I’ve been a long-time user of the FireFox browser and the BioBar plugin from EBI. When I switched to Google’s Chrome browser, one of the things I immediately missed were BioBar’s search plugins.Recently I stumbled across a feature in Chrome that allows you to search sites like Wikipedia, and to add your own search plugins. To search Wikipedia you simply type “Wikipedia” in the location bar and then hit the tab key. Then enter your search text and hit the Enter key.Since I search PubMed, Entrez Gene, and OMIM a lot, I decided to add these plugins to my browser. Here’s how:
- Right-click on the Location bar and select “Edit Search Engines” from the drop-down menu.
- Click the “+” button to add a new search engine. Enter a Name, Keyword, URL for the search engine. (The links below should help you get started).
PubMed
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=pubmed&cmd=search&term=%s
EntrezGene
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=gene&cmd=search&term=%s
OMIM
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=omim&cmd=search&term=%s
Google Scholar
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=%s
To search Entrez Gene for KRAS, you simply type “gene”, hit the Tab key, and type “KRAS AND Homo Sapiens[Organism]“. Happy searching!
I don’t know where I got my bookmarklets. But I use the Google Scholar bookmarket a lot: javascript:var%20s=”;if(window.getSelection)%7Bs=window.getSelection()%7D;if(document.getSelection)%7Bs=document.getSelection()%7D;void(s!=”?q=s:q=prompt(‘Enter%20search%20terms:’,”));if(q)void(location.href=’http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=’+escape(q))
That’s in the third location on my Bookmarks toolbar, so if I want to search Google Scholar, I hit Opt-3 and a window pops where I can enter the search. Or I can highlight text on a webpage and hit Opt-3 and Google Scholar is searched without the intervening popup. The highlight thing doesn’t work from pdfs open in Safari, though, which is a pity as I often want to search from a paper I’m reading.