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.
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
