Plan
I want to be able to run a google search based on text contained on the clipboard, this allows me to quickly search for text snippits I come across
Windows
From this site:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/heyscriptingguy/archive/2004/12/15/how-can-i-grab-a-url-from-the-clipboard-and-then-open-that-web-site-in-a-browser.aspx
I found a snippet of VBS script got me most of the way, the only thing to add is to adapt it so that it appends the string to the end of a google seach URL.
The final script looks like this
Set objIE = CreateObject("InternetExplorer.Application")
objIE.Navigate("about:blank")
strURL = objIE.document.parentwindow.clipboardData.GetData("text")
objIE.Quit
Set objShell = CreateObject("Wscript.Shell")
strSearchURL = "http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=" & strURL
objShell.Run(strSearchURL)
You can then save this script with a vbs file extension and have it called when you press a certain keyboard shortcut or macro key.
By default this will prompt to allow the script to access the clipboard. You need to add "about:blank" to the trusted internet zone and set the "Programmatic clipboard access" to enabled not prompt.
Ubuntu
After looking into google searching from gnome-terminal the only solution looked a bit risky
http://blog.ubuntu-tweak.com/2010/11/16/gnome-terminal-with-google-search-support.html
As a result I decided to look into a safer and more general option, that was using xsel and ubuntu keyboard shortcuts to open a browser tab searching for whatever is selected.
#!/bin/bash # Steve Fry http://cdtfry.blogger.com
# 04/Oct/2012
# Search based on selected text
search_string="http://www.google.com/search?q=$(xsel)"
# Search based on clipboard contents
# search_string="http://www.google.com/search?q=$(xsel --clipboard )"
# Open a chromium tab based on the search string.
chromium-browser "$search_string"
This can then be saved to a text file such as /home/steve/bin/google_from_clipboard.sh and then allocated to a keyboard shortcut using the ubuntu keyboard menu.
Steve
