I'm back :)

Hey, long time.
I won't make many excuses: I just been busy, and this is my hoby project.

I missed it so much! I tried to get back to this many times, but I just couldn't make it.

A few weeks ago, I was taking a look at an AngularJS tutorial just out of curiosity and as soon as I started it I tried it with the extension's data model. It was so simple that I kept on going, hence 0.3.2 :D

This cleanup allows me to make more changes to the extension, hopefully making it better, but also keeping it as simple as possible.

Check my previous post on more information about what changed in 0.3.2.

Also, here's a few links you might find interesting if you're interested in helping out:

• GitHub project: If you're up for it, feel free to join and make it better :)
• Crowdin project: Translate the extension to your own language :). There's a few translations (French, Polish, Spanish, Dutch) but there's a lot missing. We're 14% there :)
• You'll find up to date information on what i'm working on in my Trello board. 

Finally, and most importantly, I was checking out some figures:

1. Around 5.000 search queries (events) are run every day with the extension. 
2. Last month, this meant 172,811 events!
3. It's 2,689,418 events since the launch of the extension in June 6, 2011
4. It seems that around 20.000 users have this extension installed
5. Top search engine is Amashow, which I don't know what it's all about, but registered over 630.000 events, 23% of the total events from all times. Can someone tell me what these guys do for a living? :D
6. Second in ranking is "Confidential": About 7% of the clicks are not tracked -by users' choice-.
7. Close is YoutuBe, with 6.4% and then follow IMDB, Google, Amazon & Wikipedia (in that order).

Besides the fun in numbers, I also realized there's a lot of users using this tool, which is cool, but also more responsibility.

As the extension grows in complexity, with more features, I realize it's super hard for me to test them all the time, and making sure all is well. 

I'm thinking in asking for help in testing, having a small group of trusted beta-testers. If you're interested, please comment to this post and I'll add you to the group.

I'll probably start releasing new features to this closed group first, then to the open audience.

Finally, THANK YOU! You guys, are awesome, I 'm really happy you find this extension useful.

Cheers!!

0.3.2 is live!

How long it's been! Sorry about that.

Last friday I published 0.3, during the weekend I was notified I broke the "Search everywhere!" option (sorry!) so I posted 0.3.1 with the fix, and then 0.3.2 rolling back some unwanted code that went out with 0.3.1. Messy. Rusty. 

But who cares! 

Here's the change log for all 3 together:

New on v 0.3.2

  - fixed Search Everywhere (broeken in 0.3)

  - new plus sign option

  - new options interface

  - major tech upgrade

  - new "open in incognito" option

  - bug fixes

  - translations to several new language

  - support for special characters in search query (including &)

So I won't go into  much detail, but explain just a few:

Main "under the hood" change affected the Options page: you'll notice some minor design changes, but the main thing is that it's now based in AngularJS & Bootstrap. Result: I'm still a messy coder but code is way better than before.

As said, I'm still mess, there's lots to improve, but this is a huuuuge improvement to the previous code.

The code refactoring allowe me to make a couple of quick improvements: 

• you can now specify if you want a link to open in an Incognito Window. 
• Also, some search engines prefer to separating words with the "+" sign instead of spaces. You can now specify that per Search engine.

I hope you like these changes. There's more coming!

now on GitHub!

Michał, from Poland, sent me a mail yesterday -though my youtube account :P- suggesitng I posted my extension`s code to GitHub.
There's a couple features he'd like to have and he suggested he'll do it himself.
Cool!
I've never thought about it, but it sounds like a really cool thing to do, so I just did! :D
I'm still getting used to the idea that other people might see the code and freak out, heh, but well, I never said it was a fine piece of software, did I? :)

So If you're readig this and interested, knock yourself out: https://github.com/frenetix/SimpleSelectSearch

Michał's 2 new suggestions where:

• Option to remove the "search everywhere" link. Fair enough.
• Have groups of links, so you might want to order your links in a specific way, with sub-folders and sub-sub-folders... Works if you have lots of links... i don't but am ok with it :D

He was also very polite as to offer himself to translate the extension into polish :D nice... remember you can translate it to you own language here: https://crowdin.net/project/simpleselectsearch/invite

Cheers!

New crowdin project for translation available here

+knutars suggested that i created a project in crowdin so the extension could be translated to other languages more easily... So I just did that!

Check the translation project here

Thanks for helping out!

1 year without activity :P

Yikes... 2013 was intense!... a single update to the extension!
It's not like it's a finished product. It's just that I had no time at all :)
It was a good year, though :D

But there's a few new things I'd like to try this year, which will mean some major changes under the hood.
So even it might take some time, I thought to share it with you anyways:

1. Configure links to replace spaces with %20 or '+' sign. That's a per-link configuration, since some sites use + on their URLs instead of the standard %20 for spaces. This was requested a long time ago, but means I should change the configuration object... that's why I haven't implemented it yet. It will mean some backward compatibility code will need to be in place, plus, most of all, will mean to change the current links table to something better... I'll start looking into cool JavaScript tables to use. 
2. Configure links to be opened on a new window and on a new incognito window. Don't know if can be done... I'll have to check the Chrome API... It's something I came up with a long ago, but again, means all the changes mentioned above... so since I'm doing #1, makes sense to go for #2 too :)
3. Someone requested this new feature that I liked: an option to display an icon on the omnibox and then a pop-up menu with the available links.... It's against the "right-click-search" original objective, but couldn't hurt to try... and I guess makes sense on some scenarios, like when I'm browsing from my iPad using a remote desktop to my computer... yeah... i do that sometimes :/ ... I'm not sure it will work or be easy to implement so, again, I will have to check the Chrome API. But since I haven't been doing much coding lattely, I welcome the challenge :P 

I'll also try and include a couple new translations (thanks for the offerings!!!) and well, #1 & #2 above will probably mean some more major changes... I'll re-think using knockoutJS to work with my configuration data... I'll have to ask someone that really knows if it's really worth it, though.

That's it so far, I hope to get back here soon with more news.

Cheers!

Minor update: version 0.2.2 is live

Version 0.2.2 went out last night, in silent mode: this means, if you had 0.2.1 you won't notice it updated... This is something suggested by my friend and coworker +Alejandro Charbonnier (Gracias Lalo! :D)

On this release I did only 3 things, I've been busy and will be for a few weeks so I'm not expecting to include any major changes in the next trhee to four months.

The new changes are:

1. Bug fix: Import/Export feature was not working, and for the looks of it... it hasn't been working for a long while!
   First, thanks to +Alvin Chong for reporting this, and for being so kind and patience -it took me like a month to fix this-, and also to test the fix and send feedback. I really appreciate this!
   Usually, when I'm "on the other side" I do this once in a while, only for a piece of software or service I really appreciate, but not often. So I value the support of users like Alvin who remind me I'm not the only one who likes my extension :D
2. Included 3 new search engines to the featured list... these I took from Alvin's list (again, thanks!).
   As of the update of the manifest version, I no longer update this Database externally, but pack it within the extension. I might go back to the external web service, once I get the proper SSL certificate to do so -Chrome does not support external website call unless encrypted-.
   I figured it's not worth it.
3. I now included the version number to the left column of the options page, so you know which version you're dealing with.

That's it... thanks again for the continuous support.

Quick update: version 0.2.1

Hi there,

Had to perform a quick, silent update last night. I found another weird thing when editing some config options... Now that seems to be working fine.

Also, a user reported that the string to be searched (what you define as %s on the url) was not working properly if there were more than one %s on the same URL. I never really thought it might be  necessary but he shoed me a site that required that. So, it now works with more than one %s on the URL.

Cheers!