The Hanover Collaboration

I’ve been using Quicksilver ever since I got a Mac. My favorite feature was the ability to make a “trigger” i.e., hotkey, for web searches. I used to press ctrl-apple-g, type some text and then my web browser would come up with the google results. ctrl-apple-w and it would be wikipedia instead.

I set this up again in 10.6 (using QS ß58 (3841) and the Web Search module (version 104)), but the custom trigger breaks whenever I restart quicksilver. So I played around until I found a work-around here.

Basically, what you do is you

• install the “Service Menu Module”

• turn on “get selected text from front application” in prefs/extras

• assign a hotkey the “Command With Selection” trigger

The last two bullets are things that I wanted anyway. Since Safari offers “search with google” as a service, that’s all the pieces.

This isn’t quite what I wanted, but it works. If I want to search selected text I do the hotkey then “s” and then enter. If I want to search for what I type, I do the QS hotkey then the search string (adding a space if there isn’t one) then tab, “s” and enter.

I can live with that, but I want wikipedia too. I can’t see how to add other searches as a service to Safari. It seems that to make something a service it needs to be in a menu. Maybe I’ll see if Chrome or Firefox can do it. But I think I’m near the point where the additional return isn’t worth the effort.

Update: You can eliminate the need to type “s” by increasing the priority of “search with google.” I’d recommend something between “open url” and “large text”

This tax season you might have used an Adobe web form. I used one for Ohio. I just did an SF85 (clearance form) and it was one too. If you tried to save the form, it would tell you something like “Saving form data is disabled. Do you want to save the blank form?” So you tried to print it to PDF. Disabled. Postscript. Disabled. Bullshits!

So I installed a CUPS-PDF printer. The idea is that you add a printer that actually just saves it to a file. Linux users will be saying “duh” here, but when using an Adobe product on a Mac, its not obvious how.

Go here for a really easy Mac installer. Well, it wasn’t super easy. I had to do some chmoding and making a directory ~/Desktop/cups-pdf (all described on the linked page) before I could do it. Also, the printer it created wasn’t called “virtual printer” but “CUPS-PDF” so it took a minute to find.

UPDATE: It seems that sometimes you need to “print as image” (in advanced options in the print dialog).

Before I start talking about myself, let’s lay down the interesting material. I’ve been testing and profiling my web application (Digiyou) and to do that, I use a number of different browsers. I’ve tested Firefox 3, Internet Explorer 6, 7 and 8, Safari 3 and 4, and Google Chrome. I tested what ran in Windows and Mac.