Keyboardr

I am a big fan of search as you type, where search results are delivered on the fly as you type. This often means that you do not have to type out the full query string before you get the desired results, hence driving efficiency on the computer.

As such, I am glad to stumble upon Keyboardr, a search as you type frontend for the Google search engine. (However, searches are not limited only to Google – I will get to that in a while) It’s actually developed by Julius Eckert, who also happens to have created the HUD theme for Quicksilver, of which I am a great fan. But back to Keyboardr. It is obviously designed with Mac power users in mind – you can navigate and open search results using the arrow keys and the enter(/return) key, and there is no need for your hands to leave the keyboard.

Another great thing about Keyboardr is it actually also searches Wikipedia, Youtube, Google Images etc. and places the results all in one page, which is great. The simplistic interface of Keyboardr is also another plus point, though I thought that the clock on the front page was a little out of place.

There is a way to remove the clock, but it is not built into the main build of Keyboard. There is actually a nightly build available at http://keyboardr.com/nightly, which allows you to set personal settings such as disabling the clock and which sites to search in. However, the uncool thing is that it requires your email address to create an account to save your settings – I personally thought it would have been better if we just store it in a cookie.

There were news that Google was trying to buy in Twitter for its search as you type functionality, but maybe Google should just look into acquiring Keyboardr.

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