Comment by svat | Hacker News Reader

Comment by svat | Hacker News Reader

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It would be nice if there were a tool of some sort where I could type a search term and on two halves of my screen the results from Google Search and from DuckDuckGo would appear… after trying that for a month or two, one would be better informed how the results differ, and be more confident about switching (one way or the other).

I've had the idea for a while of writing for myself such a tool (probably can't be a browser extension?), but I haven't gotten around to it yet. Does one already exist, or is trivial to write?

As I type this comment, I found that at the commandline on macOS one can do, say:

    open -a "Google Chrome" "https://duckduckgo.com/?q=umbrella"
    open -a "Google Chrome" "https://www.google.com/search?q=umbrella"

(or whatever your usual browser is) and it's easy to wrap that in a script:

    function search() {
        open -a "Google Chrome" "https://duckduckgo.com/?q=$*"
        open -a "Google Chrome" "https://www.google.com/search?q=$*"
    }

This (invoke like say `search freddie mercury`) opens two tabs and I haven't yet figured out how to open them in side-by-side windows, but maybe I'll try for a few weeks to be disciplined about doing all searches this way, and see how it goes. Seems worth finding out!

This works as is but you’ll want to edit the window position numbers (at the bottom).

  function search {
    local query="${@}"

    osascript -l JavaScript -e "
      browser = Application('Google Chrome')

      google_window = browser.Window().make()
      ddg_window = browser.Window().make()

      google_window.activeTab.url = 'https://duckduckgo.com/?q=${query}'
      ddg_window.activeTab.url = 'https://www.google.com/search?q=${query}'

      google_window.bounds = { 'x': 0, 'y': 0, 'width': 600, 'height': 600 }
      ddg_window.bounds = { 'x': 600, 'y': 0, 'width': 600, 'height': 600 }
    "
  }

It could be improved in a few ways, like:

* Not opening the extra window if Chrome isn’t already running.

* URL-encoding your query.

* Auto-detecting the screen bounds (and Dock).

* Auto-detecting the active browser.

But I didn’t want to turn this comment into a full-fledged gist. As is, this works in Chromium-based browsers (replace the name in the `browser = Application('Google Chrome')` line). Adding support for all of them and Safari is simple: https://gist.github.com/vitorgalvao/5392178

There have been programs which did this before google became so popular. Unfortunately I don't remember the name of the software, but it would query several search engines and show the results below each other. I remember it had some colors indicating the progress next to it - like green, when it found something on that engine. That was the time when there was also Software to find the cheapest provider for dialing in over modem line at a particular time of the day - because it was expensive and each minute counted.

Ah, found it (I used a much earlier version of it):

https://copernic-2001-basic.informer.com/5.0/

In the olden days, I used to search with Dogpile. It was a multi-search engine query site: In those days, there were a bunch of search engines (altavista, yahoo, google) and to find what you wanted it was easiest just to use Dogpile.

Like most people I know, I switched to Google directly when I realised I just scrolled down to Google and clicked the first link.

>macOS

At least on Linux it's likely doable with xdotool, it should let you identify the windows and put them where you want them.

On macOS it’s doable[1] with AppleScript[2].

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27534252

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AppleScript

> I haven't yet figured out how to open them in side-by-side windows

Two iframes side by side?

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/23737427/how-to-put-two-...

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