Quicksilver

The Web Search Plug-in provides a way to send textual information to various web sites and receive a result.

As an example, consider searching Google (assuming the aforementioned plug-in is installed):

1. Activate QS
2. Start typing 'Google Query' to specify the 'Google Query' object in the first pane
3. Ensure that the action is 'Search For...'
4. Move the focus to the 3rd pane using the TAB key and enter text-entry mode (this can be done by typing the period key or single quote key) to specify the text to search for.
5. Press RETURN to initiate the query

If all goes well, the result is usually displayed in a web browser window or tab.

So, if you have the ability to set up a program on a web server to respond to such queries, you are in a position to 'extend' Quicksilver via a 'web search'. An overview of the steps involved then are:

1. Arrange for an appropriate program to be accessible via a web server (e.g. write or enable some CGI program and make this available via a web server some where)
2. Add an appropriate entry (one for your program) to the web search list -- this consists of making appropriate edits to the web search list (a wiki page -- by observing the current content, it should be straight-forward to figure out what to add)

On a related note, it seems like it'd be nice if the query results were made available via the command window. Indeed, there is already an action named 'Show Results for Search...' which does this. However, it appears that EVERY link on the results page is made available (if there's more than one, they are displayed in a list view beneath the command window) -- a 'nicer' arrangement would be to present only the hits, though it seems like this would require per-site parsing. Perhaps a wiki page containing per-site parsing/scraping instructions could be set up and leveraged by an appropriate plug-in/action ;-)

last updated 2 years ago #