[XYScript] QuickieSearch: Search with Personalized Tips
Posted: 16 May 2025 02:14
QuickieSearch
Introduction
The QuickSearch dialogue is a fantastic tool and very robust. The problem is that with so many search options, often times I find myself digging through the help file for a refresher.
QuickieSearch (
) is an alternative to the default QuickSearch dialogue. It will allow you to display personalized tips, instead of only the defaults provided by the 
button of the built-in QuickSearch. I've alse added a bit of additional functionality, as described below...
Instructions
Simply download, extract, and run the
By default, you will be presented with the minimal QuickieSearch window, as seen in the first screenshot above. Entering
In the script folder, you'll find three files of interest...
Download Todo
Changelog
Previous Versions
- QuickieSearch
- QuickieSearch.png (58.09 KiB) Viewed 1004 times
- QuickieTips
- QuickieTips.png (522.22 KiB) Viewed 1004 times
The QuickSearch dialogue is a fantastic tool and very robust. The problem is that with so many search options, often times I find myself digging through the help file for a refresher.
QuickieSearch (
) is an alternative to the default QuickSearch dialogue. It will allow you to display personalized tips, instead of only the defaults provided by the button of the built-in QuickSearch. I've alse added a bit of additional functionality, as described below...Instructions
Simply download, extract, and run the
QuickieSearch.xys script By default, you will be presented with the minimal QuickieSearch window, as seen in the first screenshot above. Entering
??? will display your full QuickieTips, like in the second screenshot.In the script folder, you'll find three files of interest...
quickieTips.txt: These are the tips that will be displayed when entering???. I've filled the file with tips that I think most beginner to intermediate users will find handy, but of course, you can edit the contents to fit your needs. Any changes to this file will be reflected in the QuickieSearch dialogue.
quickieTipsRegex.txt: These are the tips that will be displayed when entering>>>. I've filled this file with more regex syntax than you'll find in the otherquickieTips.txtfile, but like before you can edit the contents to fit your needs. Regex is so fun I felt it was deserving of its own tips!
config.ini: This configuration file can be edited to adjust various script options and to add/remove custom dropdown searches. I've included comments to explain the various options, as-well as a few dropdown searches as an example.
>>>will re-open the QuickieSearch window, but with the contents ofquickieTipsRegex.txtdisplayed.
:::will close the QuickieSearch window and instead open the Scripting Commands help file. Additionally, you can specify which section of the help file to jump to by also entering the function name (Ex::::base64decode)
///xyplorerwill close the QuickieSearch window and instead do a websearch forxyplorer. There are a few different search engines to choose from in the config, but by default it uses DuckDuckGo.
???h[elp]will close the QuickieSearch window and instead open the QuickSearch help file
Download Todo
- Copyable Tips: The
input()function this script uses doesn't seem to support a read-only text field, like what you'd see after clicking the button of the Quick Search dialogue... Still thinking up a solution on how to make tips copy-able, so until then it's eyes-only 
- MRU in Dropdown: I haven't been able to find any documentation on how to access/modify the QuickSearches MRU to include them in the dropdown list. If anyone knows the function let me know, but in the meantime the script will keep its own history!
Changelog
Code: Select all
v2.0 [05/18/2025]
! Large code refactoring, upgraders will need to start fresh.
+ New Startup Dialogue: By default, a minimal QuickieSearch window is displayed, entering '???' will display your 'QuickieTips.txt' contents. This keeps your tips close at hand but not obtrusively so.
+ Remember Search History: The last 15 search patterns are now remembered by default, but this can be toggled/adjusted in the config.ini
+ WebSearches: Entering '///xyplorer' will now open your browser and do a websearch for 'xyplorer'. By default the search is performed by duckduckgo, but I've provided a few different options that you can choose from in the config; [DuckDuckGo, Startpage, Brave, Google]
v1.1 [05/16/2025]
+ Remember Last Search [Default = True]: This new setting will pre-fill the search box with the last used search, which is useful for editing a search if it didn't return the results you wanted.
+ Open Scripting Help File to Specific Section: Entering ':::xyz' will now open and jump-to the 'xyz' section of the Scripting help file. Ex: ':::base64encode'
+ RegexSearch Default Value: Specifying this value will pre-fill the search box when viewing the 'quickieTipsRegex' window.
v1.0 [05/15/2025]
+ Initial release. Kinda think I killed it already, but we'll see...
Previous Versions
