Granite Mountain Software

Kewl Bar

Kewl Bar installs as a toolbar within IE. You can type in your search text in the "Search Text" box, select a search engine from the "Link to Site" box, then click the Search button. Your search text will be sent to the search engine of your designation, and the results will be displayed in your browser.

A Screen Capture.

Installing Kewl Bar

If after running the install you do not see the Kewl bar, you may have to enable it. If you are running IE6, you may have your toolbars locked.

You can turn the tool bar on by right clicking on a blank area of any toolbar (See red circle in the image above). Simply check "Kewl Bar" to turn it on. If you don't see a menu similar to the one below after right clicking, try clicking a different area.

If you have IE6, you may have to unlock your toolbar in order to use the Kewl Bar. Simply right clicking on a blank area of any toolbar, and uncheck the "Lock the Toolbars" option. You can re-lock your toolbars after enabling the Kewl Bar

How to Use Kewl Bar

Simply type in your search query into the "Search Text" box. Currently, Kewl Bar remembers your last 10 unique searches. (This number may be customizable in a future revision). You most recent search is inserted at the top of the list. Once the recent list reaches 10 items, the 11th item will remove the oldest from the recent list.

To select a search engine, simple choose one from the "Link to Site" drop down box.

Features

You can click the Kewl Bar button to bring up the main menu.

The following menu items are available from this menu:

Goto Granite Mountain Software Website - Click this to go to the Granite Mountain Software website.
Goto Authors Home Page - Click this to go to the author's home page.
Configure - Click this to configure Kewl Bar - Configure Help
About - Show version info for Kewl Bar

Getting Help

If you click on the Help Button, you can get quick help for the currently selected search engine. (NOTE: You can also get more limited quick help by hovering over the Link to Site dropdown box). If you click on the black down triangle on the Help button (or right click it), you will get the help menu.

The following items are available on the help menu:

Quick Help - This is the same functionality of left-clicking the Help button
More Detailed Help - Links to the Kewl Bar web site for more in depth help regarding searching. The help text is customized based on which search engine is selected in the "Link to Site" dropdown box.
Help for Kewlbar - Brings up this help document.
Help from Search Engine Web Site - If available, connects to the help provided on the search engine web site of the currently selected engine in the "Link to Site" dropdown box. Some web sites (Snap for example) may not have help available.
Open Search Engine Web Site - Takes you to the home page of the search site selected in the "Link to Site" dropdown box.

Kewl Bar Options

Simple Mode - Currently, the only available mode.
Default Search Engine - This is the search engine that will be selected by default when a new browser window is opened
Maximum results per page - Most search engines allow you to customize how many "hits" they will display per results page. You can set this number anywhere from 1 to 100. You may even be able to get more results per page that by using the search site directly. (i.e. Metacrawler only has options for 10, 20 or 30 results per page from it's web site.)
Max Result per Search Engine - For meta search engines (search sites that search other search engines, such as Metacrawler and Snap) will sometimes allow you to specify how many "hits" you will retrieve from each search engine. To my knowlege, this feature is currently only supported by Metacrawler.
Timeout - Some meta search engines will allow you to specify a timeout for each search engine. To my knowledge, this feature is currently only supported by Metacrawler.

Enabling / Disabling Kewl Bar

You can turn the tool bar on by right clicking on a blank area of any toolbar. Simply check "Kewl Bar" to turn it on, or uncheck "Kewl Bar" to turn if off.