First off, for the edification of other readers, you're refering to my previous article How can I add a Google search box to my Web site?
Now, there are two parts to having a text field (or any HTML form entity) selected when a Web page is loaded, and the key element is to have both the form and the form element named.
Let's have a look, but let's do it with a simpler HTML form for demonstration purposes:
<form method="post" name="myform">
<input type="text" name="infield" />
</form>
Here you can see that the form is called "myform" and that the specific text field that we'd like to have auto-selected upon page load is called "infield". That's all that needs to be done within the form.
The other half of this is that there needs to be a select associated with the onLoad event, most typically dropped into the actual HTML body tag.
With the named elements shown here, the body tag would simply have added:
<body onload="document.myform.infield.focus()">
That's all there is to it. Now you just need to apply this technique to the Google search form shown in the earlier article. The only change in the form itself is that you need to give it a name:
<form method="get" action="http://www.google.com/search" name="googlesearch">
Since the text field is already called q, all we have to do is add a slight change to the body field, thusly:
<body onload="document.googlesearch.q.focus()">
That should do it!
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Related to your issue of placing the cursor in a text box in drafting an HTML page, my question is how do you STOP it from working. You may have noticed that the MSN start page causes the cursor to start in their search box. I am a google toolbar user and also often type my urls directly into the address bar. The MSN "cursor snag" causes me to wind up typing half my address in the address bar and the other half in the MSN search engine. I usually hit enter before I realize my cursor has been stolen and wind up getting a search result for "ustrating" leaving the "fr" in the address bar! There has got to be a way to regain control of my cursor and KEEP it where I start typing. I suspect that MSN is trying to inflate their search statistics for advertising revenue purposes however it is most certainly a nuisance. Any thoughts?