Customising SharePoint 2010 Search Box

Question

Is it possible to customise the Search box by swapping the controls(Drop down and Search Box) without creating a custom code and by using SharePoint designer. I want to show the search box first and then the drop down selection.

Answer 1

Since server-side code is not an option, you might want to use CSS added via SharePoint Designer into your masterpage. However, this requires quite some effort to figure out how to shuffle those HTML elements around using CSS like the below example code on the built-in searchbox HTML elements:

<style type="text/css">
#s4-searcharea .s4-search .ms-sbcell
{
  position: relative;
  right: 200px;
}
#s4-searcharea .s4-search .ms-sbscopes
{
  right: -200px;
}
</style>

You might have to experiment a little bit with the pixel adjustment, but it should serve you as a starting point.

Hope that helps.

Answer 2

off course you can. Usually I suggest to deploy a delegate control. You can find more information in this link: http://salvatoredifaziosharepoint.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/delegate-controls-small-search-input.html