KwiClick - Complete Tasks Quicker

Earlier this week we rolled out a significant update for KwiClick. This update introduces a number of new items and quite a few fixes. Lets dig into each one:

Search Clovers - One of the main goals here at KwiClick is to make it as easy as possible to perform searches whenever you need to, and however you want to. A popular way of performing a search is to highlight some text on a webpage, copy and paste that into the browser search box and get the results. The Search Clovers make this a bit easier. When you highlight some text, you’ll now see a small semi-transparent icon appear above that text. This icon shows the Google logo, and when you click it, the search will open inside the KwiClick panel. Additionally, if you hover over this icon you will see three more icons appear in a clover formation; hence the name Search Clovers. We’ve loaded these clovers with Google, Wikipedia, Google Maps, and twitter; but you can easily re-assign them to your favorite services that we support (19 and counting as of this post). We’ve got some interesting bells and whistles built in here that you can play around with such as: changing the delay before you see the first clover, adjusting the transparency of the clover, tweaking the time before the other clovers disappear, the minimum number of highlighted characters before the clover appears, the animation speed of the clovers, and opening the clovers above or below the selected text. These clovers are pretty intelligent because they know where the selected text is on the page. If you highlight some text that is all the way on the right side of the page, the clovers will know to open slightly to the left so that they don’t appear off the page. If the highlighted text is on the very top of the page, the clovers will know to open below the text. This type of searching has been called ’selection based searching’ and we think you’ll love the way we’ve done it. Please do feel free to give us more ideas on improving this nifty little feature.

Updated Bing Provider - We’re now fully supporting Bing so all you Bing lovers can start using this immediately. (this can also be assigned as a Search Clover).

Updated compatibility for Firefox 3.6beta- Mozilla is preparing an amazing update to the Firefox browser and we’re ready for it. KwiClick is fully compliant with the latest betas.

Trim leading and trailing spaces from searches to improve accuracy- Sometimes a search may produce different results if there is a space before the search query or after it. We’ve implemented a way to remove these spaces so that the results are a bit more accurate. This one was requested a bit by you guys.

Updated kwiclick skin- You may not notice it, but we’ve shaved a few pixels off the KwiClick panel to make it look and feel a little bit sharper. We’ve got more in store for this stuff so stay tuned.

Updated wikipedia provider- When we first rolled out Wikipedia support in KwiClick we had some issues with the accuracy of the results. I’m happy to report that we’ve taken care of those issues. Wikipedia results should come back quicker and if there is an exact match for an article, you’ll be taken directly to that page.

We’ve got a lot more in store and love hearing your feedback. Most of the items I’ve mentioned above are the direct result of users sending in what they love (and hate) about KwiClick.

The web is the perfect medium for information retrieval and discovery.  You can find a video about skiing in the Swiss Alps and then moments later read the latest review of a new book by Stephen King called Duma Key.  Everyone that has used the web has most likely used a search engine such as Google.  When using a search engine, you type in your query, view a list of pages that contain relevant information, then choose one which might provide the most relevant information for your needs.  Oftentimes the page chosen is not exactly what you were looking for.  So, we click the back button, look at the set of pages again, and choose another.  It is in between clicking the back button and choosing another page that we have chosen to focus our core business.

When web browsers first introduced the integrated search box (whether through a toolbar or built directly into the browser) everyone rejoiced as their information retrieval process had just gotten a bit easier.  No longer would we need to type www.myfavoriteengine.com, and then type our query.  Now we can instantly jump to a search results page.  This has become one of the most popular ways of using a search engine.  But do we need to always look at a ‘search results page’?  We think there’s still room for improvement.

Imagine you are reading that book review about Stephen King’s latest book Duma Key that I mentioned above.  Somewhere in the second paragraph of that review, they mention “The Dark Tower”, another book by King.  If you wanted to find some web pages about The Dark Tower, you would put that in the search box, hit enter, and look at a page worth of search results.  You are no longer reading the review on Duma Key.  Your attention has now shifted over to the new search results page.  Either you opened a new tab/window to keep your place on the Duma Key review, or the search results have replaced the Duma Key review in the same tab/window.  Maybe you want to look at The Dark Tower search results later and finish the Duma Key review, so you click back into the review.  This whole process requires more ‘clicks’ than is truly necessary.

KwiClick attempts to solve some of these workflow pain points by presenting search results without the need to view a new page.  The search result set is organized within an intuitive panel that can be moved, enlarged, docked to the side of your screen, or hidden when not in use.  There are two main goals: remove unnecessary steps to retrieve search results, and help you stay focused on the task at hand.

Let’s think about skiing down the Swiss Alps one more time.  When you are at the top of a fairly easy trail, there isn’t much getting in your way on the path towards the bottom.  Let’s call this the ‘path of least resistance’.  Now imagine you are at the top of a double black diamond trail.  You look down and you see numerous moguls and trees.  You’ll need to pass through a number of obstacles before you can get to the bottom of this trail.  This is, obviously, not the path of least resistance.  Searching on the web is not that different from the scenario described above.  There are easy ways of accomplishing tasks, and then there are hard ways of accomplishing that same task.  KwiClick flattens out some of those moguls to make your path a little less bumpy.

Over the next few months we will be releasing a set of tools built into KwiClick that flattens out more and more of these moguls to help you accomplish your tasks easier than before.  Stay tuned, as we’ve only hit the tip of the iceberg.