>Yahoo! Inquisitor
>
The Yahoo! Inquisitor is a free search plugin now available for three major internet browsers Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari. It is also available as a free search app for the iPhone platform. Originally a search technology for the Safari browser before being acquired by Yahoo!, it now has two additional beta versions of search plugins for both IE and Firefox. Yahoo! Inquisitor lets you simply type your query into the search box. Apart from assisting you with the regular auto complete feature and suggestions, its search technology uses a system of just in-time searching to show probable results for your query, related websites as well as suggestions for refining your search while you are typing in your search term. It personalizes the results based on your search behavior and keeps track of your search history and bookmarks to display results from your browsing history as well. Inquisitor try’s to understand your usage and preferences, learning and modifying your results as you search. Inquisitor by default uses Yahoo search for acquiring its results, but you can change your default search engine or use a different search engine entirely. You can also assign customized keyboard shortcuts for each of them. The latest version of Inquisitor also points to alternative relevant links from Amazon and Flickr based on the user preferences. UI design
The most appealing part of the inquisitor plugin is its user interface design. The UI presents results in large easy to read grey boxes directly in your browser below the search field where you type in your query rather than opening a new web page. The more letters you type the more refined your search suggestions get. Favicons and two lines of content are also presented along with the search results to give you more details regarding the page. Abbreviated news results from two different sources also appear at the very top, as and when applicable. Apart from showing you the results while keeping track of your history, you can use it to find previously visited websites. It shows the link to previously visited websites, the number of times you have visited it and the time when you did it.
Configuring Inquisitor Settings
To configure the setting for Inquisitor, in Safari go to Preferences and click the Inquisitor logo on the right. In Firefox, select Add-ons from the tools menu and locate Inquisitor on the list. Click on Options to change its settings. In Internet Explorer after starting a search using the plugin, an option for “Search Options…” will appear at the bottom of the drop down list containing the results. Click on it to access the settings. Using the settings you can change the number of results displayed and the default search engine.
The Inquisitor iPhone App
Inquisitor also comes in the form of an iPhone App. The App more or less works like the browser plugin while the search results come streaming in without being heavy on the iPhone processor, or slowing down your key strokes. It is worth mentioning that the application is actually ridiculously fast and efficient. You can see results in the drop down being refined as you are typing in your search term. More importantly it’s so fast that you can type in your query in less than four seconds after launching the app on your iPhone making it faster than starting a cold search on the native Safari browser. You can view the presented results in an integrated Webkit browser without having to switch back to Safari. After going through the results if you choose to go through to a particular webpage or article by clicking on it, it will then be framed by the app. A toolbar is present at the top of the app which allows you to go back to your search results making the process of navigation very fluid. You can always go out of the app into the iPhone’s regular Safari browser to view the page. You can also choose to email yourself or anyone else the links for later viewing on your computer.
