nondeterministic . net

Mac OS X Tiger Timesaving Techniques For Dummies by Larry Ullman and Marc Liyanage, page 239:

fiwt (www.nondeterministic.net/hack/fiwt, free): Another SIMBL plug-in, fiwt (find it while typing) lets you search for text on a page without bringing up the Find dialog. After you load a Web page, start typing the word you’re looking for and fiwt highlights the first occurrence. Press the backslash key to find the next occurrence.

We now find ourselves at "find while typing" version 0.5. Competition from bigger, fancier players who no doubt do a much better job responding to users’ feedback might be stiff, but that’s alright. Sometimes it’s just nice to have a bit of hackery with your name on it, even if it’s a small bit of hackery not must used.

As of now, fiwt 0.4 has seen 1134 downloads to 960 unique IP addresses (fiwt 0.3 saw at least 1541 downloads total). And last week, fiwt made it onto the list of apps demoed at an O’Reilly OSXCon session. It’s pretty awesome to be in the company of some of these great pieces of software.

Mr. Signoff has bounced my last offering right back at me.

[continue reading “Tee eye double-guh err”]

Preamble: I was sitting in my room some weeks ago working away on my Powerbook, when one of the other guys in my flat came by. We were talking, referenced a web site, and at some point I hit the key for Exposé: “Whoa, what was that?” I explained, and demonstrated. “Why did you show me that? Now I want a Mac! And instead I have to go back upstairs and use my stupid Windows computer!”

[continue reading “Me: bounce! / OS X: how high?”]

After a few hours of hacking I bring you fiwt version 0.3, my latest Safari find-as-you-type attempt. Little fiwt is now a SIMBL plugin, which improves its behind-the-scenes behavior and makes upgrading (or uninstalling) a much easier process. The included Readme file has further details.

Some spare time spent coding has yielded fiwt version 0.2, which addresses all known bug reports (all one of them) and includes several other fixes. The shift key is handled, backspace is better, and a timeout keeps old searches from coming back to haunt you. I think fiwt is now approaching a state that might be considered usable; as always, your comments and suggestions are very much appreciated.