TouchSearch 2.2 Released!
After a couple of (mostly minor) bugs were discovered in Touchsearch 2.1, I decided I would upload a new version to iron out some of these issues people were having. Today TouchSearch 2.2 passed the required Quality Assurance tests, and should be available to install from your local App. Manager within the next day or so. Although this is mostly a bug-fix release, there is one nifty feature that I would like to talk to you about. It is called the “TouchSearch Quick Bar” and adds keyword based searches to TouchSearch.
One of my users gave me the idea (thanks, evad!) and here is how it works: it allows you to search any of your other search engines by adding a certain prefix to your query. For example, let’s say you find it a bit too time consuming to change search engines every time you want to search a different site. This gives you the ability to use a single search engine, and “change” them by adding a letter at the beginning of your search query. Here are a couple screen shots to demonstrate;
I have selected the QuickBar as my current search engine:
Let’s say I want to search Ebay for, I don’t know, shoes. What I would do is enter “e shoes” as my query.
The “e” tells TouchSearch I want search ebay.com and will automatically by stripped from my query. Shoes, obviously, is what I actually want to search for. When you hit return, TouchSearch magically directs you to ebay’s results page for “shoes”.
And this works for all your search engines. “a” for Amazon, “w” for Wikipedia, “gm” for Google Maps, and so on and so forth. If you enter no prefix or “g”, Google is queried. Additionally, you can change which prefixes are used and add your own to your custom search engines.
How do you get this feature? First, install TouchSearch 2.2. Like I mentioned, it should be available in the next 24 hours or so. Secondly, if this is the first time you’ve installed TouchSearch, you should see the QuickBar available right after installation. If you are upgrading from an older version of TouchSearch, you may need import this search engine into your current database. Do this by:
- Going into Desktop Edit mode (tap the desktop, then tap the little gear)
- Tap on the wrench next to TouchSearch > Configure > Merge > Yes.
That should import all new search engines (including the QuickBar) into your current database.
Have fun (and leave feedback)!
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Hello Brent
Are you available for a hug? TS is THE most useful app on my N900, and it never fails to wow even Android-carrying friends. You deserve special recognition because you keep updating the app frequently, all the updates add something, yet the app remains snappy. The ‘Quickbar’ should ROCK – something I can’t even do on a PC! In a world where, having bought the N900, all I hear about in the way of apps is code merges, SDKs, extra-devel, and “projects” that are close to finishing but NEVER EVER APPEAR (sorry Maemo community, you guys are great but N900 suffers from absence of Nokia’s own app support), you are a breath of fresh air. Keep rocking!
Thank you for the kind words, Tim!
As an open-source developer, it is very nice to see that there are people out there that are enjoying my software (and that it impresses folks with Android devices — cool!).
Thanks for leaving a comment and letting me know!
Thanks Brent, love the new quickbar! TouchSearch is a great application I use frequently and I really appreciate your continual improvement of it. I can’t say “thank you” strongly enough.
Is there a way that I can force Google Maps to consider my current GPS location in the search results? I tried being lazy typing into quickbar “gm library” and was shown the British Library in London way across the pond. “gm library san jose” does however do the proper thing and show the MLK Library. Just wondering if there is a way for me to still be a lazy typist and get what I’m after?
@Tim: try the Opera browser, a “quickbar” equivalent has been there for many years.
Thanks for writing this man. It goes along way to improve my user experience of the N900. Is there a way u can add a functionality to allow it search local file on the N900? like be some kind of GUI frontend to tracker?
@speednut
I am not that familiar with the capabilities of Google Maps and what can be done with GPS. What you can do is create a second Google Maps, called, for example, Maps San Jose. Create it exactly like the builtin one, and instead of having &q=%s in the url, replace it with: &q=san%%20jose%%20%s
Give it a prefix of “gs” (or whatever you want) and then when you want to search by San Jose you type: “gs query” or regular Google Maps “gm query”.
@bigbrovar
I briefly looked into tracker, and it is really complex. That almost seems like the job of a separate stand-alone app (preferably, by Nokia). It probably won’t be something that will be added to TouchSearch, but never is a long time…
Development idea: When the user types g, e, w etc to change search engine, the search icon can change to the icon of the site or resource being searched, as a visual confirmation of where the search will go..
Could also serve as an aide memoire.. And it would look nifty
@Matt
That sounds hard to implement! (seriously, it can be done, but probably isn’t a priority).
Thanks for the idea, though!
I would love to see search for the internal wikipedia app. Make it an alternative but that would be so cool.