Selected Text to URL
Text selected in a message can be looked up on various websites and search engines by way of encoded URL strings. This functionality is the same in messages which are being composed, or which have been received.
At the bottom of the Edit menu are four entries:
- Dictionary
- Thesaurus
- Translate
The Dictionary and Thesaurus entries link to dictionary.com and thesaurus.com, respectively. (Both of which redirect to their respective subdomains at reference.com.)
The Translate feature automatically populates Yahoo's Babel Fish page with the selected term, at which point it is up to you to choose the desired languages.
Customizing
Each of the Selected Text entries have keyboard shortcuts assigned to them (Ctrl+3, Ctrl+4, etc.). While only four entries are included by default, there's actually space for a total of six. You can customize what each one does via hidden preference penelope.selectedTextURL1, penelope.selectedTextURL2, etc. (The hidden preferences dialogue is accessed via [Options/Prefs window] > Advanced > Config Editor.)
The format of the Selected Text entry is as follows:
- the name of the menu item
- a comma
- the URL to launch with "%s" (without the quotes) where the selected term should go
So the entry for Google looks like this:
Google,http://www.google.com/search?q=%s
And an entry for Wikipedia might look like this:
Wikipedia,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%s
You should test the syntactic validity of your URL's before adding them to your configuration.
The keyboard shortcuts are assigned by the application, and are not adjustable by the user.