Today I’m pleased to announce the release of TouchSearch version 3.1. This is the first major release of TouchSearch in the past six months and brings with it all the shiny new features I’ve been working on.

First and foremost, everything you love about TouchSearch v2.2 is the same in TouchSearch 3.1, and everything you didn’t like about 2.2 is better in 3.1. Well, maybe that is a little ambitious. However, 3.1 will open your eyes to all the things you never realized you wanted that were missing in 2.2.

Let’s start out with the changes:

A new search engine format

Okay, maybe not the flashiest new feature, but the most improved part of 3.1 is the stuff you don’t see (really?). Yes, really. The new search engine format is vastly superior to the one in 2.2. For starters, each search engine is self-contained, meaning that the format allows the addition of a whole ton of new functionality (like downloading additional search engines, I will be talking about this later). Additionally, search engines are installed to /opt/ now, so no room will be taken up on the rootfs (in fact almost all of TouchSearch now installs to opt)). The new format now  makes more advanced error handling possible as well… which brings me to my next improvement.

Better error handling

Version 2.2 of TouchSearch was pretty finicky, if I say so myself. If the wind blew the wrong way (meaning, maybe, you inputted a search engine incorrectly) it would crash. And crash badly. With big ugly black boxes — eek! Thankfully, those days are gone. TouchSearch v3 handles any problems with search engines gracefully — I haven’t found a way to crash it yet, but problems never do show up for me… anyway, it should be much smoother sailing for all of you.

Support searching different language versions of websites

This is probably the biggest improvement over TouchSearch v2.2 for non-US English speaking people: the ability to choose whether to search Google.com or Google.de, en.wikipedia.org or ca.wikipedia.org, amazon.com or amazon.fr, or any number of other countries/languages. This was another major reason for updating the search engine format.

Support for downloading additional search engines as Addons

TouchSearch v3 supports the installation of search engines as addons via this page at touchsearch.org. This gives you the ability to easily add any engines available there, and I add new ones all the time!

Enhanced search interface

I’ve been trying to make searching the web really easy. At first, you needed to switch search engines via a desktop button (the “plus” button). I thought that maybe people needed an easier way, so I made the QuickBar. Now I’ve one-upped myself and introduce the new “Enhanced” mode for the search dialog. Now you can select a few of your favorite websites and have them always appear in the search dialog. See below:

If you are lazy like me, you are going to love this. Trust me.

Improved “Add search engine” interface

The old interface was confusing. It confused me and I made it (I’m guessing most people’s reaction was something like… what the heck is “Query?!?”). Thankfully, the interface is much simplified and, hopefully, much improved. I did have to indulge myself and add one feature to it, though. Now you can have TouchSearch automatically create an icon for the new search engine based on the name. I got tired of having to create icons for my custom search engines, and thought maybe you did to.

All the other things I won’t mention

Of course, there were a boatload of little bugs that were fixed and minor improvements that were made, but I won’t mention them here. I’ll leave it up to you to try to find them (or you can read the update changelog, one or the other…).

Now you are probably wondering, “How can I install this update?”. Well, I just uploaded it to extras-devel and even more recently promoted it to extras-testing. The testing page is here.

Meaning, if you want to get your hands dirty and jump right in and test this new version, it ready to install from -testing. If you’d rather wait for a stable version to hit you local Extras repository, that’s cool too (it’ll be a little while, though; testing is 10 days at the minimum).

If you do test it out, please vote and leave feedback for it on its testing page. Thanks.

Here are some useful links for TouchSearch 3:

• Homepage: http://www.touchsearch.org/
• Testing page: http://maemo.org/packages/package_instance/view/fremantle_extras-testing_free_armel/touchsearch/3.1-1/
• Screenshots of new version: http://www.touchsearch.org/screenshots/
• Addons page: http://www.touchsearch.org/addons/
• Help/FAQ: http://www.touchsearch.org/help/
• Donate page: http://www.touchsearch.org/donate/
• Help on adding search engines: http://www.touchsearch.org/help/adding-custom-search-engines/

After a couple of (mostly minor) bugs were discovered in Touchsearch 2.1, I decided I would upload a new version to iron out some of these issues people were having. Today TouchSearch 2.2 passed the required Quality Assurance tests, and should be available to install from your local App. Manager within the next day or so. Although this is mostly a bug-fix release, there is one nifty feature that I would like to talk to you about. It is called the “TouchSearch Quick Bar” and adds keyword based searches to TouchSearch.

One of my users gave me the idea (thanks, evad!) and here is how it works: it allows you to search any of your other search engines by adding a certain prefix to your query. For example, let’s say you find it a bit too time consuming to change search engines every time you want to search a different site. This gives you the ability to use a single search engine, and “change” them by adding a letter at the beginning of your search query. Here are a couple screen shots to demonstrate;

I have selected the QuickBar as my current search engine:

Let’s say I want to search Ebay for, I don’t know, shoes. What I would do is enter “e shoes” as my query.

The “e” tells TouchSearch I want search ebay.com and will automatically by stripped from my query. Shoes, obviously, is what I actually want to search for. When you hit return, TouchSearch magically directs you to ebay’s results page for “shoes”.

And this works for all your search engines. “a” for Amazon, “w” for Wikipedia, “gm” for Google Maps, and so on and so forth. If you enter no prefix or “g”, Google is queried. Additionally, you can change which prefixes are used and add your own to your custom search engines.

How do you get this feature? First, install TouchSearch 2.2. Like I mentioned, it should be available in the next 24 hours or so. Secondly, if this is the first time you’ve installed TouchSearch, you should see the QuickBar available right after installation. If you are upgrading from an older version of TouchSearch, you may need import this search engine into your current database. Do this by:

• Going into Desktop Edit mode (tap the desktop, then tap the little gear)
• Tap on the wrench next to TouchSearch > Configure > Merge > Yes.

That should import all new search engines (including the QuickBar) into your current database.

Have fun (and leave feedback)!

I’m pleased to announce the release of TouchSearch 2.1-2 — this is really a major upgrade for those using 1.3-2. Many things were changed, most notably the look and feel of the widget. Gone is the (admittedly, ugly!) black box background and in is a very sleek semi-transparent background that is more consistent with the look of the built-in desktop widgets:

Also new in this version is the Configure Search Engines interface. This is available from the Widget Options and allows you to create, edit, delete and sort your search engines. Beware though, that the Add Search Engine option is still a bit untested and you may run into a few hiccups while trying to add search engines. Here is the full changelog for those wondering:

• User can now Add, Edit, Delete and Sort search engines
• Widget now features a background with rounded corners and user-selectable opacity
• New integrated help system
• Added WebMD to search engines list
• Numerous bug-fixes and optimizations.

One of my favorite Desktop Widgets on my N800 was the “Internet Search” applet. However, I was disappointed to find out that it was being dropped in Fremantle and there would be no official replacement. Since I wanted to learn a little more about programming for Fremantle and something as useful as a Search Widget wasn’t available, I decided to tackle both at once.

The widget is called TouchSearch, and it allows you to search the web right from your Fremantle Desktop. It has a decidedly different feel than the Nokia-made widget because of some of the Fremantle Desktop restrictions, but accomplishes roughly the same thing.

TouchSearch is currently in the extras-testing que and is in need of testers! So, if Touchsearch sounds useful, give it a whirl. The package page is here and it contains a link to the bugtracker if you find issues or want to request new features. Please leave a thumbs up/down if you test it (packages need to have +10 karma to be eligible to be promoted to regular extras). Thanks!

Here are some screenshots on Scratchbox: