Using Reference.com in IE7

While surfing, what will you do if you need to lookup a word without a dictionary at hand? It turns out to be a good idea to lookup it up by the services provided by Reference.com.  It can be set as a search provider if you are using IE7. Open the search provider setting dialog by click Changing Search Defaults … on the drop down list besides the search box embedded in IE7. Add this string as another search provider and set it default one.

 http://www.reference.com/browse/all/TEST

Attention: TEST must be in UPPERCASE so that it can be replaced by what you want to lookup. Press Ctrl-E to set focus on the search box. Press Alt-Enter can open the search result in a new tab window. What about it?

如果手頭沒有英文字典，可以用Reference.com查單詞。在IE7下，還可以把他加為一個搜索提供商，并設為缺省值。這樣，按Ctrl-E可以激活搜索框，按Alt-Enter可以在一個新的tab里面打開搜索結果，是不是很方便？添加搜索提供商的對應字符串如下（注意TEST必須大寫）：

 http://www.reference.com/browse/all/TEST

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Update [2007/06/28]

An easier way to add to the search provider list: while browsing reference.com, it can be automatically added as candidate into the popup list while clicking the down arrow button. That’s cool, isn’t it?

Also, another amazing dictionary service, The Free Dictionary , is strongly recommended. It provides dictionary, thesaurus, idioms, wikipedia and some other special references. Moreover, you can search by double-clicking a word on the page. That’s really awesome. Actually, it’s the one I used now.

還可以有一個更簡單的加入方法，在瀏覽reference.com時，單擊那個向下的小三角，點開增加搜索提供商的菜單，就會發現它已經作為一個候選被發現并放在里面了。

此外，發現一個更加推薦的站點The Free Dictionary。它提供了辭典、同義詞、成語、wikipedia等多個參考源。還有，它支持在頁面上直接雙擊查詞，厲害吧。我現在就在用它。贊！