Other Search engines ?

[bir0012]

Do you have any plans to allow users to "customize" a search engine other than Lookeen or Taglocity?  Categorize Plus is a great tool and would be even better if it could be customized to search with X1, Google Desktop etc.  I realize you can not cover every tool... but a custom search option could then allow the user to enter the search engine's query commands so the Search menu could launch other search engines.

PS: Great tool... I am sold on it.

Ken

[JonZimmerman]

Hello Ken,

Thanks for your feedback.  Although I have no current plans to add other search engines, it would be very easy for me to do so.  Unfortunately, it is not possible to provide a generic "custom" search engine option as you suggested.  The reason is, not only does the user have to define the query commands, but the user would also have to define the search engine's text input window where the query commands are entered.  In order for CP to work with Taglocity and Lookeen, CP writes the stored query string directly to the search engine's text input box.  This approach is necessary because third party add-ins do not expose their object model for use by other add-ins.

However, so long as the search engine has a query text input box, and so long as CP can write to this text input box using standard windows API commands, then it is very simple to add the search engine as an option in Categorize Plus.  There is a separate module in CP that holds the query string translations for each search engine, and there is another module that holds the algorithms to write to the search engines input box.  Therefore, adding another search engine should only take a day or so.

Therefore, is there a specific search engine that wish me to investigate?  I cannot promise to add the capability anytime soon, since I am currently investigating options for improving the integration of CP in Outlook 2010, but I will add your request to my list of new features.

[bir0012]

Sorry it took me so long to reply but I wanted to give the other search engines a chance and compare to using X1 which has been my search for the past 2 years.  I am now back to using X1 with CP, but doing my Category searches manually (I type ca:category in the X1 input box).  I would much prefer if I could use the custom menus I have created if you decide to support X1 as a valid integrate search option.

If you find time and go this direction I would gladly test for you.

BTW: excellent product.

Thanks
Ken