Following Shortwave, one of Shaun Inman‘s many ideas, Joost de Valk from Yoast released Quix – a command line bookmarklet tool for your browser, on steroids! 🙂
Quix combines multiple bookmarklets across multiple browsers and allows you to keep all of them gathered in one place.
Quix is an extensible bookmarklet, that allows you to easily access all your bookmarks and bookmarklets, across all your browsers, while maintaining them in only one spot. All you have to do is remember the shortcut for the bookmarklet, so, basically, it’s like a command line for your browser!
Before you get started with Quix, check out the first steps guide and how you can integrate it with your browser.
When you’re ready to use the app, just drag it to your Bookmarks Toolbar and you’re all set!
Once bookmarked, click on it and run some command. In order to open a command in a new window, just type space before it.
The beauty of Quix is that you have everything in one place, and once you get familiar with the shortcuts – you will find yourself using it everyday.
Instead of opening new tabs, visiting specific URLs, doing searches on sites and search engines, with Quix you will be able to quickly run a command and be directed to the resource you were trying to access.
At the beginning you’ll find yourself using the “help” command a lot, which will send you to the Quix help page. Here you’ll be able to see all Quix commands and their explanations.
Power tip: if you add a space before the command, the result will open in a new tab.
To give you some examples, here’s what you can do with Quix (and these are just some commands with their short descriptions):
- a – search Amazon
- e – email link
- g – Google search
- gs – search the current site with Google
- wa – Wolfram Alpha search
- fb – share current page on Facebook
- tn – tweet current page
- plugin – WordPress plugin search
- gc – Google cache for current page
- gwt – Google Webmaster Tools for current domain
- kwte – Go to the AdWords External keyword tool
- speed – Do a Pingdom speedtest of the current URL
- gspeed – Do a Google page speed test of the current URL
- vs – View source of the current URL
Quix has many more really useful commands, but I wanted to give you a quick taste of it.
Quix works in any browser and it can also be used on mobile phones (iPhone for example).
Additionally, it’s fully customizable. You can extend Quix using Quix Syntax.
With Quix there are no plugins that will slow down your browser or multiple bookmarklets for you to remember. Only one spot to manage your bookmarklets from.
Watch this 2-minute demo that will introduce you to Quix and help you get started with it!
Have you tried Quix yet? What did you think of it? Let me know in the comments below.
