Data

Tools

Indexes

Applications

Experiments

Awesome

An open API service indexing awesome lists of open source software.

https://github.com/zigul1/searcher

A browser Manifest V3 extension (Chromium and Gecko) for a quicker search: select the text in the webpage or type it and then use the right click menu or the popup in the browser toolbar. It can be used also with external documents. just copying the text.
https://github.com/zigul1/searcher

browser-addon browser-extension manifest-v3 searching tab-opener

Last synced: about 1 year ago
JSON representation

A browser Manifest V3 extension (Chromium and Gecko) for a quicker search: select the text in the webpage or type it and then use the right click menu or the popup in the browser toolbar. It can be used also with external documents. just copying the text.

Awesome Lists containing this project

README 

          
# Searcher

(articolo in italiano [qui](https://turbolab.it/browser-455/searcher-estensione-velocizzare-ricerche-web-4291)  ![image](https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/fff61062-49ca-4c48-b82e-c1515ac544dc), video YouTube [qui](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haTOiyQD2os)

)



## What *Searcher* does



*Searcher* is a multi-browser extension (Manifest V3) that allows the user to set a text to be used as search parameter in different sites; the text can be set by:

- **selecting** it directly on a webpage, using the mouse or any cursor

- **typing** it in the popup text field (see below)

- **copying** it from a local file, like a PDF or other document formats.



Once the text is chosen, the user can click on the toolbar popup buttons to **open directly the various results in new tabs**.



The user can search for the chosen text:

- in **Wikipedia**, **YouTube** or **archive.org**

- asking about it to **3 AI chatbots** (Felo, Phind, You; one at the time or all three at once; if so, 3 new tabs will open)

- as location in **3 online maps** (DuckDuckGo, Google, OpenStreetMap)

- as prompt for **images search** (Bing, Google, Yandex, one at the time or all three at once)



If the user copy an *image web address* (not the image itself), he can also make a **reverse image search** using Bing, Google, TinEye and Yandex (one at the time or all at once).



The same functionalities are available in the right-click menu.



## Adding *Searcher* to browsers



This extension has two versions, one for *Chromium browsers* (**Chrome**, **Brave**, **Edge**, etc.) and one for *Gecko browsers* like **Firefox** (109 and above). It's already available in its **Firefox extension page** [here](https://addons.mozilla.org/it/firefox/addon/searcher_en-it/).



Anyway, it can be used as a *local imported extension*:

- for **Chromium** browsers: go to *Extensions*, enable *Developer mode*, click on *Load unpacked* and then choose the folder that contains the files

- for **Gecko** browsers: type *about:debugging* in the address bar, click on *This Firefox* (or similar) in the sidebar, then click on *Load Temporary Add-on* and select the "manifest.json" file from the extension folder.



## How to use it



Once the extension is loaded in the browser, it will show an **icon on the toolbar**; clicking on the icon will open the **popup menu** with all the available options. It has light or dark mode and two languages (English or Italian). For more usage details, click on *Instructions*.

![darkEn](https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/cfd228ba-adbb-402d-9fdc-0da86099c95c)

![lightIt](https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/2f7d208d-8bee-442c-9291-d6e8adfba610)



On the **right click menu**, the submenu *Searcher* is added with the same functions, exept the custom text field.

![rClick](https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/6c661468-dcdc-464c-a7b0-a2f497e29237)



## Permissions

*Searcher*, to do its job, needs to:

- get data from the clipboard (so to search the text that is copied from documents outside the browser)

- set data in the clipboard (after typing the text in the text field, it's stored in the clipboard so it can be used)

- access browser tabs (so when the text is selected in the webpage, it can be spotted and used by *Searcher*)

- open new tabs (so the page with the selected text stays open, while the search happens in new tabs)



## Considerations

- Wikipedia pages and online maps require *proper text syntax* to get results 

- some image addresses may not be compatible with some reverse searches

- if no text is selected and *Searcher* is called to action, it will read and use the *last text saved* in the clipboard (*Searcher* doesn't read the clipboard if it's not asked to)

- remember that any extension can be set to work only if clicked or only on specific sites