Inquisitor - Add Search-Ahead Capabilities to Safari's Search Box

One of the things I really like about Firefox is that its Google search bar uses Google's suggestion technology, so as I'm typing, it tries to guess what I might actually be looking for, and if I see what I need, I can click that option to save me time. In Flock, the search box gets even more useful, because the Flock developers have added the ability to display actual search results as you type. In this way, you can see some of the results even before hitting "Enter," so if you see what you like, you can go directly to it, bypassing the results page entirely!

Sadly, nothing like this exists at all for Safari. And while I do find myself using Firefox most of the time, even when using Mac OSX (since I can set up Firefox in OSX and Firefox in Linux to be nearly identical), I do sometimes find myself using Safari. So I went looking for a tool that would add this ability to Safari's search box, and happily such a tool does exist.

The tool's name is Inquisitor, and it comes from David Watanabe, a Mac software developer also responsible for projects such as Xtorrent, Acquisition and Newsfire (a bittorrent client, p2p application and RSS reader, respectively). I downloaded and installed Inquisitor and was really happy with what I found.

First, Inquisitor looks really nice. As you can see from the first screen shot, Inquisitor uses a translucent black window theme that I personally thinks very nice. It's stylish without being garish, and in spite of its good looks, still manages to present the user with quite a bit of information.

For instance, as you can see from the first screen shot, as I was typing in "NBA Finals" into the search engine, up popped Inquisitor, showing three possible results. You'll notice that "NBA" is highlighted blue in each result. This clues in the user as to why exactly that page showed up.

One thing I really appreciate as a user is how Inquisitor gets rid of paid affiliate ads. What this means to me is that I get the results that would naturally be at the top of the list, and not the ones that are there simply by paying the most money.