I would like a smaller Search Input for the header of my site.

Hi Tom,

Martijn was suggesting you hide the dropdown using CSS. You can add the following CSS to your masterpage or using the alternate stylesheet property under site settings > masterpages.

select.ms-sbscopes { display:none; }

This is a quick fix. The control is a Delegate control in WSS. The ideal solution would be to copy the SearchArea.ascx in the 12/Template/ControlTemplates/ folder. Remove the dropdown in the user control and any references to it. Create a feature with to define the delegate control for more information please see http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms463169.aspx. The xml should look like:

<Element>
<Control Id="MySearchInputBox" Sequence="100"
Url="/templates/mysearchcontrol.ascx"/>
</Element>

The feature will need registering and activating for the current site.

You then will need to add to replace the following in the masterpage (this should be the default.master, but check first).

<SharePoint: DelegateControl runat="server" ControlId="MySearchInputBox"/>

with

<SharePoint: DelegateControl runat="server" ControlId="MySearchInputBox"/>

Hope this helps

Dave

I am guessing you are using MOSS because you have custom scopes.

SearchBoxEx control has a property

DropdownModeEx which you can set to HideScopeDD enum value(In UI Scope Dropdown section ->Drop down mode->Do not show scope drop down).

Since you want to do this for the SearchBox in the chrome which is in master page, the easiest thing to do is instead of putting the delegate control in the PlaceHolderSearchArea content place holder there put the following

<asp:ContentPlaceHolder id="PlaceHolderSearchArea" runat="server">

<SPSWCearchBoxEx id="SearchBox" runat="server"

GoImageUrl="/_layouts/images/gosearch.gif"

GoImageUrlRTL="/_layouts/images/gosearch.gif"

DropdownModeEx=HideScopeDD

FrameType="None"

SearchResultsPageUrl="/SearchCenter/Pages/result.aspx"/>
</asp:ContentPlaceHolder>

You may have to change the results page url based on what you have. Also for the complete list of properties on SearchBoxEx you can use the following link

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.sharepoint.portal.webcontrols.searchboxex_members.aspx

You will have to register the SPSWC tag prefix using the following at the top of master page

<%@ Register Tagprefix="SPSWC"

Namespace="Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal.WebControls"

<SPSWCearchBoxEx id="SearchBox" runat="server"

what is can't see clearly