The standard search box in Safari is pretty simple. Type in your search query and hit Enter. Boom! View the results from Google. Well, that’s only if you’re quite certain about what you’re searching for. What if you’re in that zone when you’re looking for something but you aren’t really sure what it’s called or [...]
The standard search box in Safari is pretty simple. Type in your search query and hit Enter. Boom! View the results from Google. Well, that’s only if you’re quite certain about what you’re searching for. What if you’re in that zone when you’re looking for something but you aren’t really sure what it’s called or which keywords to type in? Search suggestions are what you need. Maybe a more powerful search box?
Here are two search enhancement plugins for Safari which will improve its search function by leaps and bounds. Find out which is better!
Inquisitor
I’ve been using Inquisitor ever since I had my Mac and it has proven to be a very handy tool when surfing. It hasn’t completely replaced the regular Google searches but it has definitely enhanced the process.
Searching with Inquisitor is something like using that Google “I’m feeling lucky” button all the time. That’s because by default, Inquisitor uses the Google search engine. So, its first result is most frequently the right one.
In Inquisitor’s results field, you’ll be presented with five websites; each with its own title, one-line description and web address. It will also tag the results which you have clicked with each own time-stamp and the number of visits. That’s quite handy in order to keep track of the sites which you’ve visited and the ones which you haven’t.
Below the website results, you will also be presented with suggestions based on the search keywords which were entered. That will prove useful when you don’t really know which keywords will produce results closer to the item that you’re searching for.
During the time when I was using Inquisitor, I never felt that it had let me down as a search plugin. Most of the time, the results were spot on. Rarely, I had to hit ‘Enter’ to view the Google results page - probably because my keywords were too broad to find what I was looking for.
Glims
Glims sprung up not long ago, masquerading as a search plugin but it does so much more! It adds quite a bit of functionality to Safari which I feel Apple should have had natively. Besides the search function, Glims allows me to re-open closed tabs, automatically re-open the tabs I had during the last session and full-screen browsing. Even Opera has these options by default! But since Safari doesn’t, I’m glad I found Glims.
As for its search enhancements, well, it’s half and half. Glims provides the results in the same format as Inquisitor but without the number of visits and time-stamp tag. In my opinion, that’s quite essential and it’s a big drawback not to have that.
However, Glims makes up for it by the extra functionality it provides. The option to re-open closed tabs comes in very useful, especially for me because I get quite trigger-happy when it comes to pressing Cmd+W and most of the time I accidentally close more tabs than intended. Glims also has more search engines built-in compared to Inquisitor (which only has Google, Yahoo!, Amazon and Flickr).
The only thing which irked me about Glims was the fact that it replaced all the close buttons on my tabs with favicons. I had to delve deep into the preferences to get rid of that.
Conclusion
Purely for its search enhancements, Inquisitor surely shines brighter. But we can’t ignore Glims for the extra useful functionalities which it adds to Safari, and because of that, Glims is better overall.
Glims requires Safari 3.0.4 [Mac only] or greater and is available for free from machangout
Which one do you prefer? Or do you have another favourite you’d like to nominate?
(By) Jackson Chung is a full-time medical student attempting to perform a juggling act with relationship, studies and his future.
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Tags:glims, inquisitor, Mac, plugin, safari, search
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