Don't Back Down

Saturday, I mentioned the new Google Deskbar. One of the cool features about the Deskbar is that it has an integrated option for adding customized searches.

For instance, say you regularly search the Internet Movie Database. You could type www.imdb.com in your browser window and perform your search. You could even leave an open window to the IMDB so you could jump over to it when necessary. Or you could set up a customized search in the Deskbar.

Then you just press Ctrl+Alt+G to get to the Deskbar, type your search and press Ctrl+M to search the IMDB. Both of the hotkeys are configurable, and reflect my personal choices. Yours may vary, but the process is the same other than that.

So how do you do this, you may ask? First, you need to know the search string that gets sent to the site to perform a search. For the IMDB, you'll want to send something looking like this:

http://www.imdb.com/Find?select=All&for=shrek

Where only the last part of the URL is the value you are searching on (Shrek in this case). Once you know how to run the search manually, you update the Deskbar options. Click on the Customized Searches tab inside the Deskbar options, then click Add.

Give your search a meaningful name. Actually, it doesn't matter if it is meaningful, but it might help if you forget it later. Then, assign a hotkey if you would like. In the example above, I used M, so that when I press Ctrl+M while in the Deskbar, it executes this search. Be careful that you don't use a hotkey that is already in use or your results may be a little odd. Then enter your search string. In this case, we'd use:

http://www.imdb.com/Find?select=All&for={1}

Note the {1} at the end. This says to replace the value with the search data. In our example above, the {1} is replaced by Shrek when we run this query. Save your settings, then you can run the search and see your results.

One thing I like to do is to keep the results in the mini-viewer (this is the default). That way the answer pops up, you can make a note of it, and then it disappears - all without disrupting your workday by having to reset your browser to another page or close an extra window. It just goes away when you're done!