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Inquisitor 3.0 (Beta 1)

Inquisitor 3 Beta 1 is available now. The whole UI has been given a serious injection of style, and most importantly, Inquisitor 3 is now completely free. Tell everyone!

Please note, the preferences have now moved into the main Safari preferences view, which is where they should have been from day 1.

  • October 28th, 2006 7:16 pm

105 comments...

Alex...

Sweet, thanks for making it free! Where’s the Camino version though?


Li-Wei...

New inquisitor looks great. I really hope this wonderful application can support asia language instead of western language only. I use Xtorrent too. Asia language in Xtorrent works as a charm. Hope new inquisitor can have the same capability as Xtorrent has.


Sean...

Excellent job! It’s really great.

I would like to see a white version too if it’s not too much work. Some of the favicons (like A9’s) look weird on black.


I’m vastly overcommitted in terms of work right now, and things need to be prioritized. Camino (and OmniWeb, for that matter) are simply used by too few people. Safari is the dominant browser on the platform, so smart time management says I should focus on that. If you’re using Camino, you should stay with the last 2.6 release that supported it.


T...

Wow, that’s really great! I would like to see a white version as well, but black is pretty good for now.

One big caveat is that I can’t use the Down arrow key to cycle through the results. Do I really have to use my mouse to choose a result?


Brian...

David! Great work! Looks fabulous and I like the improvements a lot. Thanks a ton for your hard work.


Dylan...

Awesome work. Thank you for making it free. This just made my day.


Mark...

This is very elegant and sleek, but I too prefer the white theme over the black. Probably just going to take a few to get use too, I’m sure in time the Black will grow on me. Either way both look great!


Iiro...

Hello. Great on work on this update! I really love the style of the popup you made.

Might I suggest adding finnish as an option to localized sources (Google FI, Yahoo! Fi…)?

Would be a great addon for me. :-)


Derek...

Liro, have you looked in the preferences? Search engine localizations are included.

Dave, nice work on this new version!


Frank...

Is there a way to have the last version that supported Safari and Camino and this version which only supports Safari installed at the same time? I happen to use both browsers equally and would love to still have this functionality in Camino.


pumpkin...

Does it gonna remain free or is it only for the beta stages of this version?

I love Inquisitor, and also love the new interface, but I have to agree with Sean about the favicons.

Thanks for this, Dave. :)


phantom_cameron...

freeeeeee!!!! *laughs manically* that is so awesome


John...

How can we download the latest version of Inquisitor that supported Camino David? I miss my Inquisitor!


ulrik...

Hey Dave, this is really cool stuff, thanks for making it available for free. I love the new UI :)


Andrew...

Just a quick comment – The new version looks great on pages with white or lighter backgrounds but doesn’t really work on pages that have black backgrounds (like the Inquisitor download site) perhaps you could consider some kind of keyline in the future when you’re less busy.


Frederik...

Nice update. I must say though I’m suspicious. Why do you make it free? :)


Jona...

Thank you David! You are making some of the most beautiful and elegant Mac software around! You should team up with Panic!

Again, thanks so much! This new version is amazing!


Fritz...

Great Tool! Thanks…

But two small things:

1. Crash Safari when i try to use it with amazon.de
2. Seperators would be cool for the Search Channels

… i know its still in beta


CraigJ...

LOVE IT!!! :)


Edward...

David,

Thanks so much for making this app free. I am a happy user of NewsFire as well. Your programs are some of the best on the Mac.

Ed


basetta...

thanx!
I bought inquisitor 2.6 but im happy this new release is free for all ;)

i already digged on my website
http://www.downloadblog.it/post/2764/inquisitor-3-diventa-free


Jannis...

It’s cool that it’s free but it’s not cool that I bought the old version already ;-)


Ivor...

Gawd bless ya Sir!


Donovan...

Hey David, think since I paid for it not too long ago I could maybe get a credit towards Newsfire? I missed the ‘Buy Newsfire, get Inquisitor free’ thing. :(


James...

Looks great, an excellent piece of software.
One suggestion, could you make the blue highlight the same colour as the users system highlight?
I use graphite with a pink highlight and that bright blue looks really out of place.


Joe...

Thanks a lot for making it free!
I’m curious as to why it is now though?


kOoLiNuS...

BIG thank you also from Italy :-)
ciao !


Chris...

The only issue that I see is the black background exposes every tiny flaw in site favicons. Some have really poor contrast, as I suppose they were designed for a white/light background.


Kurt...

What about the people who had previously paid for 2.x?


Todd...

I think we’ll be seeing Inquisitor everywhere now. Thanks for the freebie.


eric...

Any chance of it following the graphite interface prefs? I see that there’s some graphite artwork in the resource directory, but fiddling with filenames doesn’t seem to get it to load in place of the blue.

Nice upgrade! I don’t use camino much, so the non-support doesn’t strike me as a big problem.


Alex...

Agreed with the comment asking for a white version. It is difficult to read the white/gray on black, and I’m young :) Can only imagine what some of the other folks are thinking.


Ed...

Well done, its a great program. I noticed that it crashes safari if you try to add a custom search engine to the list, at least it did every time I tried to add Google UK search.

Good job :)


Mark...

Thanks for this! It’s terrific. My only problem is that the website suggestions’ descriptions have a font color just a bit too dark for me to read without rolling over them. I realize my display’s contrast settings could help this, but they’re set high for a reason (bad eyes). As it is, this is the only thing, system wide, that I have a hard time reading. I realize the black theme is in keeping with coming changes to OSX. I just hope the grey text won’t be.

Thanks again.


Todd...

Thanks for releasing this for free, David. A very nice gift to Mac users around the world.


Dustin...

I just wanted to say that the old layout for the preferences was a little easier to use and navigate.

The new look is awesome and it seems a lot faster as well.


ATMB...

Wonderful!
It seems that buying Inquisitor like I did took to the right thing…that is, making InquisitorX 3 being free!

Wonderful, David!


sengan...

Hi David,

It’s great it’s free, but why did you decide to make it free? Too much work on Acquisition?

Sengan


tylermoody...

Have some features disappeared from the last version? I remember being able to hit enter for google results, or shift-enter for wikipedia.


tylermoody...

Nevermind, it just took me a minute to find the option.


Maced2...

David,

Many Many thanks for this Free version Inquisitor
It.s working great and it,s looking great


Dustin...

What happened to the option of command-enter and it opening a new tab?


Andreas...

I like the new prefs. But I find that the white text on the black background reduces readability compared to 2.6 with black text on white background.

It looks great but I find it hard to read, especially when my eyes are moving around on a large display from one object to another, the white on black is disruptive to my workflow beacuse my brain has some problems adjusting.

So I’m staying with 2.6 for now. Hopefully the final 3.0 release will have color options. (Crossed fingers.)


Reinier...

Great new look, responsive too, love how it resizes with the search enige field.

However, favicons that have been optimized for white/light backgrounds do not render very nice.


Tony...

This is really cool, and it works so well!


Luca...

Thank You Dave, Inquisitor is simply “insanely great” ;)


michel...

wonderful gift. very good for your karma :)


michel...

is it possible to have the same for Omniweb ?


Dan...

Honestly, this should be built into Safari out of the box. I hope Apple offers you tons of money to buy Inquisitor and they include it in Safari 3 as the default!


Michael...

I was just about to email and ask where the preferences were when I decided to look at your weblog. I see they have been moved to Safari Preferences.

I think the new look is great. I am a fan of Inquisitor (and NewsFire as well–and registered user of both). Thanks for the update.


Wysiwyg...

Just wondering… Will a white theme come soon? If not, will the previous versions be free too? I loved Inquisitor but the black is just tiring, and i loved the previous interface. I would register, but the comments in Versiontracker discouraged me.


Sian...

Great work, and a tip to implement for international travellers like myself: when I travel overseas to Europe for example, although my default for search is Google.com(US), search defaults to the local Google (in my case, Google.de or Google.fr) to give me results in French. Can you do something to override it?


stephen...

I smell an Apple buy-out. Am I right? Fab plug-in!


herb...

Great plugin! But please bring back the white background. The new design is nice, but it is to different to safari.


adin...

Since FF is the #2 browser, should I be expecting a FF pluging? ;)


mpmchugh...

I also 2nd the request for a Firefox version.

Pretty please!

-mpm


Jonathan...

Inquisitor is the only reason I’ve kept Safari going alongside Firefox.I paid for it, and it would have been cheap at twice the price.The new version seems to work even faster- but it’s now hard to read with grey text on a black background and I’ve had to re-install 2.6.


Steve...

I love the new look, great work.

PLEASE make a version that supports OmniWeb 5.5.1!!!!

I’d gladly pay for that.


Omniweb will never be supported.


Mikael...

Oh, finaly, it’s free. Took some time, but even the bluest waters needs fishes.


iNeo...

Now have MACZOT post it on thier website as the freeware of the week/2weeks. Get u lots of attention ;P


Jesse...

Absolutely fantastic work David.

Scratched my head there for a bit wondering what happened to the preferences. Should have spent more time reading before hurrying up and downloading it.


filipp...

But where is the link to 2.6.3 now?


eric...

This is a solid update, it looks very nice.

My original comment seems to have been eaten, but will there be a graphite version of the hover state? Kind of weird to have the bright blue popping out like that.


Jon...

Free is great, but I’d still pay for a version that worked in Camino and Omniweb. I can see why you’ve decided not to support those, but it does seem as if there is a fair bit of demand from Omniweb users


Godzilla...

I love everything about this, really some very nice work. The visual style is nice, I wish spotlight looked as cool.


Massimo...

Great work! But now I miss the small button to the right of the search result, because I have like 25 additional search engines, and choosing one now is nearly impossible… :-)


David...

Great piece of software, but I found a bug :-)
Try the zoom box of the Inquisitor preferences – how can I get my window back???


Dexter...

Wonderful piece of design, beautiful and functional. Firefox port, pretty please?


Injecter...

Just installed it. Quite cool! BUT: I can’t put in additional search engines in that menu. The “Done” Button doesn’t work and after updating to v32 the + doesn’t work either. But nice work yet! And its free too! GREAT :)


Injecter...

Oh ya! My environment: MBP Core Duo 2,16Ghz, 2GB RAM, OS X 10.4.8

And I meant the “+ button” of course. Both of the buttons seem to work SOMETIMES but have no function :S

Sorry for double-posting.


Frederic...

Great Mind reader !!! ;)
IMHO,The only problem is the color scheme. The colors are great but Safari is not using this color scheme. So the plugin looks like a application on top of Safari. How about an option for using the scheme define by the user on the OS level (to look more like spotlight for example).

Anyway, this plugin rocks !!!!


Way...

Oh, sweeet!
But somehow I can’t use Korean keyword on Inquisitor 3. Syllables are scattered as I type. Could you consider this to the next build, plz?


Adam...

This is great, but I dont know if I am being stupid, when I click the suggested searches, it just takes me to googles default page, as opposed to the search itself?


drebes...

There is a bug in the way Inquisitor (v32) deals with Japanese input. It converts some characters to kana, but leaves others as romaji, so it’s not possible to input japanese expressions. I suppose this will not be trivial to fix, though. :(


jss...

Glad this is now free (though I never felt any guilt or having purchased or recommending such a useful little hack, except when you dropped Camino support).

The black is incredibly distractive as it looks more obviously like a hack and less integrated. It looks kind of like the black bezel, but not really. As another person mentioned, when you are using the Graphite theme in particular, the blue and black just don’t look right.

I currently sort of wish that I could switch back to the older version which, except for the preferences inconsistency, seemed far more natural; like it should have always been there. I’ll either get used to it or just switch back to Camino, I guess.

Have you considered, now that you are not looking for payment, releasing the project as open-source? It would take a lot of weight off of your shoulders and allow other browser support to continue.

thanks again for writing and continuing to develop this very useful hack.


KapitalD1...

This is a must-have plugin for Safari.
Really good job you did.
And thanks for making it free. ;)
BTW, any plan to support multi-byte languages?


Dexter...

Wonderful, David, many thanks for releasing it for free!

Though I really wish there was a Firefox version (which is at least as popular as Safari, if not more). Due to the lack of extensions I rarely use Safari nowadays…


Neal...

Where should I send bug reports? There is an intermittent issue in the latest version where if you type quickly, characters will get eaten and you end up with a subset of the thing you typed. I assume this is partly due to Inquisitor attempting to complete what one is typing, but this didn’t happen in previous versions.

Sometimes it works fine, but occasionally I will type something like “toric algebra” but “toricebra” shows up.

Thanks for your work on this software and for releasing it for free.


Andres...

Inquisitor looks awesome. Thanks for making it free.


spok...

This is just incredible. How can it be THAT fast ??!!
I am impressed – that’s a quantum leap forward and I’m addicted to it since I took the very first dose.
Amazing.
Thanks so much.


Eduardo...

Thanks for making it FREE! Congratulations for your softwares!


Rico...

You did an excellent job !!! The problem is I Used Acid Search & it disappears when I installed your software….May you tell me how I could install MacUpdate & Internet Movie Data Base in the Inquisitor’s Search Engines….it would be THE perfect script….Thanx ( a thousand)


CHristian...

I’ve been trying to get Google UK working as either my second or main search engine. I want it also to have search UK selected…

I’ve tried everything including this:
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&btnG=Google+Search&meta=cr%3DcountryUK%7CcountryGB&q=%@

To get it to work, but no luck i’m afraid. What can I do????
Thanks for any insight.


newswede...

I’m a longtime user of your apps & have always been VERY happy with them. I have used Inquisitor for at least a year and was happy to pay the $5…I thought it was a good business model and more than a fair price.

Free rocks too…now people like me are mailing everyone about this, I’m sure it’ll bring some of the other cool apps to light.

PS. just tried out Xtorrent…VERY cool! My only suggestion would be to put a refresh button next to the search results – like in Acquisition.


Martin...

Great job!

One Suggestion: It would be great, if you add the ability to choose that the search result opens in a new window! Thx


DuĊĦan...

Very very cool. Congratulations, excellent piece of cake. Just two things. Missing Camino support. And what about including new Firefox search plugin format which support suggestions to allow different search sources.


gg90fr...

hello
do you think it can works with firefox ?

thank’s

greetings from france


Adrian...

If you would like to use Inquisitor under Firefox or under Windows, just use
http://inquisitorx.com/beta/

It’s the first result for “inquisitorx” under Google anyway.

;)


audiophil...

Kudos for this Dave, it’ absolutely gorgeous.


Dan...

Excellent!


nylock10...

This application is really nice, runs really fast on my iMac Intel.

Thanks a lot, keep up the good work!


Macdude...

Nice that it’s taken to the next level, but I’m disappointed that Camino is not supported. I’m not going back to Safari, I’d rather miss Inquisitor than Camino…


leuffi...

Inquisitor is awesome, I discovered it only 2 days ago but I love it! And I’d love it even more if it supported Japanese.

Thanks a lot.


vanfruniken...

Inq3 is even better than Inq2.
1. I really appreciate the inclusion of country-specific searches.
[suggestion]But could you make this somewhat more accessible, e.g., by Option-clicking? Going to the preferences to switch countries or search engines just seems a little too cumbersome. Or IS it more quicly accessible and am I missing something?
[/suggestion]
2. I was on the verge to donate $5. With v3, there seems to be even more reason to do so.
[suggestion]Could you add a donation link somewhere?
[/suggestion]


Andreas...

I know I can add it myself, but IMO Youtube ought to be included in the video search sites optional by default in the preferences.


Julien...

Wow ! inquisitor rocks :) (little suggestion) It would be nice to select the first result by holding the apple touch. As spotlight does… It would be even faster ! Thx a lot


freestef...

Great plug-in and so nice design.
If it’s the place to make features suggestion:
- Open result in new tab by command-click
- Display more results with command-g or similar
It could also become a menu exta item like Charlotte which does not work anymore.
Beautiful work, I would be glad to pay for a Pro version :-)


huy...

wow just stumbled upon this… this is great and just what i wanted for safari!


russ...

would it be possible to add keyword searching to inquisitor? so instead of hitting a key combo to search something you can type:

e spiderman
or
ebay spiderman

to use ebay to search for spiderman?

have a toggle to enable keyword searching and if the text before the first space is a listed keyword; search using the keyword specified search?


Jason...

Absolutely awesome products you have here. And extra points for being a fan of The Stars.


mike...

I love it! It’s got me using Safari again. I have to admit – using spotlight after using Inquisitor… not the same. It’s not as pretty and not as fast and… no stars!


Vince...

Inquisitor is awesome. Thanks for doing it. The price is right, of course. Just like everyone else, I’d love to see versions for Camino, Omniweb, Opera, etc. But I don’t know any code and am not likely going to learn. So no bitching from me is allowed. All you choosy beggars, why don’t you offer your coding skills to Dave and YOU write the one for your favorite browser? My arrow keys work just fine for scrolling thru options, btw. Thanks again. And I promise, someday soon I will finally cough up the cash to register my copy of Acquisition, which I have happily been mooching off for 2 years now…


Justin...

Where can i find a copy of 2.6 so i can use it with camino? I did buy it.