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Googlepedia… Google and Wikipedia Firefox Extension

James Hall wrote a useful Firefox extension called Googlepedia. It displays a relevant Wikipedia article along with your Google search results. It also creates links in the Wikipedia article for other Google searches, making it a very useful tool.

Other features include:

  • Uses Google’s I’m Feeling Lucky(tm) feature to find relevant articles
  • Links images directly to their full-sized versions
  • Can be expanded to take the full width of the page
  • Uses your local language Wikipedia based on the Google language

A word of warning: Your mileage may vary with many Wikipedia articles as some have been taken over by trolls or idiots with hidden agendas. Others are simply incorrect by accident. See more of the Criticisms of Wikipedia and use your head before believing anything written there as fact.

[tags]Google, wikipedia, Firefox extensions, Firefox[/tags]

One Comment

Dude.. this WOULD be a really great Firefox extension except for one fact: The linking to Google searches. The layout of everything is nice, even to my high standards, but, as you can see, something is wrong.

The links in the Wikipedia article link to Google searches. I know you portray this as a great thing to have, but I personally see it as a nuisance. By redirecting the links, the program causes a full loading of 2 pages: The Google search and the new Wikipedia page.

IMO, the links in Wikipedia should be left alone, and when a Wikipedia link is clicked on, only the Wikipedia part of the page should be loaded. The original Google search should stay in tact — kind of like frames in IE. This, to me, would prove to be an easier way to search for information quickly; this way one could orignally search for something in Google and the Wikipedia page would pop up on the right of the screen. The user could browse through several articles on Wikipedia without ever leaving his/her original Google search. A good addition for this would be back and forward arrows in the Wikipedia section, in case the user clicked on a link - maybe to define a word - and he/she wants to quickly return to the Wikipedia article he/she was just looking at. Optional buttons would be stop and reload, but I don’t really see a necessity for these two.

When the user finishes with Wikipedia, he/she looks back at the Google search, which remains untouched.

Maybe this isn’t what you were going for with your extension, and if it’s not, I’m truly sorry. I’m only expressing my opinion on how the extension should be made. However, if you know of any extensions like the one I’ve described [and you aren't willing to change your own extension..], I would like to ask where I could find them.

Anyways, that’s my opinion, and I hope some of these changes appear in the future! Thanks!

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