Quix: Better than the video game of the same name.
First off, I know the title is wrong. The video game was named Qix and was completely awesome.
At any rate, I discovered a new browser bookmarklet early last week that completely changed the way I use my browsers. That bookmarklet is called Quix, and it is nothing short of a Swiss Army knife of geekery.
Here is a shot of it working on my iPhone. Like I said, it works on most any browser. As you see it’s nothing more than a command line interface. But, that’s it’s power. Type “help” and you’ll see a command list a mile long.
Want to find a photo of a horse on flickr that is Creative Commons licensed? Type “fc horse.” How about sharing a link on tumblr? Type “tumblr.” Wikipedia entry for dysphoria? You guessed it, “w dysphoria.”
I think you see where I’m going with this. If you don’t, I’ll tell you. A cosmic sea of awesome is where I’m going with this.
Quix is especially nice in Safari because I’ve got it mapped to a keyboard shortcut. Command-2 pops Quix’s dialog window up any time. The only reason I don’t have it mapped to Command-1 is because that’s where my Instapaper bookmarklet is, and that’s the only bookmarklet I use that is not supported in Quix at this time. However, I have seen tweets between Joost de Valk, Quix’s developer and Marco Arment trying to get Instapaper fully supported.
Even if you’re not a hardcore geek, I invite you to give Quix a try. It has enough everyday tools and searches built in that it’s bound to change the way you use your browser too.