First off, some background: How can I add a Google search box to my web site and How do I add a Technorati search box to my Web site?
Now that we've established the theme :-) let's look at how eBay structures queries. If you actually view the source to the eBay Web page, it's just about impossible to decipher how they do searches, actually, because of all the JavaScript they're using. Not sure why they need the complexity, but fortunately a bit of detective work can suss out the most important values, the field names and the CGI script or program on the server that receives search queries.
Boiling their form down to its bare essence, then:
<form method="get"
action="http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll">
<input type="hidden" name="sojs" value="1">
<input type="hidden" name="from" value="R40">
<input type="text" maxlength="300" name="satitle" size="20">
<input type="submit" value="Search">
</form>
Here's an example of it at work:
Experimentation reveals that you don't need to send either the sojs or the from fields either, so in fact the smallest possible eBay search box looks like this:
<form method="get"
action="http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll">
<input type="text" maxlength="300" name="satitle" size="20">
<input type="submit" value="Search">
</form>
I'll leave all the fancy cleanup and design work to you, but those few lines of code should definitely get you moving in the right direction!
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Dave, you are officially a genius. Cheers mate!