Keyword search using Safari

January 30, 2009 by Sukrit Dhandhania

One of the many great features of the Firefox web browser is the keyword search which allows you to direct a search to a search engine by using a preset keyword and a query in the url box of your browser. So you can type something like imbd there’s something about mary in the search box and the search query will be directly sent to www.imdb.com. Safari does not yet support this feature out of the box. Keywurl is a free plugin for the Safari web browser that adds this very useful feature. Before we proceed with the installation please note that this is a Mac-only Safari plugin.

Head to the Keywurl site and download the latest Universal binary release of the plugin. The prerequisites for this plugin are Mac OS Tiger or later and Safari 3.0 or later. Keywurl also needs SIMBL.. SIMBL stands for “Smart InputManager Bundle Loader” and is an input manager that runs on Safari, making it easier for programmers to write plugins for the browser.

SIMBL comes bundled with the Keywurl download. Double click on the SIMBL installer to launch it. follow the instructions and hit Continue a few times to complete the SIMBL installation.

After SIMBL is installed return to the mounted Keywurl installation directory. Pick the version of MacOS you’re using, Tiger or Leopard. Copy the file Keywurl.bundle into the directory /Library/Application Support/SIMBL/Plugins on your computer. Finder will request for your administration password, which you should enter. Installation is now done. You need to restart Safari for Keywurl to become active. So do a Cmd + q in Safari to exit it and launch it again.

Keywurl is now installed and you can begin using it. Enter a query wiki apple computers in your browser.

You should be taken directly to the wikipedia page for the search query apple computers. You can run similar searches on IMDB.com, Amazon.com, Flickr.com and many more. You can checkout the Keywurl configuration and modify it in the Safari Preferences pane under the tab titled Keywurl.