa.search=this; // if the specified item is an input element, use it
else qa.search = this.prepend('<input type="text" id="qa_search_query"/>').children().eq(0); // otherwise, add an input inside of it

So when you call quickaccess with $(’#example’).quickaccess(settings);, it looks for #example; if #example is a text input or textarea, it uses it as the quickaccess query box; otherwise, if #example is a div or paragraph (etc) line 40 inserts a query box into that element (prepended before the elements other content). Let me know if that helps.

We’d used the title attribute in the first several versions of this for Haverford, but switched to comments before the site went live. What we decided was that the title attribute has a meaning of its own (both semantic and behavioral) and we shouldn’t co-opt that for our own purposes (see also a future post that I’ll call “Our Beef with Microformats”). Basically, it was really annoying to have “PoliSci, International Relations,American” show up when you moused over the link for “Political Science”.

If you’d prefer the title attribute approach, though, just change line 50 of the QA.js to:

qa.matches = qa.links = $(s.selector).each(function() { $.data(this,'keywords',(this.innerHTML+$(this).attr('title')).toLowerCase().replace(/[,-\/]/g,' ').replace(/[^a-zA-Z 0-9]+/g,'')); }); // grab links, attach data to match against

(Adding “+$(this).attr(’title’)” to the matched text.)

I’d love to see a sample page when you get it up and running!