Dave's Quick Search Taskbar Toolbar Deskbar

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Check out Dave's Quick Search Deskbar Search Wizard.

Google does it right: they are fast .  Their loadtime is quick.  Their searches are instantaneous.  Voila! What could be faster?

Good question.  You know that the I'm Feeling Lucky button speeds things up.  So does a shortcut to Google on your taskbar, and so does the official Google Toolbar . And maybe you're already using all that.

Still need to go faster? Install Dave's Quick Search Deskbar .  It launches Google, Yahoo and other searches straight from your desktop taskbar.

Dave thinks it's indispensable; you can also read what other users around the Internet say.

What is it?

Dave's Quick Search Deskbar is a tiny textbox that Dave Bau designed for search hounds with weary mouse-fingers.  Unlike the Google Toolbar, this little deskbar lets you launch searches without starting a web browser first, directly from your Windows Explorer Taskbar.

You type your search and hit Enter for a regular Google search.

If you're feeling lucky, tack an exclamation point on to the end of your search - "pow! " - and go directly to the top ranked hit. It is Powered By Google, and Yes it Really Works.

Now you can do searches no matter what you are doing - email, word processing, programming, whatever.

There's more.  You're not a captive to Google. Do Yahoo searches with a "yh question", get Merriam-Webster definitions with a "colon:", get Bloomberg stock quotes like this "msft intc csco$", and find Switchboard phone numbers by saying "Lois Lane#". You can search real "news." search "newsgroups," check "weather*", or "comparison shop$$". There's a built in calculator when you need to know "pow(1.0625, 30) " is 6.1640785.  And so on.

Too much to remember?  Click the button on the search bar or press F1 and a menu shows you all your choices. Not enough space on your deskbar?  It includes a clock so that you can free up some space by turning off the system deskbar clock.

Missing a feature you need? If you know HTML and want to add your own functionality, you can - it is distributed under GPL and is available at SourceForge .

It'll make you super-quick.

You'll be ready to take on the world and surf like never before.

More Questions?

For more information be sure to check the Frequently Asked Questions area.

Installation Instructions

Want it? First off, you need to be running Windows 95 or better and using IE 5.5 or newer.  It's been tested with IE 5.5, and 6.0, on Windows 95, 98, 2000, and XP.  (Please let me know if it works on various other configurations.)

Here's what you do:

  1. Run the following setup program.  ("Run this program from its current location" is fine.)

    Dave's Quick Search Deskbar Installer

    It will install the deskbar in the "Quick Search Deskbar" folder in your "Program Files" directory, along with sources and an uninstallation program.

  2. Clear out a nice empty gray space on your taskbar by closing some apps, then right-click on the empty gray part of the taskbar, and select the menu Toolbars > Add Quick Search...

    If "Add Quick Search" doesn't appear, wait ten seconds and try again - Windows takes a few seconds to discover the existence of a newly installed deskbar.

  3. You're done! Dave's Quick Search Deskbar has appeared on your taskbar. Drag things around so that it's just the right size and in the right place.

  4. Saving screen real estate. Since screen real estate on the taskbar is precious, you probably want to get rid of the little caption that says "Search" by right-clicking it and unchecking "Show Title".   And since the search bar includes its own clock, you probably want to remove the system clock from the system tray by right-clicking in the empty space in the taskbar and selecting "Properties", then unchecking "Show Clock".

            

Type ? and hit Enter in the search box to get more information about other features.  You can also type ? followed by a search string to find searches.  For example, to display help about all the searches that have something to do with movies, type "? movies".

Alternate Installation Instructions

Some users of Windows 98SE and Windows ME have reported that the search bar does not show up when they follow the steps above.  Here is another way you can install the search bar that works if the regular way does not work:

  1. Download and run dqsd.exe as usual.
  2. Right-click on your Windows Explorer taskbar and select Toolbars > Add New Toolbar...
  3. When it prompts you for a folder, type in the following URL: http://notesbydave.com/toolbar/install.htm (be sure not to copy in any spaces at the beginning or the end)
  4. The Quick Search bar should appear.

Alternate Alternate Installation Instructions

The trick above only works if your program files directory is on your C: drive.  If it's on your D: drive you'll want to use a different URL, and if it's on your E: drive, there's yet another one.

Support

There are new discussion forums for support, ideas, and enhancements.  If you've got any, please email them to the dqsd-users@lists.sourceforge.net group.  An archive of the list is here.    (Note, we're moving away from the old forum on Yahoo because the advertisements and downtime have become too annoying.)

There are three mailing lists for DQSD:

If you want to contribute to the future development of the search bar, you may want to sign-up on the developer's list

User Contributions

Searches created by DQSD users that aren't a part of the default installation package. If you have created searches that others would be interested in, drop a note to dqsd-users@lists.sourceforge.net .

Uninstallation Instructions

If you are unhappy with your Dave's Quick Search Deskbar, email Dave to complain, or check the old or new discussion group archives to see if there is a workaround. Maybe somebody has already found a fix. In the meantime, it's easy to uninstall.

  1. Right-click on the "Search" caption of the deskbar (or the little gripper to the left of the deskbar if you've hidden the caption) and select "Close".
  2. Then, to unintall the files and registry entries, go to the control panel and click on "Add/Remove Programs".  You'll find an entry for "Dave's Quick Search Deskbar", which you can use to run the uninstaller.

This erases it from your computer without a trace.

Some Notes for Real Search Hounds

Search Menu.  You can get a menu of searches by clicking on the » button that is available to the right of the textbox.  So you don't need to remember the punctuation.

The menu button will not appear if the deskbar is too narrow; it won't show itself if it would take up more than some percentage of the deskbar's screen real estate.

Even if the menu button isn't being shown, you can display the menu of choices by typing "F1" key while you're entering your search terms (you'll still need IE 5.5 or better for this feature).  You can continue editing your search while the menu is shown.

People Lookups.  Most names are too common to do ordinary lookups.  If you say

Jackie Jones#
you will get hundreds of hits.  So you can specify the state and, if you like, the city too.  You put them in parentheses, like this:
Jackie Jones (ca)#
Jackie Jones (san fransisco, ca)#
If you specify the city, you need to say the state, but not the other way around.

Drag and Drop .  Drag and drop is pretty neat. If you drop in some text, it opens a Google search directly so that you don't need to hit Enter.  It trims punctuation for you so you don't search newsgroups just because you dragged in a comma.

If an instant Google search is not what you want, then just use cut and paste.  The regular cut and paste keys ctrl-C, ctrl-X, and ctrl-V do work.  (It wasn't easy.)

Calculator .  The deskbar has a built-in Javascript calculator that lets you evaluate ordinary Javascript expressions using an "=" sign, e.g., "9*(3+22.4)=" will give you "228.6".  If you type in something that looks like a math expression without the equals sign, the calculator will also try to evaluate it.

The code is executed within Javascript's Math package, which gives you access to various functions and mathematical constants. For example, "cos(pi)+sin(pi/2)" gives you "0".

You have access to the entire execution environment of the page, so you can show the about box with "about()=" or do an Ask Jeeves search with "aj('why')=", etc.  All the single-letter variable names are left for your use, so they are useful as memory for your calculator.

If you say "x=4344", then "x*x-x" later on will yield "18865992".

Search History .  The deskbar remembers your last 50 searches (by default).  You can use the up and down arrows or ctrl-P (Previous) and ctrl-N (Next) to browse through your history of searches.  If your deskbar is not docked in the taskbar, you can use the up and down arrow keys for the same thing.

FreeTranslation.com Language Translation .  You can translate words or web pages through FreeTranslation translator like this: "algunas palabras es-en" translates some words from Spanish to English, and "calvinone.net pt-en" translates a web page from Portugese to English.  Supported translation codes include include en-zh, en-fr, en-de, en-it, en-ja, en-ko, en-pt, en-es, zh-en, fr-en, fr-de, de-en, de-fr, it-en, ja-en, ko-en, pt-en, ru-en, and es-en.

XE Currency Converter .  You can convert between currencies using current rates by typing "100usd>gbp" to see how many British pounds you get for $100 U.S. Dollars. There are currency codes for every currency you can think of (eur, dem, jpy, frf, itl, aud, cad, hkd...).  There is a complete list of three-letter currency codes here on xe.com .

Other Shortcuts .  There are several more shortcuts that you can use.  Click the button next to the toolbar or type "?" to display a list of all the searches grouped by category.  To search the search descriptions themselves, type "? [search string]" and only the searches that have [search string] in their description will be displayed in a popup window.  E.g., "? translate".

Dave's favorite searches .  When a Google search fails, Dave usually goes to the FAST engine search next.

Why? Dave finds that the main problem with Google is that its view of the Web is a month or more out-of-date.  So Google is no good when Dave is searching for something new. The FAST engine reindexes the internet every 12 days, so it's a fresher view than Google.

Launching addresses .  Some things that you type into the textbox will not launch a search. If you type in what looks like a URL (http://foo.com/bar), a DNS name (foo.co.jp), a local filename (c:\foo\bar), or a UNC name (\\foo\bar\file), it will open those directly. If you type one of the bits of special punctuation without a search term, it will open an appropriate page for that service.  (Some are nice; for example, * is great because AccuWeather remembers your previously specified zip code.)

Launching addresses faster .  A lot of websites have DNS names like "www.joelonsoftware.com". To zap to these sites even faster, you can just type in "joelonsoftware" and type control-Enter, and it works just like the IE address bar does with control-Enter. It'll add the www.  and the .com parts for you.

Reverse Phone Number Lookup . If you type in what looks like a phone number (including area code), it will do an AnyWho reverse phone number lookup.

What about other search engines? As I mentioned before, you're free to modify the code and even redistribute it as allowed under GPL. See the Contributing section below for more information on modifying the source code. If you add a cool feature, please let me know.

What about Linux? For your GNOME desktop, you might want to check out WebSearcher on SourceForge, which seems to have similar UI.  (I've never tried it.)

What about Windows NT? It works, but you've got to get Active Desktop enabled on NT, which can take some contortions. Jeff Winkler offers the following tip: "Took me a while to get it going under NT/SP6 because I hadn't enabled Active Desktop -- there were no toolbars in my taskbar.  It's fairly tricky - instructions are at http://www.jsiinc.com/SUBG/TIP3200/rh3235.htm "

What about Netscape or other non-IE browsers? Update : As of version 2.5.0, thanks to Koen Mannaerts code contribution, you should now be able to launch Netscape, Opera, or other non-IE browsers using the deskbar.  This normally works out-of-the box just fine: searches are launched using your default browser.  However, sometimes, the deskbar can be tricked into believing that IE is your default browser when it is not.  If this is happening to you, you can edit your "preferences.js" file and change "launchmode" from 2 to 1.

What's New

Version 3.1.6 (April 20, 2003)

Version 3.1.5 (December 25, 2002)

Version 3.1.4 (October 3, 2002)

Version 3.1.3 (September 9, 2002)

Version 3.1.2 (September 8, 2002)

Version 3.1 (August 27, 2002)

Version 3.0 (June 29, 2002)

Version 2.5.7 (April 1, 2002) was coordinated by Glenn Carr (through six beta releases) and adds the following features contributed by the open source community:

  1. New searches: reget, winres, day, rgb, hexconv, chart, phone, multi
  2. Removed currency.js and phoneno.js, all the script needed for those 'searches' are in their respective XML files. Monty added an autodetect_* method for each search. This might also speed the load (but not sure)
  3. Rework of switch parsing; addition of parseArgs() method
  4. Neel Doshi's changes to tools.js to correct the browser launch mode
  5. Added searches Downseek, TechWeb Encyclopedia, Borland Newsgroup Database by Tom Corcoran
  6. Added telephone country code lookup by Stephen Montgomery
  7. Shortcuts have been fixed so that entries in localaliases.txt that contain backslashes don't require escaping those backslashes. I.e., instead of... 
    run explorer /e, "C:\\Program Files\\Quick Search Deskbar"
    ...the actual path should be used... 
    run explorer /e, "C:\Program Files\Quick Search Deskbar"
  8. Updated ZDNet search from John Bairen
  9. The following variables can now be used to customize the help fonts and help window... 
    helpstyle // contains standard CSS style settings
helpoptions // contains options for the window.open() options
    Here are some examples that could be used in preferences.js to increase the font size and to modify the help window... 
    helpstyle = "font-size:12pt";
// the following are not CSS styles, but options
// passed to window.open()
helpoptions = "width=800, height=550, status=yes"
  10. Modified the 'run' command to allow passing parameters to an executable. E.g., you can now enter: 
    run explorer e, C:\Program Files\Quick Search Deskbar"
    Or, an alias can be defined in localaliases.txt like this: 
    run explorer /e, "%s"
    ...so that you can enter: 
    exp C:\Program Files\Quick Search Deskbar"
    This required a change to the DQSDTools.Launcher component (the OpenDocument method has a second optional argument which takes the parameters.)
  11. Fix for the mysterious disappearing dollar signs in the help that JB found.
  12. Added RobbyH's SurfWax search - "sw horses"
  13. Monty added helpful comments to preferences.js
  14. New searches/functions submitted by Tom and Monty:
    1. fd - Free On-Line dictionary of computing: "fd xhtml"
    2. fe - The File Extension Source fe {[a..z] | num | sym }: "fe d"
    3. js - European specialist job site
    4. tm - Teoma search using Subject Specific Popularity : "tm denali"
    5. uktv - UK Television guide
    6. base - Convert decimal values to hex, octal and binary equivalents
    7. ascii - Convert ASCII characters to decimal, hex, octal and binary equivalents
  15. Glenn added expanding/collapsing help categories
  16. support for comments (leading '//') for alias files
  17. localaliases.txt isn't overwritten on install
  18. sync names of search files with function names

Version 2.5.6 adds the following:

  1. Ryan Edwards fixed drag-and-drop, which I inadvertently broke right before packaging up 2.5.5 for release.
  2. Tom J. Corcoran added a whatis.com search.
  3. Other miscellaneous fixes.

Version 2.5.5 includes the following improvements:

  1. Glenn Carr added a mechanism so that searches can be loaded from a searches directory instead of a huge search.xml file.
  2. Monty Scroggins and others ported the search.xml file into the new format.
  3. Ryan Edwards added infrastructure so that all searches that use option switches do it the same way.
  4. Several new searches were added, and several bugs were fixed.
This is the first release where Dave hasn't followed the development of the code in enough detail to provide a detailed log here. If anybody has a better changelog, please mail it to Dave!

Version 2.5.4 merges the following contributions from the discussion group:

  1. Olney Lee (xtrecate) contributed an AstaLaVista computer security search ("crax")
  2. Daniel Baek contributed Danish strings
  3. Glenn Carr contributed a send-email feature
  4. Jonathan Payne contributed a bugfix for launching unc names with numbers
  5. Kjetil Limkjaer contributed norwegian and dutch strings
  6. Michael Baas contributed german strings
  7. Glenn Carr improved the reverse phone number regex
  8. Glenn Carr added a feature so that you can control when DQSD spawns new windows
  9. Glenn Carr added a feature so that you can control when DQSD uses a multiline textbox.
  10. The CIA world fact book is added as a reference
  11. Glenn Carr updated the mapquest search to match the changed website
  12. Monty Scroggins improved the cpan search
  13. John W. Bairen contributed a pc magazine and a zdnet search
  14. John W. Bairen contributed a tom's hardware search
  15. Monty Scroggins added alarm and timer functionality
  16. Glenn Carr fixed the aim function so that it behaves better when AIM isn't installed.
  17. Monty Scroggins and John W. Bairen improved navigation inside the ? help window.

Version 2.5.3 adds a bunch of new functionality and reorganizes the code significantly:

  1. Thanks to help from Monty Scroggins, all the searches are moved into search.xml now. Search.htm is much smaller. the format of search.xml has changed. Shortcuts are no longer defined in this file; instead, they are defined in aliases.txt, and the menu layout is in menu.txt. Search.htm is exploded out to several different .js files.
  2. Some of the default mnemonics for searches have been changed. Every search can now be done via a command like "gg" for google. The searches listed in the "?" help box are now organized into categories so it's slightly easier to find things.
  3. Adam Stiles figured out why it wasn't correctly launching NetCaptor, and now it's fixed to work correctly!
  4. Glenn Carr added a feature so that the history is persistent (it is saved accross reboots). It's saved in history.txt.
  5. The calculator memory (single-letter variables) is also persistent. It's saved in calcmem.txt.
  6. The history now supports a "find previous command" feature: if you previously searched for "foo bart", you can now type "!fo" or "!bar" to recall the search; or you can use ctrl-P/ctrl-N to scroll through all the matching searches. "!!" redoes the most recent search. (If you want the "I'm feeling lucky" shortcut, the "!" needs to be at the end.)
  7. The input box is multiline instead of single-line (this feature was suggested by Mark Zeren).
  8. There is an option (buttonalign="left") to move the button to the left (as requested by Mitch G).
  9. Erik Hartmann contributed an aol IM shortcut a long time ago that I've finally gotten around to pasting in. I haven't tested it because I haven't installed AIM yet - and this should be changed so that it behaves better when aim isn't installed.
  10. There are two new UK-oriented searches (suggested by David Brake): cdo searchs Cambridge Dictionary Online for a British view of the English language, and mm searches multimap.com for addresses in the UK.
  11. Reginald Braithwaite-Lee contributed a bomis.com search
  12. Stephen Granade contributed a better bartleby.com quotations search
  13. Volker Wick contributed Fahrenheit to Celsius (and vice versa) conversion
  14. Monty Scroggins contributed a hotscripts search for searching for resources for various scripting languages simultaneously.
  15. Translations go to freetranslations.com where possible instead of going to AltaVista. en-no is added.
  16. An assortment of bugs were fixed (in history, cut/paste, selection, layout, IE 5.0 problems, installation problems, etc, etc.).

Version 2.5.2 includes the following improvements:

  1. Rick Olson contributed an improved pricewatch search - "pw ram:64mb". The old $$$ search is still there but will probably be removed soon.
  2. Monty Scroggins added a perl cpan search - "cpan CGI" (case-sensitive)
  3. Glenn Carr fixed a bug in the Vivisimo search identified by Paul Shotts.
  4. Nik Devereaux added an option to force the menu button on or off (showbutton = 0:off, 1:on, 2:(default)auto)
  5. Eduardo J. Fernandez Corrales contributed the rest of the needed Spanish localization strings.
  6. There's a new "run" command that just does a ShellExecute, e,g, "run winword" launches Microsoft Word.
  7. The popup calendar now updates "today" correctly when it's tomorrow.
  8. DNS names followed by slashed paths are now treated as http URLs
  9. There is an option to turn off the popup calendar (cal=false) as requested by Mitch G.

Version 2.5.1 is a bugfix release:

  1. Launching Yahoo calendar correctly appears to require timezone adjustments. These have been added.
  2. Some calendar rendering problems have been fixed (the current day is highlighted on Sundays; the calendar can navigate faster; and it puts itself away in the right situations).

Version 2.5.0 introduces some significant improvements:

  1. Thanks to Koen Mannaerts, Glenn Carr, and Monty Scroggins, this version is capable of launching your default browser even if it is not IE. It works with Netscape, Opera, and others. (Koen graciously made the ActiveX control that makes this possible available under GPL; the original idea came from his LaunchInIE control, which was introduced to us by Monty Scroggins. And Glenn came up with a way to handle POSTed forms through temporary files, so that changes to search.xml are minimal.)
  2. Sidney Chong added a terrific calendar (that I hacked up a bit). Get it by right-clicking in the deskbar. Preferences.js can be used to customize it to launch yahoo, msn, aol, netscape, mycalendar, or evite calendar services.
  3. Volker Wick contributed a bugfix in the ctrl-enter code.
  4. Jimmy Lin contributed a "start" search that uses a natural language question answering system at MIT.
  5. Glenn Carr implemented Nik Devereaux's idea of a MovieFone search: "mf Ocean's"
  6. Glenn Carr added a Bible search: "bible 1 cor 13:4-7"
  7. Glenn Carr implemented Chris Weiss's idea of ups and fedex tracking number searches: "fedex [tracking#]" and "ups [tracking#]"
  8. Glenn Carr added a Yahoo movie search: "ym Potter".
  9. Glenn added a date tooltip.
  10. Alain D contributed some French localization strings.
  11. Some more support for localization was added, partially through my clumsy efforts to use online translation tools. Please send in fixes or additional translations if you see errors or omissions. German, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, and other languages all have big omissions that need to be filled.
  12. Also, thanks to Justin Frankel for quickly merging a delta to NSIS 1.91 to help improve dqsd.exe setup.

Also new with this version: dqsd is on SourceForge. See this message for more information.

Version 2.4.5 is another bugfix release:

  1. Tim Lara fixed a bug in 2.4.4 so that the calculator works again.
  2. Glenn Carr added a yahoo movie search ("ym Ocean's Eleven").

Version 2.4.4 is a bugfix release:

  1. Bjorn Jonson, Glenn Carr, Kjetil Limkjaer, and Greg Mitchell quickly found and fixed a problem with the Vivisimo part of search.xml that prevented it from working with older versions of Microsoft's xml parser.
  2. Tim Lara contribted a formatting fix for the popup menu that improves its rendering on some configurations.
  3. Edney Soares de Souza contributed Portugese localization strings.
  4. Kjetil Limkjaer contributed Norwegian and Dutch localization strings.
  5. Eduardo J. Fernandez Corrales contributed Spanish localization strings. We still need more languages!

Version 2.4.3 adds the following:

  1. Jerome DeCock added localization and French strings (thanks to Martin for the short month names). We still need other languages!
  2. Nikolai Devereaux added an AcronymFinder search ("af nasa").
  3. Sam Gera suggested a Vivisimo search, and Glenn Carr implemented one ("viv anything").
  4. Glenn Carr added a number of features, including making more things customizable from preferences.js, looking for a second xml file containing searches, and making things work better when there are errors.
  5. Angus Johnson fixed drag-drop behavior so it copies text instead of moving it.
  6. Errors are handled in a more robust way; layout fits tighter with different font selections.

Version 2.4.2 adds two things:

  1. Dave Maymudes contributed a PAD file to help automate distribution of the search bar on download sites.
  2. Glenn Carr made the popup menu formatting a bit more robust.

Version 2.4.1 includes the following:

  1. Jerome DeCock contriubted a date formatting bugfix so unabbreviated monthnames work.
  2. Glenn Carr added a preferences.js file so that you can preserve your preferences when you get new versions of the deskbar. I've tweaked setup so that it doesn't overwrite this file.
  3. Damian Maclennan contributed a sqlteam.com search ("sql triggers").
  4. Now if you type "!" it refreshes the code; and the about box has helpful links for developers.

Version 2.4.0 has the following new features:

  1. Sidney Chong added a clock that shows in the deskbar after some idle time. This saves some screen real estate by allowing you to remove the system clock. I've modified the clock to add some formatting options using code from Matt Kruse. Glenn Carr helped fix my buggy modifications.
  2. Bjorn Jonson merged Sidney's changes into the latest version of the deskbar. He also contributed a new dns dig search (try "unip yahoo.com").
  3. Monty Scroggins added a weather underground search (by zip code - try "wug 75287").

Version 2.3.4 is another quick bugfix release:

  1. Michael McWilliam noticed that 2.3.2 introduced some changes that break the deskbar on IE 5.0 (that is what comes with vanilla Windows 2000, so that is a lot of people). This release fixes it, so you can now use the deskbar again without having to upgrade IE beyond 5.0.

Version 2.3.3 has the following improvements:

  1. Raul Costa noticed that a Windows 98 setup bug (previously found by Edney Soares de Souza) somehow crept back into the distribution. This is fixed again.
  2. Dan Sanderson's fancy Amazon search is added, so you can search an individual Amazon store.
  3. Andrew Gilmartin's Access Medicine search is added.

Version 2.3.2 the code is a bit restructured to make it easier to add new searches and manage your shortcut bindings. I still haven't merged in all the cool searches that have been posted yet, but it should now be easier to do this. This version includes:

  1. Glenn Carr's extensibility mechanism - now you can define new searches in a convenient search.xml file.
  2. Stewart Rubenstein's Cambridgesoft chemfinder searches (in search.xml)
  3. Alternate Merriam-Webster thesaurus
  4. Adam Jury's Dictionary.com search
  5. Glenn Carr's additions for image, half, amaz, xref, and isbn searches.
  6. An autodocumentation feature so that the help in "?" is always accurate.
  7. James Gleick's alternate thesaurus (not enabled by default)
  8. Bugfixes from Jeff Winkler, Don Womick, Chris Farmer, and others.

Version 2.2.1 thanks to many contributors, this version merges a bunch of neat new functionality from the dqsdd discussion group. It includes:

  1. Chris Sell's PhoneSpell support (use "523-3113 #*"),
  2. Damian Maclennan's Samspade search (use "sams dnsname.com"),
  3. Chris Farmer's Newsgroup menu item, decimal regex (say ".4+1"), and autocomplete (off) bugfixes,
  4. Peter Risser's code to search various music databases (use "cdnow britney/t", "cddb britney/t", "alm britney/t"...),
  5. Brian Ross's bugfix for the broken dogpile search,
  6. Peter Risser's currency conversion (w/ Greg Mitchell's lowercase mods; use "100usd>gbp"),
  7. Rick Olson's php and mysql searchs (use "php fopen" or "mysql alter table"),
  8. Greg Mitchell's babelfish translation (use "some words en-es"),
  9. Jelmer Cormont's request to be able to use long var names by saying "snoopy=34",
  10. and Chris Weiss's request to round near-decimal numbers (700-639.84 is now 60.16 instead of a few trillionths less).

Version 2.1.9 incorporated Greg Mitchell's code to do an internet movie database search (**) and a pricewatch search ($$$).

Version 2.1.8 implemented Joel Spolsky's suggestion to mimic the IE address bar's ctrl-enter behavior, which zaps you to www.just-type-this .com.

Version 2.1.7 fixed a bug introduced in 2.1.6 where URLs ending in / resulted in a search instead of going straight to the page.

Version 2.1.6 incorporated Adam Kalsey's code to search the very cool Wayback Machine with &&, and Edney Soares de Souza's code to search CNET Download.com with >>.

Version 2.1.5 thanks to a bug find by Edney Soares de Souza from Brasil (aka InterNey ), setup should now work correctly with Windows 98.

Version 2.1.4 the popup menu adjusts itself for smaller screens. Thanks to bob.rtps for the bug report.

Version 2.1.1 fixed overflow bug in about box, improved math expression heuristic.

Version 2.1.0 added FAST, Altavista, Excite, and Dogpile searches. And you don't need to use a trailing "=" to calculate a math expression any more: we heuristically discover when you type one in.

Version 2.0.1 added a few fixes suggested by Mark Rafn including a better label for the popup menu.

Version 2.0.0 introduced the NSIS setup script suggested by Dave Maymudes, so we have a downloadable self-extracting setup program now.

Contributors

Besides Dave Bau , who wrote the thing, some other people have started to contribute.

Gary Burd was the first user and suggested several improvements to take advantage of IE's features including the popup menu. Some improvements are not yet implemented.

Dave Maymudes fixed the popup UI by attaching it to F1. He also suggested a good approach to open-source setup (nullsoft NSIS, which was used to generate the setup exe).

John Rhodes (WebWord) used the search bar early and promoted it by posting an interview on the widely-read WebWord, which lead the involvement of several other contributors.

Adam Kalsey contributed code to search the wayback machine with &&. It takes a little longer, but it goes way farther back than Google's cache.

Edney Soares de Souza (aka InterNey ) found a key bug in the Windows 98 setup, and he contributed code to search CNET Download.com with >>.

Joel ("on software ") Spolsky suggested hooking up ctrl-Enter to fill in "www." and ".com" for you, just like IE does in the address bar. He also linked to it from his popular weblog, which lead to several other contributors.

Greg Mitchell contributed Internet Movie Database and PriceWatch searches, and also the cool Altavista babelfish translator.

Peter Risser contributed code to search several online music databases, and he also contributed the currency exchange utility.

Glenn Carr contributed a number of searches including xref, isbn, half, image, screenit; and he added the cool search.xml feature where you can add searches in an external xml file.

Many others on the dqsdd discussion group have also contributed code; I've tried to give credit properly in the "What's New" section above. (If I've missed you, please let me know!)

Finally, thanks to the many people in the Internet community who have posted links and reviews on the deskbar.

Contributing

If you have any ideas on how to improve the Quick Search Deskbar, please email them to mailto:dqsd-users@lists.sourceforge.net. (You can read an archive of the list at mail-archive.com .)

Or better yet, implement your ideas yourself and post them to the group. It's easy. The deskbar's logic is coded entirely in HTML, and its setup script is an NSIS setup script.

If you've installed the deskbar, the source code is in your Program Files/Quick Search Deskbar folder. You can edit search.htm in that folder to modify the deskbar. Any modifications will show up in your toolbar after you right-click on the deskbar's gripper and select the "Refresh" menu item. You can also open search.htm directly in a web browser to preview it.

If you want to add new search engines, the easiest way is to copy, rename and edit a xml file in the searches subdirectory. (Thanks to Glenn Carr for introducing this mechanism.) More precisions about this can be found in the Frequently Asked Questions .

Please remember that, since the code is licensed under GPL, you are free to redistribute it, but you must include the source code and license your distribution under GPL as well.

If you'd like to repackage your modified deskbar as a redistributable executable, you need to install the open source nullsoft NSIS install system. Once you've installed NSIS, all you need to do is right-click on the search.nsi file and select "Compile NSI". This will run NSIS and create the setup executable dqsd.exe .

If you'd like to share your changes with Dave and others, again email or post them on the discussion group so that others can use it, and so that Dave or others can merge them in to the version on this site.

Or you can merge your contributions in directly by using the CVS repository on SourceForge. To get write access, you need a SourceForge account to which Dave or others can grant permissions. But of course read-only access is open to all. Here's the link:

SourceForge Logo

Licensing Information

Dave's Quick Search Deskbar
Copyright (C) 2002 David Bau

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.


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