Thursday 16 January 2014

Tab to Search in Google Chrome

Imagine you are a Google Chrome user (of course you are! What? Still using the browser that should not be named here? Please leave my blog immediately !).

You want to do a you tube search for your favorite music video, let's assume PSY gangnam style1.
So you open Google chrome and write youtube in the omnibox, press enter. Then you click on youtube site from results and search for PSY gangnam style there. Alternatively, you write Youtube PSY gangnam style or just PSY gangnam style in the omnibox, click on search results to goto the page. Sounds familiar?

Google Chrome has a unique feature to cut down on the number of clicks you make here. It has a feature (of course it's not new, not now at least) called Tab to Search which helps you search a specific site directly from the omnibox. All you need to do is write the site name (youtube), when the name appears in suggestions, press the tab button. If chrome recognizes its search API, you will see a "Search Youtube" sign. Replace the site name (i.e youtube) for linkedin, scholar, pubmed, uniprot, NCBI, yahoo or whatever site you want to search. Type your query and you directly reach youtube search results instead of having to goto google results followed by site and then searching there.

It will not recognize any site at first for Tab to search feature. Once you visit the site a few times, chrome will recognize its API and you can search it easily.

I thought this feature might be well known but have been recently surprised that I was wrong. Though, most computationally inclined people may know it already.

For in-depth details - visit chrome's page explaining this feature.


References-
1. Here is the link in case you still can't search it that way :- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CH1XGdu-hzQ

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