Soon after reading this article, quix became one of my favorite scripts. This tool amazingly improves our searching experience. And you can enjoy it even more with Google Chrome. Although it’s basically created as a bookmarklet, it’s possible to integrate the powerful search tool with Chrome’s address bar.
Slight Modification of the Built-in Commands
To fully enjoy quix in the address bar, I strongly recommend to set a “default” search engine. Since this script requires, by default, a command, such as ‘g’, it causes a lot of troubles for someone who loves the simple behavior of the address bar. Let’s get rid of this by rebuilding “quix.txt” file. Download it and open it with your favorite text editor. Add a line at the bottom of it with the following statement:
* http://www.google.com/search?q=%s Untriggered search
By this line, the script interprets an input without any command as a to-be searched phrase. It works quite well. If you wish, you are allowed to add commands for your favorite search engines by editing quix.txt. Follow the instructions given in http://quixapp.com/help/syntax/
Because I’m Japanese, I thought it was necessary to add Japanese counterparts of Google and Amazon. You can’t forget Google Scholar. My custom commands are as follows:
@Custom @Commands that I added * http://www.google.com/search?q=%s Untriggered search aj http://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/search/?index=blended&keywords=%s&_encoding=utf-8 Amazon.co.jp Search gj http://www.google.co.jp/search?q=%s Google Japan Search sc http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%s Google Scholar
Reflecting the Revision to the Script
Firstly, upload the quix.txt file to a web server. If you don’t have any account, you can’t use the Public folder of Dropbox, which I think is the most wonderful idea. It’s the easiest way to edit and upload. Quix offers a simple script to reflect the revision. Go to the following site. http://quixapp.com/extend/
Integration of Google Chrome and quix
Once you made your custom script, it’s time to integrate it with Chrome. See the following site.
1. Open the script you’ve got in the previous step with a text editor. Modify it as follows.
- { –> %7B
- window.prompt(‘Quix: Type `help` for a list of commands:’) –> “%s”
2. Install the script to Google Chrome. You can see a detailed instruction in the above mentioned website.
3. Enjoy quix!
Note. If you wish to revise commands after all those processes, you can do it just by modifying quix.txt on your server. After revising and uploading, execute the “debug” command on the “quixed” address bar. You can see that the new commands will be working.
