Success integrating AJAX Solr with Solr 4.5

In regards to my post on Stackoverflow, my resolution to this problem was to update search.js and check the window.location object:

//Old code - from reuters.js example
Manager.store.addByValue('q', '*:*');    

//Custom query by end-user for my search.js file
var userQuery = window.location.search.replace( "?query=", "" );
Manager.store.addByValue('q', userQuery);