Customizing Sharepoint Search Box

Question

I followed some tutorial to change the way Sharepoint Search Box is shown on screen.

My first problem is, after modifying the SearchArea.xml file, is there a way to force the reload? The frequency of reload seems very random.

Bonus question: is it the best way to do it? It's the easiest I've found, but having to change the file on the client's production server when the project is deployed doesn't seems very optimized.

Answer 1

For the first question, you need to reactivate the feature to have it instally reload, check this link in msdn

The second question, I just answered in another post, check it out