SelectEngine

Inspiration

The inspiration for our project came from the frustration over the inability to search a given query across multiple platforms in a single click.

What it does

When the user encounters a word or phrase on a website and wishes to search it on Google, Dictionary.com, Wikipedia, YouTube, or various other sites, they would usually need to enter that search term on that website or at least use a search engine. Instead of doing this, our Google Chrome extension allows them to select the word or phrase on any website, and then press a keyboard shortcut that will open up a new tab with the results of their query on the specified website. For example, if they see a blog post with a caption of "can opener", they can select the phrase "can opener", press the 'w' key, and be redirected to a Wikipedia article on can openers.

How we built it

This chrome extension was built using javascript, HTML5, and CSS3.

Challenges we ran into

Due to the fact that most of our team members were inexperienced in web or app development, we had to learn javascript, HTML, and CSS over the span of 24 hours. Due to unfamiliarity with syntax, we ran into challenges reading the selected text input as well as with the user key input.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're extremely proud of creating a working extension from scratch, as well as familiarizing ourselves better with 3 completely new languages, all in a span of less than 24 hours.

What we learned

What's next for SelectEngine

We hope to release our extension on the Chrome Store so that individuals all over the world can access search results from multiple websites in a single click. We also hope to add more default websites, as well as give users the option to modify keyboard shortcuts and add unique websites of their own.