Links are wonderful conveniences, as we all know (from clicking on them compulsively day in and day out). But they’re also distractions. Sometimes, they’re big distractions – we click on a link, then another, then another, and pretty soon we’ve forgotten what we’d started out to do or to read.

While I do agree that the different color of a link can be a distraction, I think one of the main issues that might be causing people to lose their focus is how to deal with links.  I’m going to assume (and might be completely wrong) that when people click a link they go to the destination right away.  This is very different than how I use links on the web.  Whenever I run into a link that tickles my interest I almost always open it in a background tab.  A simple mouse-gesture browser addon allows me to do this.  I find myself easily opening 5, even 10 links while reading a single article, yet I do not lose focus on the original article as all of the links are opened in the background.  Only after I am finished with the original article do I then proceed to read the new links that I’ve opened.

The discussions spawned around Nic’s post hit very close to home as one of the main drivers behind KwiClick is to help people stay focused on the task at hand.  As you read an article and want to perform a search about something you read, your choices are to open a new tab and look at a full page of results or replace the article with a full page of results.  So with KwiClick, we wanted people to be able to get those results without losing the context of their task at hand.  Also built into KwiClick is the ability to open links in background tabs (simply right click each search result you see in KwiClick).

Looking ahead, I think there are still plenty of untapped ways/tools to help people stay focused on their tasks, as well as augment each task with unique information touch points to augment their tasks.  We’re hoping that KwiClick can be one of those tools.

Here’s where you adjust this setting from the options panel:

Site Specific Search Provider – add any site into KwiClick for immediate searching.
Country specific searching – Would you rather use KwiClick to search on Google.es, Google.fr, or any of the other local country search engines Google provides?  Now you can.
Reorganized options panel – We made the options panels a bit easier to navigate by further grouping similar items together, and removing redundant items.
Default provider is first favorite - Whenever you drag a provider to the lest most position on the favorites bar, it becomes the default provider.  Much easier to assign a default this way.
New dictionary provider – Highlight a word and get the definition with a single click.  Easy.  Straight-forward.

There are also a number of other tweaks and enhancements under the hood that should make for a smoother experience.

Got some feedback on this update? Let us know about it in the comments or our community forum.

When you install the most recent version of KwiClick, we’re going to look at your Firefox default language/country settings and automatically adjust the Google search provider inside KwiClick to match that of your home language and country.  If you would rather control this yourself, you can always adjust this from within the KwiClick options panel.

If you are a Bing or Yahoo fan, the same functionality will work across those search providers (as well as a few more providers in KwiClick).

There is also another change coming to KwiClick: When you click the Open In Browser icon located in the KwiClick search bar, the traditional Google.com page (or google.es, google.fr, etc) will open in your browser, as opposed to our KwiClick Custom Search page. I think you’ll prefer this as it feels a bit more natural and what you’ve been accustomed to expect when visiting a Google site.

One of the most requested items that we hear from users is the ability to use KwiClick with sites not included in the application. This presented a challenge and also an opportunity for us.  Each search provider that ships with KwiClick has been specifically configured to pull data (when searching) from a particular site.  When you use the YouTube provider, we return results with a thumbnail image, the view count, the title, and some additional information.  When you use the Google search provider, we show a list a search results similar to how Google.com shows their results.

In order to achieve a method of displaying search results from “any” site out there we needed to decide upon a result style format that would be suitable for a wide variety of sites.  So we’ve gone ahead and used the Google result set as the standard style format for this new feature.  In fact, Google powers this new feature.  Here’s what I mean: You can construct a search on Google.com that only pulls in results from a specific site by entering the following into Google: site:cnn.com baseball

This type of search will restrict the results to just cnn.com and search for “baseball”.  We’ve taken this concept and baked it right into KwiClick.  When you are browsing a site that you’d like to add into KwiClick as a search provider, you can simply click the Site Search icon: You can access this icon through the Search Clovers and from the favorites toolbar which sits on the bottom of the KwiClick panel.  After clicking the icon, a search will be triggered in KwiClick which restricts the results to just the site you are currently on.  You’ll also see a notification to save the site for later use: When you click Yes, the site search provider will be saved and instantly added to your favorites toolbar (which you can remove or rearrange from the options panel).

That’s it!  A couple of clicks and you’ve got yourself a new search provider. If you decide to click No, a site search provider will not be created.  It’s a good way of running a search on a particular site that you probably won’t use in the future.

A couple of things we wanted to avoid when designing this feature:

1) Don’t make anyone copy and paste any url or long strings.

2) Don’t make anyone search for specific words in a form and look for certain code to add into KwiClick (what a pain!).

3) Make this as simple as possible, with as few steps as possible.

This is just one of the many features we’re preparing to roll out shortly.

App Tabs – minimize tabs and lock them in the corner of your tab list for quick easy access without taking up too much room (great when you leave certain tabs open all day).
ColorZilla - a handy tool to get the color code of anything you see in your browser.
Download Statusbar – shows some quick stats on downloads as they happen.
Firebug - tremendous tool for debugging and making developing more efficient.
FireGestures - love this one.  With the flick of the wrist you can execute pretty much any command in Firefox.
Firesizer - helps resize the browser to specific settings, or tells you what the screen size of your browser is whenever you resize it manually.
ForecastFox – another great tool to give instant weather information.  I like to run it at the top of the screen.
KwiClick – From what I hear this one is a keeper.
MeasureIt – measure anything on a page in pixel dimensions.
Multirow Bookmarks Toolbar – ive got quite a few bookmarks in the toolbar. this addon creates another row to keep them in place.
Page Speed – great tool to check what is causing slowness on your site.
SearchStatus – a swiss army knife for search marketing and SEO people.
Xmarks – the best bookmarks sync I’ve seen yet.

Got some favorites of your own?

A default message is a block of text that KwiClick can automatically insert into your status update when you post a video to Facebook and Twitter. This saves you a bit of time if you typically write similar messages with each status update.

Here’s an example: “I found an interesting video that you should check out: $title”

You’ll notice that I used the variable $title.  This will automatically insert the name of the video into your status update. You can also use another variable called $type which will output the type of content that you are sending (this can include a video, image, or map).  So if you shared a flickr image with your friends on Twitter and wrote “Check out this $type I found” into the status message area in KwiClick, your friends would see “Check out this image I found”.

Another handy feature with our status update tool will tell you how many characters are remaining while you write your message.  This is used to make sure you don’t exceed the character limit.

Do you have an idea of how we can improve the status updater?  Let us know in the comments.

Over the next few months we’re going to be updating our UI to better reflect the focus of what users are trying to accomplish by using the application. At this point, our interface is a bit saturated with icons and buttons and does not leave too much room for empty space.  The notion of empty space is important because it can help segment certain elements in a way that creates visible groups. These groups help people identify which things belong together and can shave milliseconds off decision making when it comes time to point and click your mouse. Now it may not sound like a lot to save a few milliseconds here and there, but it helps us continue to push towards our goal of consistent flow when using the application.

If you’ve been using KwiClick and have some suggestions that might help us accomplish this, let us know and get in touch.

On the bottom of the site (although not on this blog) you might see a little live chat window.  This helps us connect with people and answer questions while they are browsing around our site.  In addition to the live help, there are a number of ways to get in touch with us to ask a question, report an issue, or just yell at us if that’s your cup of tea.

Get Satisfaction: This is our main support forum where users can ask/answer questions they have about using KwiClick.  It’s also a great way for other users to comment on suggestions or feedback and helps us understand what’s important from your perspective.

Twitter: If you are privy to the twitter way of getting in touch, this is a great way to connect with us and get quick answers.

Contact Form: We’ve got a snazzy contact form on our site that shoots an email over to us in light speed.  Feel free to send over your thoughts.

Got other ideas to keep us in the loop?  Let us know in the comments.

Facebook: First, find the video you want to share.  Let’s say you’ve found a YouTube video embedded on someone’s blog.  You will notice a new set of icons that appear above the video, as shown in the image below:

Click on that Facebook icon and the KwiClick panel will open showing you an area where you can write a message.  This message will be seen by your friends once the video goes into your news feed (as a status update).  Now click on the Send Message button.  The next screen you see is the Facebook Connect prompt.  You are going to need to link up your Facebook profile to KwiClick to send the video.  Once you link Facebook with KwiClick, you won’t need to do this again in the future.

So, you’ve authenticated with Facebook and granted the permissions that we’ve asked for.  That’s it!  If you now go check your Facebook feed you should see the video posted for your friends to see.  Not to hard right?

Twitter: This process to send videos to Twitter is very similar to Facebook.  First, click on the Twitter icon above the embedded video. You will be asked to provide the standard information and then the video will be sent to your Twitter feed.

Tip: You can send a video to Twitter and Facebook at the same time.  Simply check both services in your message window, as shown below:

That wasn’t too hard was it?