Supercharge your Windows Vista Search Bar

The search bar in Windows Vista does what it’s supposed to do and does it well. But nobody expected the possibily of making that search bar into a real search bar. By that I mean making that Search bar also being able to search on Google, Imdb, Wikipedia. Well now you can thanks to a piece of software named Start++ created by Brandon Paddock.

You’re probably wondering how this is possible. Start++ uses custom-made aliases to commands. You’ll find out what it is that I exactly mean in a minute.

First, you’ll need to download Start++ which you can find here.

After installation, you can right-click the icon in your system-tray to customize it.

Here are just some of the commands that have been premade for you to use

So if you want to quickly find out what that super-duper long word means, simply type:

To create your own alias, you will need to understand the different variables you can use. You can find out about all the different variables by clicking on Substitution Key:

Let’s quickly go through how you would create an alias if you were to design one for Youtube. If I wanted to search for the movie Loose Change, this is the URL you get:

http://youtube.com/results?search_query=Loose+Change&search=Search

Look for where your search query is placed in the URL, which I have underlined. That’s where you’ll substitute the variable. Different websites use different search methods. In this case, the + sign is used to separate words. For this kind of situation, we’d have to use %+. So your new customized command would be:

http://youtube.com/results?search+query=%+%search=search

Aside from searching, you can even play songs from the Search Bar. Play around with the tool as there are tons of things you can really do with your Search Bar once you truly take advantage of Start++.

This is an incredibly useful tool. I recommend you guys to download this one.

Still need help? Check out our new forums where you can get an even faster and better response!

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 22nd, 2007 at 10:28 am and is filed under Tips and Tweaks, Windows Vista. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.