But recently that site does not place the cursor in the Search field upon opening, breaking my macro (not even hitting tab works). So I have chosen dictionary.com instead, and I must say it works very well. Actually even better, because sometimes Answers.com was too slow to load, also breaking my macro, but it never seems to be the case with Dictionary.
It's way faster and easier than using a paper dictionary. Gotta love computers and the interweb.
16 comments:
You are using Safari, perhaps? In Firefox, you can make keyword shortcuts for things like this. Do a search for, say, "almond." Bookmark the results. In bookmarks manager, replace "almond" in the url with percent-s (%s. Add a keyword while you are in bookmarks manager. Then when you type "(keyword) walnut" you will get the result for walnuts.
I think there are add-ons for this in Safari, but I don't know if they work. This and the tabs that are colored so dark you can't read the writing are the two reasons I don't use Safari.
Yes, I use Safari, it's my fave. (I also use Firefox for some purposes.)
My macro also works if I am not already in Safari, say if I want to look up a word in an email or one I just wrote but want to be more certain of.
Try Lingoes.net, they have hundreds of free dictionarys and it works in almost anything with text. You highlight the word and ctrl right click on it and it opens a window with whatever dictionaries you have installed including translations and thesaurus's
Try Lingoes.net, they have hundreds of free dictionarys and it works in almost anything with text. You highlight the word and ctrl right click on it and it opens a window with whatever dictionaries you have installed including translations and thesaurus's
Ah, well that's different. In a lot of programs you can right click and there will be a "look up in Dictionary" item in the contextual menu. But not all programs have this.
In 10.6 you can use Automator to make a contextual menu entry. It's a bit complicated to do, but I have done it for JPEG files, to change what program I open them with and to get rid of the scary, "this is from the Internet" message.
If you look around on the net for 10.6, automator, and service you may find enough info to get started...
What's wrong with Mac OS X's Dictionary app?
Surely it is the fastest since it doesn't have to load the CSS, images and other cruft from the source site.
It can also look up from Wikipedia really speedily.
That app is good, but it seems it only works from Apple apps.
...but it seems it only works from Apple apps.
I don't understand this. Surely you can call it from a macro with any application active.
Yeah, I guess I could if I tried, hadn't thought about it. If the web gives me any grief, I'll try it.
No need to call up the native mac dictionary at all. Just paste the word into the Spotlight and it looks it up.
Hello Eolake,
I have downloaded Quickeys for Mac and could not make a macro to do even after lots of trying. Could you please send me the macro at swissroll3@yahoo.com if possible.
Thanks in advance.
Jean-Pierre
I can't seem to export it, but I've made a screenshot of it so you can emulate it. (Notice the little pauses you have to include some places.)
Eolake,
Thanks a lot and thanks for your site.
JP
Just one more question, is it possible to make the picture a bit bigger as it is not clickable. When I zoom in I can't make out all the steps.
Scratch the above. I managed to see the steps. I disabled the tab keystroke though and it works great. Thanks again.
Yeah, blogger acted up when I put in the image. I've tried again, it should work now.
Post a Comment