Mike Rapin’s Guide to Web Searching via Quicksilver

February 7th, 2008 by Mike | Posted in info, mac os x |

So, there I was in my chemistry lecture, too lazy to reach into my backpack on the floor and pull out my calculator to solve a simple problem written on the board by my professor (who is a bad ass, seriously):
‘Find the square root of 2.3×10^-18′

Lo and behold, I was on my beautiful MacBook, and BOOM I popped open Quicksilver (Ctrl + Space). “Ha!” I thought, “Square roots can be solved by the calculator plug-in I have!” So, I typed =sqrt(2.3*10^-18) in, hit enter and the Quicksilver plug-in did its job. I was satisfied with the answer (.00000000151657508881 ~= 1.5×10^-9). But it was at that moment that my friend sitting next to me, who is a Windows/Linux user but wants a Mac really bad yet can’t afford one, said this to me:

“Dude, in Launchy, calculates on the fly… why doesn’t Quicksilver do that?”

And I replied, “Damn I don’t know… I know Spotlight does.”

The conversation ended there as the lecture continued, but I was baffled as to why Quicksilver couldn’t actively update calculations… I was searching and searching on Google when I came across this guide to Quicksilver on the MacRumors.com.

Now, this article didn’t answer any of my questions outside of explaining that ascii math notation (ex. sqrt(16) or 10^8) work in Quicksilver’s calculator function, but what drew my eye and made me forget about the whole calculator deal was the part about web searching.

Web searching, in case you didn’t hit the link, is basically you searching for something (’pokemon‘) via Quicksilver on a specific site (Wikipedia, Google, eBay, etc.). Now, upon first read I was tad confused as to how to get this whole ordeal working. As of now, I have it working after tinkering around and to help anyone else understand who is interested, here’s a guide to get web searching working view Quicksilver:

Mike Rapin’s Guide to Web Searching via Quicksilver
Please know, as I said, this is an interpretation/clarification/modification of THIS PORTION of THIS MacRumors.com guide.

Also, this guide is aimed at users who are a bit computer-friendly, have installed Quicksilver and are a bit experienced with it, so please mind my skipping of basic steps (such as how to open an application, how to create a bookmark, or modify a URL).

1. First off, you’re going to want to open your default browser.
   • If you don’t know what your default browser is, launch Safari.
   • Go into Safari’s Preferences
   • Click General (if it isn’t already selected)
   • Then where it says ‘Default Browser’, open the browser specified.
2. Next, you’ll want to check the following links out:
   • http://www.google.com/search?q=***
   • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=***&go=Go"
   • http://imdb.com/find?q=***
   • http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?satitle=***
   • • Notice how there are three *’s? Well, apparently Quicksilver likes to see *** and when it does, it replaces text with it.
3. Now, those links are examples. What you need to do is in your default browser create a new bookmark and use a URL similar to those. You can make them for on any site that has a search. All you need is to find how the site searches in the URL (assuming it uses the URL to search, which most sites use) you can make a general copy of the URL and wherever it puts your search string, just replace it with *** and voila! a perfectly good searchable bookmark.
   • Example:
     • When you search eBay you get a URL like this:
       • http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?from=R40&_trksid=m37&satitle=shiny+pokemon+cards&category0=
     • What I did was found where my search string  was in the URL:
       • ...40&_trksid=m37&satitle=shiny+pokemon+cards…
     • Then just made a blank copy:
       • http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?satitle=***
     • And it works!
       • Mind you, it searches eBay in general, so if you want to fiddle with the URL to search just electronics or whatever, you can probably change the category or whatever to search just one category
4. So, you have your new bookmark, right? Did you name it a simple name so when you search in Quicksilver it will come up easily? You didn’t? Well, you probably should go do that… I’ll wait…
5. …
6. Okay.
7. Now, open the Quicksilver preferences.
8. Click on Plug-ins
9. Scroll down to the bottom of the Recommended Plugins and make sure you have the Web Search Plugin (checked)
10. Now, click on Catalog.
    • FYI: the Catalog is what Quicksilver searches to find your stuff
11. Chances are you have this to refresh at a certain time, but in our case, we want our bookmark available now, so click the little refresh button (it looks like a swirling arrow) in the bottom right corner
12. And, you’re done. The bookmark will be searchable in Quicksilver.
    • For the record, you will have to do this everytime you add a new bookmark, so I’d recommend doing them in bunches to save yourself the time of having to constantly refresh the catalog.
13. Now, for searching. (this is the cool part)
14. Pop-open Quicksilver and type the name of your bookmark.
15. Press Tab twice (yes, twice)
16. Now, type what you want to search.
17. Press Enter.
18. WHOA! Instant search! How cool!?

And there you have it. I hope it helps someone out.

Let me know if you have any other cool Quicksilver suggestions and I’ll try to do another one of these sometime soon.

-Mike