Nathan Parry

Keychain access for QSB

I recently heard that some folks get annoying password prompts every x minutes when using my QSB Delicious plugin.  They look like…

In fact, there are at least two separate issues filed for QSB about this.  This is due to the access settings for the Mac OS X Keychain.  In short, some people have settings that say “Once an application is granted access it should always get access” while others say “Force an application to re-authorize after X minutes of idle time”.

There are a couple of ways to solve this:

1. Set the default keychain to never lock.  This way you should only see the above prompt at most once.
2. If you want your default keychain to lock after X minutes, you can set up a separate keychain just for the QSB password.  This second keychain can have less security and use the never-lock setup.  The keychain item you need to move to the new keychain will be called com.google.qsb.delicious.account.<your_id>.

To change the settings for a keychain:

1. Start the Keychain Access application.
2. Locate the keychain you want to change (the default keychain is usually called ‘login’) - all of the keychains are listed in the upper-left of the application.
3. Right click on the keychain and select “Change settings for Keychain”.
4. You should get a dialog as shown below - you can uncheck the various “Lock when/after” settings based on what you want.

The same process applies if you set up different keychains for different passwords.

I appreciate that someone took the time to email me about this, I wasn’t aware of it until they did so.  If you have any questions don’t hesitate to drop me a line.

QSB plugins updated for Maganese

Updated QSB means updated plugins.

• Delicious plugin
• ROT-13 plugin

Hopefully QSB will settle down a bit and I won’t need to keep tweaking these for every release!

QSB plugins updated for Vanadium

Update: These plugins have been updated for QSB Manganese.

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QSB Vanadium was released a few days back.  I’ve updated my plugins to work with the changes in this version.

• Delicious plugin
• ROT-13 plugin

The install is the usual - download, unzip, move to ~/Library/Application Support/Google/Quick Search Box/PlugIns

I dropped my ‘Move to Trash’ plugin since it looks like that is now built-in to QSB.

For the ‘it-works-on-my-machine’ disclaimer, I’m using QSB version 2.0.0 (2.0.0.1053) according to the “About Google Quick Search Box” info.

Updated ROT-13 QSB plugin

Update: This version of the plugin has been superseded by version 0.3

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I noticed my first try at a ROT-13 plugin for QSB did not nicely display big chunks of text - I’ve updated it to use a smaller font size.  Pre-built version is here.

Obvious in retrospect

Update: This version of the plugin has been superseded by version 0.2

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I can’t believe I didn’t think to write this earlier - rot13 plugin for QSB.  Same install process as all the other plugins.

Building your own QSB plugins

In building my own QSB plugins I have just been adding my code to the main QSB xcode project.  This was less than ideal, since every time a new QSB version was released my changes to the xcode project file would get wiped out.  It was also a bit tricky since QSB lives in subversion and I was managing my plugins with git.

Happily, I think I’ve improved the situation a bit.

First, many thanks to Steven Noonan who set up a QSB mirror on github - I’m now able to include the QSB code base in my own plugin project via git submodules.

Next, I continued my slow learning experience with xcode and eventually figured out how to build my plugins in their own project.  This is probably obvious to experience xcoders, but my eureka moment occurred when I realized you could drop other xcode project files into your own project as sub-projects.  This let me add the QSB Vermilion framework from the aforementioned git submodule as a dependency of my plugins.  I had a bit of trouble getting xcode to include Vermilion headers the right way - the FRAMEWORK_SEARCH_PATH trick on this page helped me through that.

So - the end result - I have an xcode project just for my plugins that should gracefully handle updates to the main QSB code base.  And I learned a bit about git and xcode along the way ;-)

If you are interested you can check out the xcode project in the github repository.

More QSB plugins - Move to Trash

I put together a really quick QSB plugin this evening - it adds an action to move files to the Trash.  This was another QuickSilver convenience that I was missing.

I imagine this functionality will eventually make it into QSB proper, but until then you can grab the plugin here if you are interested.  The install process follows the same idea as my Delicious plugin install.

Delicious plugin for QSB, v0.2

Update: This version of the plugin has been superseded by version 0.3

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Google released an updated version of QSB with support for custom account types. Woohoo!  So, I’ve updated my Delicious plugin to take advantage of the new feature.

The code is of course available on GitHub.  You can grab the pre-built plugin right here.

Installation is a bit easier this time:

1. Make sure you are running the Titanium QSB release.
2. Download & unzip the plugin.
3. Copy the plugin to /Users/<your_user_name>/Library/Application Support/Google/Quick Search Box/PlugIns
4. Restart QSB.
5. Open the preferences, go to Accounts and add a Delicious account.
6. Once the account is added, make sure Delicious is checked under Searchable Items.

If you installed v0.1 with the custom plist file containing your Delicious username and password you can delete that file.

How to set up the Delicious plugin for QSB

Update: This version of the plugin has been superseded by version 0.2

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Right now setting up my Delicious plugin isn’t the easiest thing in the world - so here are some illustrated step-by-step instructions!

1. Download and unzip the plugin (Available here)

2. Copy the plugin file to the right directory.  This will be /Users/<your_user_name>/Library/Application Support/Google/Quick Search Box/PlugIns

3. Copy the plist file to the right directory.  This will be /Users/<your_user_name>/Library/Application Support/Google/Quick Search Box

4. Open the plist file with TextEdit.  Put in your Delicious username and password and save your changes.

5. Restart Google Quick Search Box and verify that the Delicious plugin is listed.  Under the S column (for ‘Sources’ I think) there should be a 1.

6. Make sure that Delicious Bookmarks are selected as a searchable item.

7. If all has gone well, your Delicious bookmarks and tags should show up as search results.

8. You can pivot on tags to narrow the results to just those bookmarks with the given tag.