[ic] (Ajax) Search Form question

[Klaatu IC Hack]

An earlier version of the Strap 3 demo included a perl script that
performed an Ajax autosuggest lookup as per the Readme:

Search in top bar includes autosuggest. IC isolated script: sug
located in cgi-bin/ allows quick suggestions via ajax using direct db
query, avoiding overhead of IC.

I revisited the script this week and after moving it to the cgi-bin
and setting permissions and DB it started working as specified. Great
addition.

For a second catalog I modified the script a little including concat
title and description fields:

my $mainq = "SELECT concat(title,' ',description) FROM products WHERE
inactive <> 1 and (concat(title,' ',description) LIKE '%$string%')
LIMIT $limit";

This displays autosuggestion results with title before description.

The results page also works perfectly but only if I place the form
into a typical CONTENT area within a page.

If I place the form in the top bar layout or TOP_SEARCH variable as
per the early strap demo the autosuggestions work however no items
found on the results page.

To make my question hopefully easier to resolve when I submit the
search form within a page content area the URL generated typically
looks like:

catalogname/search.html

When this style of URL is produced I am getting solid search results.

However when I move the same form into the top bar of the strap
template the AJAX works however the URL produced includes ITL tags
example:

catalogname/search.html?mp=s&s=Vincent+Van+Gogh+Sunflowers

and no results are found.

I would like to understand why the ITL tags are displayed in the URL
when I move the form into the template/layout region? How can I get
the form to generate the same hidden search.html query instead?

K.