Enhance Safari’s search with Inquisitor
Recently Dave Watanabe released a version of Inquisitor, a Safari plugin that turns Safari’s default Google search box into an asynchronous (or, search-as-you-type) search, that sported some affiliate ads within the results.
Some people didn’t like that.
He then released an updated version that “now explicitly tags product/affiliate links in search results and, furthermore, now includes an user preference to disable these links all together” [source].
I had tried an early version of Inquisitor, and it didn’t really stick. Trying to think back I’m not really sure what it was lacking, but it may have been that at the time I was using a much older system and so perhaps Inquisitor wasn’t as responsive on an older machine. I can’t be sure.
While this whole ‘affiliate link debacle’ was going on, it reminded me that I wanted to give Inquisitor another try and I must say - it is extremely useful and I highly recommend giving it a try.
Key features
- Search as you type: Since Inquisitor searches as you type, it is able to give you the “top” few search results and also a few other possible search terms as you type. After using it only a few days, I can honestly say this has saved me a lot of time.
- Records number of visits: I have yet to figure out exactly how this works, and if it keeps a record forever, but - Inquisitor will show you the number of times you’ve clicked on a search result.*
- Preferences: There are several preferences that you can modify to customize your experience with Inquisitor. As promised, the latest version allows the removal of affiliate links.**
Inquisitor really is a quality product and it saves oodles of time. Dave Watanabe has a few other applications like Xtorrent and NewsFire. Give the most recent version of Inquisitor a spin and come back and let TUG.n know what you think.
– Footnotes below –
* I think the # of visits could be more accurately described as the number of times you’ve clicked on that search result. For other searches I’ve done, which return results to sites that I’ve visited, it doesn’t show this running count. So Inquisitor does not search your history and provide you with the correct number of times you’ve been to a site.
** I leave the affiliate links on. The developer was kind enough to provide this tool free of charge, and so if that is how he’d like to make money on it, I’m ok with that.
Related sites
Recent features
The Format - Give It Up
Coheed and Cambria - The Velorium Camper II: Backend Of Forever
Leah Andreone - Break Your Fall
Song of the week
Sara Bareilles - Between the Lines
Sara Bareilles' "Between the Lines" is the Song of the Week for April 20 to 26.
Warning: main(images/faq.php) [function.main]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/.eastwood/cdevroe/theubergeeks.net/wp-content/themes/clockworkorange/sidebar.php on line 119
Warning: main(images/faq.php) [function.main]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/.eastwood/cdevroe/theubergeeks.net/wp-content/themes/clockworkorange/sidebar.php on line 119
Warning: main() [function.include]: Failed opening 'images/faq.php' for inclusion (include_path='.:/usr/local/lib/php') in /home/.eastwood/cdevroe/theubergeeks.net/wp-content/themes/clockworkorange/sidebar.php on line 119
Wow, thanks for reminding me about this handy little app. I forgot to get it once I upgraded to Leopard. Absolutely a time saver for frequently searched sites.
Sameer Barkawi on January 25th, 2008 2:02 am
Sameer: Yeah, if it wasn’t for the hubbub, I wouldn’t have remembered it either.
Colin Devroe on January 25th, 2008 10:53 am