Get instant search results with Google Quick Search Box for Mac OS X

If you’re on a Mac, and you’re crazy about Quicksilver and would like to see Google work like Quicksilver, then Google Quick Search Box is for you. Google Quick Search Box allows you to search data on your computer and across the web and get results instantly, offering as-you-type search results from both your desktop and the web.

It’s open-source, and it not only searches for and launches files and applications—it also can drill down into content and perform context-specific actions. So if you let Google Quick Search index your Address Book contacts, and if you do a quick search to pull up your contact card, hitting Tab brings up options to choose from possible actions to perform—like composing an email or starting an IM chat.

Some Quick Search Box features:

1. It works as a location bar AND a search box – It’ll autocomplete URLs and you can use TAB to search any website using Site Search.
2.  The tab key has special functionality beyond just site search. It is equivalent to “search in this context”: you’ll see that the results of a contextual search include related items, contents, and actions.
3.  Calculation, Weather, and Definition one boxes will show up periodically. More are on the way. What else would you expect to see?
4. If you enable it, spotlight results will show up. Usually these are relegated to the “More” section at the bottom of the window, but once you use these items, they’ll be learned and become much faster to access.

It features quick and easy site-specific searches, indexes items from your Google account (Google Docs and Picasa Web Albums, for now, but presumably more to come), and even offers handy keyboard shortcuts to quickly start a new site-search (for example, invoke Google Quick Search and hit Cmd-3 for Wikipedia).

Of course, it’s a prototype, so you have to expect the occasional bug here and there. But if you want to test it out (by the way, you need Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard; no support for Tiger), you can go to the Google Code page and download Google Quick Search Box.