Search jQuery API Docs from Spotlight
February 9th, 2009
Yesterday Priit Haamer of Fraktal notified me about Spotlight searchable Ruby on Rails documentation he had made. Absolutely brilliant idea. When I saw it I knew I have to do same thing for jQuery.
Note: Last update to jQuery Spotlight dictionary was done 19th November 2009. I try to update the docs every month.
Why Is It cool?
You can just hit Apple + Space to enter spotlight and search for jQuery function.
Press and hold Apple + Control + D over any function in TextMate (or Safari, iChat, Mail etc.) to get info popup.
Docs are in your harddrive so they are always accessible. Even when you or docs.jquery.com are offline.
It is native, based on OS X dictionary. No need to install AIR or any other applications.
Install From Zip
Download jQuery.dictionary.zip file. Unzip it and move to folder ~/Library/Dictionaries or /Library/Dictionaries. Enable it from Dictionary preferences.
Sometimes it takes a while for Spotlight to see new dictionary. You can speed things up by restarting it.
>killall Spotlight
According to Priit you should also drag new dictionary to be first on the list. This was not true in my case. However if you have problems it is worth trying.
Install From Git
If you like to live in bleeding edge install from Git and build your own.
>git clone git://github.com/tuupola/jquery_dictionary.git >cd jquery_dictionary >make >make install
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Priit Haamer for the original idea. David Serduke for the the Python script used exporting jQuery wiki to XML format. Jörn Zaefferer whose XSLT stylesheets were used as basis for XSLT stylesheet which converts exported jQuery docs to OS X dictionary XML source
February 10th, 2009 at 03:47 PM
Cool~~!
February 10th, 2009 at 04:35 PM
Installed. Thanks!
February 10th, 2009 at 04:50 PM
Nice. Installed and working, very cool. Has anyone done this for, say, the PHP manual?
February 10th, 2009 at 09:42 PM
Ben Byrne: Funny that you mention it. I thought to do the PHP manuals next.
February 11th, 2009 at 01:31 AM
Mika, this is one of the coolest things I have ever found on the Intertubes. Great work!
February 11th, 2009 at 08:29 AM
Tim Fletcher: Thanks! I though exactly the same when I saw Priit’s Ruby on Rails documentation. So it was really his idea. I just copied it to jQuery.
April 1st, 2009 at 08:54 PM
This is so cool! Thanks!
April 7th, 2009 at 09:52 PM
Great work… Congratulations…
April 13th, 2009 at 10:27 AM
Nice, but it doesnt’ have important methods such as get and put from Ajax.
April 13th, 2009 at 04:06 PM
sanbit: Looks like I need to regenerate the docs. Thanks for the heads up!
April 14th, 2009 at 05:43 AM
Thanks, please put a new blog post or new link up once you have a new version as I would like to get it, its very useful, thanks!!
May 8th, 2009 at 04:35 PM
how can we build our own dictionary? i would love to do some for PHP / PEARL / PYTHON… is there any documentation or “how to” about it?
May 15th, 2009 at 05:34 PM
It is just XHTML with some additional instuctions for processing. You can start by reading Apple documentation for dictionary services.
December 10th, 2009 at 05:02 PM
still thinking of doing the PHP one next? would be really cool.
January 21st, 2010 at 04:47 AM
Any thoughts on making one for 1.4? They are providing an XML version now to help things along.
January 21st, 2010 at 04:56 PM
georges: I just have to check how much the format has changed. If format is the same it is only 10 minutes work.