Hi

Chrome extension which allows you to right click on selected text and search on multiple sites at the same time.

Wednesday, May 20, 2015

0.4 is here: groups finally!

I published earlier today 0.4... I'm on a roll! :)

This version implements a major feature, which was asked by many users ever since I started: grouped  links are now available. 
Each link now can be part of a group or not, that's up to you. Once the group property of a link is updated, the link will show up in a submenu under the group's name.
The "Search everywhere!" feature is both available at a root or at a group level.
It feels simple to configure, hope you think the same. 
I need to improve the group field, so it auto-completes values with existing groups names... Also, sorting groups might be necessary, though you can achieve that with sorting the links.
It's not quite finished, but it's getting there.

Change log:
- New groups feature
- Ability to turn "Search everywhere!" off 
- New UI for featured search engines and credits page
- Having multiple search engines with same name is now possible again
- Localization updates

Still pending:
- respect incognito options in "Search everywhere!"
- hide "Search everywhere!" if group contains only one link
- improve group UI
- add filter option for featured search engines. Maybe group them (it's a lot of search engines)

I should post a few screenshots but am on my iPad :P... Maybe next time.

That's it, hope you like it!

30 comments:

  1. Please, let it save its settins at the google account (see SwitchyProxy as example)

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  2. yes! that's on the wishlist :)

    https://trello.com/c/qucLoTai/28-check-storage-sync

    I need to figure out a nice transition to sync preferences before I do that :)

    thanks for the tip!

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  3. This is awesome, when will there be a Firefox version?

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  4. Hi Steve, I have no plans of porting this to FireFox :)
    I'll take a look at how complex it could be, though.
    Cheers!

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  5. Extension works great!
    I was looking for a way to take selected text from page and show it in menu item like you did but I couldn't do that even watching your code(
    The problem is that I use window.addEventListener("contextmenu", ... method and then send message by chrome.runtime.sendMessage to background script. Then I catch it in background script and update item. But it looks like chrome shows menu before background script get message. So I have updated menu item only next time menu is shown.
    Could you explain how you update menu item text before it shown?
    Thanks

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    Replies
    1. Hi Vitally,
      Since you've been digging around the code, can you please tell me where the search strings are stored? I've tried contacting the dev., but he's never responded.

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  6. Hi Vitally,
    To be honest, i've done this a long while ago so i don't remember the particulars.
    As far as i remember, and diggin a bit into my code, i don't "send" the context menu to the background script, but I create the context menu within it (the background script).
    That way, when creating the menu I specify it is to use the "selection" contextType, hence it uses it every time the menu is displayed.
    To be able to dynamically diplay the selection within the text of the menu, I placed %s within the title property when creating the menu.
    See the method "create" in this page: https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/contextMenus
    I hope it makes sense...
    Good luck!

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    Replies
    1. Diego, thanks for the answer.
      I reviewed your code (sss.background.js) hundred times but couldn't find where you replace %s to construct title.
      In "createMenu" method you just take string from i18n storage and just use it to create menu item!
      Could you please point me out where you replace %s with selection.
      I can't sleep because can't understand how it works )))

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    2. I reviewed code here https://github.com/frenetix/SimpleSelectSearch/blob/master/chrome/js/sss.background.js

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  7. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  8. Hi, Chrome replaces %s automatically when you use %s as part of the string for "Title", and when using ContextType = "selection".
    In this case, the i18n value that returns is the following: "Search '%s' on", then Chrome automatically replaces %s with whatever it is selected (it's not me!!! :D).

    Makes sense?

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  9. Hey man this is a great app! Is there any way that I can track the use of a particular search engine? I'm introducing this tool to my office, and it would be great to track the metrics on it. Thanks!

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  10. I hope you will add support to automatically maintain a section that is a mirror of your saved omnibar search engines (top part of that list) .. ifso I will definitely be downloading this!

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  11. Would be great if search option could be top level, not just through a sub menu

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  12. Which file on the disk actually stores the additions you've made, e.g. adding search engines. I know I can export the configuration manually, but I want to be able to restore it from a backup when it becomes corrupted and I lose all of my search engines (which happens more often than I'd like). I've looked everywhere including the Extension directories in ~/Library/Application Support/Google Chrome//Extensions/ and nothing changes if I modify the SSS config

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  13. Hi, Great work on the extension! I was just wondering if you had thought about including a search engine or two for the gamers. The two best choices would be be Steam(.com) and Twitch(.com). It would be awesome if you could do that. I understand coding takes a lot of time and effort though, so what will be, will be.

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    Replies
    1. For anyone interested I have the search URL for one of those now...

      Steam

      https://store.steampowered.com/search/?term=%s

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    2. Hey @MistressBlood, thanks for your comments :D
      I'll add those to the featured engines... if you have any others you might want to have added, please let me know...
      I don't have a date in mind for when to launch a new version, but this might be a good reason to do it.
      Thanks!

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  14. you can add nzbindex.nl
    https://nzbindex.nl/?q=%s
    PS: Can you add an option to open up in a named TAB.
    ie: you search for text in nzbindex , use the page and go back to the pevious page, Select a new text and use the same nzbindex page to open the new search in.

    So you dont have to close the tab after using.

    Hope i made it clear to understand :-)

    Thanks

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  15. Thanx a lot, I was waiting for this release !

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  16. Thank you for this great extension.
    I want Web Page Translation function on this extension.
    Right Click on Web Page, then it enables sending url to %s

    for example
    https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=ja&u=%s
    https://translate.weblio.jp:443/web/chinese?lp=&url=%s&sentenceStyle=spoken

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  17. I've got SimpleSelect in my Chrome now. But when I do a search, the highlighted text IS NOT being transferred into the search engine, instead giving a blank search bar.

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    1. Hey Jim, can you share the search engine definition you're trying to use? there might be something there I can help you with.

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  18. Hi guys thx for great extension. Is it possible to better Search on all group like click on Group name?

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    1. Hey Splack... I'll need to investigate on Chrome's context menu options to see if that's possible. As soon as I get some breath time I'll look into it. In the meantime, you're stuck with the "Search everywhere!" option for groups... it's one more click than what you propose, but it should do the trick. If you didn't try that, make sure you have it on, in the Advanced Options section.

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  19. Hello. I think you should also add a hotkey for the search

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  20. like assign a particular hotkey for the search

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    Replies
    1. Hey Nabeel, that's a good idea... I'll add to the list :)

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