I have no problem with the affiliate links… Inquisitor really completes Safari for me, and having it free is really generous. I can see why people reacted so strongly to finding out about the links, but at the end of the day, who was it really hurting?

Also, as your products grow in popularity, your reputation seems to grow in notoriety. In all seriousness, for you own good, I might suggest asking someone to handle your PR. (I’m more then happy to volunteer!)

Well this should stop people complaining. Thanks for releasing a new build and keep up the good work. Looking forward to NewsFire 2 still.

Wow, above and beyond the call of duty. I can see how the pressure might make you agree to mark links, but to allow their disabling? Well played Mr. Watanabe! Very classy. I hope this results in an increased stream of donations for you.

Thank you for the update!
However, I will not disable affiliate links.
Why? Because Inquisitor is the only thing that keeps me from switching from Safari to FireFox. I could not imagine myself working without it. You deserve these little extra’s, David!

allready paid 5$ when Inquisitor was not freeware. remember us, paid customers, too.

Excellent decision. I’ve found Inquisitor very useful. If I may offer one piece of constructive criticism: despite what you said in your recent blog post, the affiliate link behaviour was not mentioned anywhere during the original release. What I think upset people the most was that this was a hidden function, and that it was not obvious that these results were getting priority over natural search results.

Anyway, I applaud your decision to make it both obvious and optional. Personally, as long as I’m aware of it, I’m happy to click affiliate links if it’s the right link — it doesn’t cost me anything after all.

Good move! Look forward to future development on the app. Inquisitor is invaluable to my web browsing experience and it would be catastrophic to see it go away.

Nice!

Good idea Dave, i think everyone will appreciate having the choice, well those who didn’t understand the reasoning behind it in the first place.

Great Job.

Well, good for you for doing this, though I don’t think it was necessary. Thank you for elegant software.

Dave,

While I could have cared lees about the recent hooplah, I think this move is a good one. As my old business law prof used to chant, “When in doubt, disclose, disclose, disclose.” Kudos to you for taking the steps to make full disclosure blatantly obvious.

This is definitely the way to handle this.

Thanks for doing that Dave. I didn’t have a huge issue with it before (mainly because I didn’t know), when I found out about it I was a little disappointed, but this latest release has done a lot to undo that.

BTW, I have bought both NewsFire and Xtorrent – and they’re great programs. Sure there are free alternatives, but as a designer I prefer things that look nice…and you’ve done a great job on the UI!

Hopefully lesson learnt, great move!

The right move to make.

Way to go Dave, but I won’t be disabling the affiliate links. At times, they are just what I’m looking for. And if it helps you out in supporting the great apps that you put out then I’m glad to do my part.

Good move — I didn’t stop using Inquisitor since this issue came up because I think you deserve a little money for this incredibly useful tool. But I can see why others threw up on it.

So kudos for this move, I appreciate it!

Well done! And in return, I’ll keep the affiliate links active.

Bravo, thanks for addressing user concerns.

Nice one Dave.

Inquisitor has always been a fantastic product, and this should keep the critics happy.

I do greatly appreciate this move.

Yeah – I purchased a copy of the original Inquisitor, too (and it was freeware only days thereafter) but never felt bad about it… and I think this is the right way. No-1 can blame you for getting something back from all your time spent on the software, and being open about it (now) just makes a good feeling :)

Well done. Affiliate links weren’t the issue, transparency was. I’ll be glad to reinstall Inquisition.

Thanks! I will be keeping the affiliate links enabled but appreciate the option

I appreciate the update but disagree completely that this was required. I think you made a fantastic product and having affiliates listed in the search results didn’t bother me a bit. Either way, its nice to know a developer of such a great app still listens to those who use his product. Great work!

Can’t keep a good man down. You ROCK Dave. Don’t let the haters get you down.

Love inquisitorx…one thing that always bugs be though:

I want to be able to put my custom added search engines at the top of the list, because when I know I want to be using one of them, I type my search term, and then arrow down to the search and hit enter.

Because the web search results take a second to load up, I end up hitting down arrow and enter really quick to select one of my searches, but I end up inadvertently selecting one of the searches as they pop up.

Happens to me alot, would be a great addition. Just bought Newsfire too, loving that.

The people who were complaining about this are self-righteous a-holes and don’t deserve to use Inquisitor, or an Apple computer, for that matter. Their punishment should be relegation to Internet Explorer 6 for all of eternity. No affiliate links there!

I hope this shuts the idiots up, but would it be possible to expand the affiliate options? Have multiple shopping search sites pre-plugged-in with affiliate links? I’d like to do what I can to support the developers I like, and 99% of the time I buy something, nobody is getting any affiliate money.

Heck, here’s a nice idea: have an Inquisitor Shopping Edition where it’s loaded with affiliate links, but you can chose to have the cash go to either you or a separate account that gets donated to charity. That’d be handy.

Thanks Dave.

I sent a donation by PayPal. I really hope that other people turning it off do the same.

Uh. I was wondering. If it was possible, could you give an option to remove the green affiliate button while keeping the affiliate links? I do realise that a lot of people have had a problem with that, but an option in the preferences would be great.

Hey I just wanted to say thanks for making this piece of software. To echo Zach in the comments above, Inquisitor really does complete Safari for my purposes. Keep up the good work.

Brilliant move – appreciate the transparency.

Great move!

The previous behaviour was definitely not right, but this the perfect solution. The problem weren’t the affiliate links themselves, but the fact that they were indistinguishable from real search results. Now I am leaving affiliate links ON. I’m pretty happy to give something for a great program.

Btw, I’m a registered user of NewsFire, and i’m really excited about version 2. Any news?

Free software and they’re complaining. Just people – never is good enough for them.

Thanks Dave, this is one product that really makes Safari worth using.

Very nice app, I’m a registered NewsFire user and this is as clear and useful as NewsFire. One improvement I can suggest is allowing some way to color the background, you know we Mac users like to color-coordinate (and black is a bit jarring). Thanks again.

Kudos.

Thanks for the option to disable the affiliate links. I love Inquisitor but was upset about that revelation. I just made a donation which I think does the right thing.

Jason

Good for you!
I like your apps!!
I just wish you had a BETTER support system other than…NONE at all…..

It’s a great product and I use it a lot. I wonder if you can add search engines for the other region such as Hong Kong and other Asia cities?

In spotlight, if the first item is the correct one, you can just press enter.

Is there any way to just go to the first site quickly in inquisitor. I don’t want to go to the google search site because I have found what I was looking for. Maybe a hotkey like Command+Return to go to the first listed of the results. Thank You.

Kudos Dave.

I like how classy it looks. Great move.

Fantastic move. I don’t use the product, but I must congratulate you on doing the right thing.

Just like v50, you still can’t set the search engine to Yahoo US. It ignores the setting and still uses Google US.

Thank you for doing the right thing and still looking forward to NewsFire 2!!! I hope you are not going to give up updating NewsFire 2 at all

When I first heard of the hooplah concerning this app, I was outraged (I guess I tripped and fell onto the bandwagon). However, the longer I thought about it, I came to the “who cares” conclusion. If that’s how you need to recover costs, it’s certainly a “user-friendly” way of doing it.

I think the biggest problem that serious folks had about it was the fact that the affiliate links weren’t marked as such – not so they knew which ones were going to make you money, but so we knew which ones weren’t really the best search results.

Personally, I think you’ve gone too far in adding the ability to turn them off. Marking them was enough to satisfy 95% of the people out there. The other 5% wouldn’t have been happy to begin with.

This is a really fantastic application and I applaud this update.

I think Luke (around comment #7) really hit the nail on the head as to why some people had an issue with the affiliate links. While I wasn’t a vocal complainer, I was disappointed at the default behavior. With this new release, I don’t think anyone can complain.

Thanks for providing this piece of free software. I certainly appreciate the disclosure and don’t plan on turning off the affiliate links.

I’m happy to have affiliate links but I would be happier if they were slightly less common. For example, if I search for “MacBook reset PMU” (like I did earlier today) using Google UK, the top link is an Amazon affiliate link.

An affiliate for “MacBook” make sense but clearly isn’t useful for a query such as mine, and the end result is one useless search result right at the top of the list.

I’m very happy with this program and I already added Youtube, Dictionary, etc. to the custom sites.
But there’s a minor glitch which makes my life hell:
Keyboard shortcuts always work! I mean, I do a search, and then I forget about it, and navigate on the sites. 5 minutes later I press enter – and Inquisitor performs again the last search.
Worse: if I add a shortcut to command+A, command+C, and I want to copy a text, for example, instead of copying, Inquisitor performs a search.
I think it should be corrected, and shortcuts should only work when I’m in the search field. I use the latest Safari under Leopard.
But still, it’s the most wonderful (and free) plugin I’ve ever seen.
Maybe you should add Youtube to the preloaded search sites.

It’s nice you’ve transparented this whole thing. Now nobody will be able to say sillinesses.

How do i uninstall Inquisitor?

Not cool.

No instructions on or automatic way to uninstall the software — no, the installer does not offer the option.

(Why would I want to do that? I think it conflicts with Saft — I can no longer access the search history menu.)

Inquisitor has not been showing web site results for some searches since 10.5.2 upgrade. Anyone else seeing this?

Stunning! I just installed Inquisitor 3 & it’s superb!!!

As an Software / UI Designer, I would however like to make couple of core suggestions:
1, Allow the user to choose more results (upto 20 please!)
2, Provide an option to shift it all over to the URL field
3, Charge us $4.99 for it: a 2 month trial would be ideal

For option 3, I strongly recommend a firm I use for my own software: eSellerate. If you do opt to include my suggestions, pop me an e-mail over – a little mention is always appreciated! ;)

I guess it’s better, but it takes FOREVER to connect. I checked my cable speed and it’s up there. Any ideas.

*drools* Need more xtorrent updates.

What would make inquisitor so much more usable for me is if it somehow integrated itself into the address bar and merged as one. I don’t want anymore of this tabbing to get to something I always use first (I hardly ever type into the address bar nowadays – its all about inquisitor baby)!

does anybody know how to uninstall inquisitor?

How do I contact the person who created Acquisition, I need my license code, I no longer have access to my old email address to get the license code recent there.

Kindest Regards,

Sebastian

How can I uninstall Inquisitor 3?

One usability suggestion to the otherwise _superb_ software:

Could it be possible to keep the result palette open when you command-click on a link?

(I often command-click to open a link in a new tab and often I then also want to continue to command-click on a couple of the other links, but then I first have to click on the triangle in the find field and let Inquisitor search again…)

Is there anyway to remove the history for this application?

Thanks for this program. Truly, this has been my best EVER download! Love this toolbar to bits. Thanks for making this.

Not sure if this is the right place to make feature requests, but…
I would love to be able to do Google searches for the domain of the page I am currently viewing. Like when you enter “search_term site:domain.tld” into the search field on google.com, only that the site-part would com from the browsers current location.
Don’t you think you could add that?

After some hours of using Safari, Inquisitor becomes incredibly slow. Then I have to cancel my current work, quit Safari (and thereby lose my browsing history at the “back” buttons) and start again.
This will recover full speed of Inquisitor – for a few hours.

I really like this free app, but this issue is absolutely bugging me.

Another improvement request:
Could you please escape the search strings in the Additional Search Engines section’s custom entries so that non ASCII characters are transferred correctly.
Thank you!

Hey I downloaded the file, uncompressed it, and when I ran the installer it said the installer is ‘damaged’ or something, and said it may be the permissions but I checked and those are fine. Do you know what the problem is? I would have emailed you but I couldn’t find your address around the site

Does Inquisitor work with Safari 3.1?
Can’t live without it, so I need to make sure before I update.

How do you uninstall Inquisitor?
Thanks!

Hallo!

This sounds very great, but the download site is down!

Please help!

best regards
Thomas

I add my voice to the other ones: this is a very good product!
Anyway: I’m using the last version 3.0(v52), but I don’t see any sponsored link nor the way to enble/disable… Why?
If it is important, I use italian OSX.5.2.

A suggestion for italian users: if you want to use the it.wikipedia, the right link to insert in the preferences tab is the following:
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speciale:Ricerca?search=%@&go=Vai

Thanks Dave!

How do I remove/uninstall Inquisitor ?

I just installed inquisition and it is really cool. My only problem is after installing and restarting safari, my 1password button has disappeared.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thank you.

This is awesome…I’ve been using Inquisitor for a few years now, and it’s getting better every time.

One question: Have you ever thought of making something like this for iTunes? It would be enormously helpful to be able to input part or an artist’s name or something and get suggestions on the spot. Searching in iTunes isn’t the friendliest thing I’ve ever done.

Okay, so I haven’t seen any mention of it anywhere else, so I thought that I’d ask. I use and love Inquisitor at home (using the sponsored links). However, at work I have to live in the Windows world. Apple has made this a little bit more pleasant by creating Safari for Windows, but I don’t have Inquisitor. So, is there any chance that there will be (or already is) a version of Inquisitor available for Safari for Windows?

Hello,

Inquisitor is really great.

Unfortunately, after making 30-50 searches and opening the corresponding results, it starts to become VEEERY slow, and I am forced to shut down Safari and relaunch it in order to get the initial speed of Inquisitor. By “slow” I mean that when I type some text in the search field, each letter appears every 1 or 2 seconds. I am using Leopard 10.5.2 and Safari 3.1, but I remember that I had the same problem with Safari 3.0 as well.

I really hope that this problem can be fixed soon. If other people are experiencing this problem as well, please post about it.

Thanks a lot,
Vital

Great Software, i love it.
But why i can’t open my search results in a new tab?????

Some apple-key modifiers don’t seem to work for me under Safari 3.1 (on 10.5.2). Eg. ‘apple+right arrow’ doesn’t open an Inquisitor suggestion in a new tab.
Thanks for the software.

I really like Inquisitor. But I stopped using it for another reason altogether. In Safari’s regular search, when you do a Command-Click, it opens up your search in another tab. Inquisitor disables that.

It should be a minor addition to the software to open in another tab if one chooses. I’ve gotten so used to opening searches in different tabs that I would rather forgo the usefulness of Inquisitor than do without the tabbing.

Please add that functionality to Inquisitor and I’ll definitely come back to it.

PS an uninstall option in the package would be nice, too.

So for those of us who are not utter douchebags and would actually love to support you through affiliate links, have you considered increasing the number of them? When using Inquisitor, I very rarely run into them and I’d love to support you in such a way. And since there’s an option to opt-out now, I don’t see why you should hold back in any way.

Not working on Leopard with Safari 3.1.1 for me :(
Maybe some update soon?

Inquisitor became a “must have” for me when using Safari. However, would it be possible to include Japanese Google (http://www.google.co.jp) inside preferences, or, maybe even better, the ability for users to set their preferred search site for the search window?
Joha

I am looking around your website for instructions on how to add my own search engines, as your product picture depicts. I’m wanting to add searches for IMDB.com, Netflix, Amazon, and others.

Thanks in advance.

Walt D in LV
http://www.thecinemaniacs.com