Backup of David's Livejournal

Fixing Dave's Quick Search Deskbar




I'm a long time, loyal fan of Dave's Quick Search Deskbar, from both the perspective of usability and efficient use of screen space.

What you see above is the result of the following workflow:
  1. Typing <Windows>+s (Brings focus to DQSD)
  2. Pasting "internecine"
  3. Typing :, and hitting <Enter> (":" says to search for the text at the Merriam Webster website.)
That brought up the definition of the word in a popup window, above the system tray.

If I hadn't typed the colon character, it would have done a google search by default. Other frequently used search specifications are:

wik (Search wikipedia)
imdb (Search the Internet Movie Database)
/images (Search google images)

There are hundreds of other searches.  But a core 5 or so is all I use.  Here are some of my personal preferences in localprefs.js:

showbutton = 0;
autocomplete = true;
historylength=100;
clocklongwidth=239;
helptime = 100;
displayHelp = false;
bannerurl = ""

And here is the crucial alias in localaliases.txt:

:|mwd /p %s

The boon here is never using the mouse (if my hand isn't already on it).  With (usually) two extra key presses I can get to the definition, synonyms, images, maps or encyclopedic material of the subject, whatever I want.

That may sound like a small deal, but saving the browser space from yet another toolbar, and halving my effort to achieve my goal makes my user experience significantly better.
Tags: web

Comments

 pastilla on Jun 12th 2007 at 4:29 AM
Thanks so much for sharing this . . . I just forwarded it to kurii, who grooves, grooves, grooves on these "small deals" in a major way.

 dblume on Jun 12th 2007 at 4:53 PM
Please let kuriimupan (I always picture kogepan when I think of him) know he's welcome to email me if he has any questions about it, and making it useful. After installing, be sure to enter "?" in the search field to see the help page showing the pre-installed searches.

 davidd on Jun 12th 2007 at 6:47 AM
Interesting example.

 dblume on Jun 12th 2007 at 4:48 PM
Not to be confused with today's word of the day, epicene, which means, "metrosexual." I would have been amused to see you caught in an epicene game of one-upmanship.