shortcuts for websearches

[CryptKeeper777]

I'm new to Linux and just setting up Ubuntu 11.04 as a second OS on my MacBook. Now I'm looking for an application that allows me to define global shortcuts for self-defined web searches. On OS X I use the app "Butler" for this, and it works the following:

When I press ctrl-g, a small window appears, where I can type what I want to search in google, and when I press enter, Google is opened in Firefox searching for the words I've typed in. The same way, I can make Google Images-searches with ctrl-i, Wikipedia-searches with ctrl-w and so on. In the App, I can define searches by pasting the URL-string that appears before the search keywords in the browser and the string that appears after the keywords, plus the shortcut. This way shortcuts for any web searches that include the search keywords in the browser URL can be created.

Is there a linux-application for this?

[sanderd17]

There is more than one app that can do this. Maybe you can take a look at synapse (in the software center).

Mabe gnome-do can do that, there is probably a unity plugin and it's build in gnome-shell.

EDIT: sorry, synapse is not so extended. There are plugins for it, so maybe those plugins give other search engines.

[sanderd17]

What do you think of this Unity lens? http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2011/05/web-sources-lens-for-unity-puts-web-search-on-your-ubuntu-desktop/

Lenses can be launched by the super key and a letter (hold the super key to see what letter). I'm on gnome-shell right now, so I can't test it.

[CryptKeeper777]

I've now installed gnome-do with the google search plugin, now I can at least make Google searches again.

But the question is still open, I'd still like to define my own searches. It doesn't really matter if I can define an own shortcut for each search engine or if it's more like gnome-do (one shortcut for the app and then quickly choose the search engine).

That unity lens thing looks kinda interesting, but is nothing for me. Thanks for the suggestion though.

[sanderd17]

I've now installed gnome-do with the google search plugin, now I can at least make Google searches again.

But the question is still open, I'd still like to define my own searches. It doesn't really matter if I can define an own shortcut for each search engine or if it's more like gnome-do (one shortcut for the app and then quickly choose the search engine).

That unity lens thing looks kinda interesting, but is nothing for me. Thanks for the suggestion though.

And what about this plugin?
http://do.davebsd.com/wiki/FirefoxKeywordSearch_Plugin
It uses firefox keywords. If you don't know what firefox keywords are (or how you can set them), look here: http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Smart%20keywords

It's a bit more work, you need to press the hotkey of gnome-do and TAB first, then your search, then TAB and then your search engine (g for google, yt for youtube, w for wikipedia ...) but I think it's still quite fast.