FastScripts Plugin For Google Quick Search Box

March 24th, 2010

I love to be surprised by what customers manage to do with my products, so I was thrilled when Martin Kühl wrote to tell me about his GitHub project that provides a FastScripts plugin for Google Quick Search Box.

If you’re not familiar with Google Quick Search Box, it’s basically a Quicksilver-style launcher, which can open all manner of documents and also do Google searches for whatever you’re typing, all at once. With the addition of Martin’s FastScripts plugin, it also magically gains the ability to directly run FastScripts scripts.

So if I bring up the quick search box and start typing the name of one of my scripts, it shows up instantly:

Significantly, this is more meaningful than simply knowing about where the scripts are located, and running them. Martin mentioned to me that he was taking advantage of my “API” for accessing and running the scripts. Huh? What? I don’t have an API, do I? Oh yes, but of course! AppleScript itself! Martin used the fact that FastScripts exposes AppleScript access to its library of scripts, and for executing those scripts in the context of FastScripts. So when you select and run a script from the GQSB, it runs exactly as it would if you selected it from the FastScripts menu itself.

A clever piece of work by Martin that takes unexpected advantage of these hooks I put into FastScripts. If you use both FastScripts and GQSB, you might want to check his project out!