Sleuth

Curio includes Sleuth, its integrated research assistant to make finding anything on the web fast and fun.

Sleuth can help you research ideas by giving you easy access to almost any search engine available on the Internet. You can quickly look up images, definitions, rhyming words, translations, and general information related to any topic. You only have to fill in the search field once, and then visit the sites that most interest you. When you find something you want to remember, simply drag and drop it into an idea space.

Searching in Sleuth

  1. Reveal the Sleuth window by clicking the Sleuth toolbar button or choosing the Window > Show Sleuth menu item.
  2. Type a word or phrase in the search field located at the top of the Sleuth window.
  3. Press Return to perform the search on the currently selected website, or choose a different site from the site popup menu located to the right of the search field.
  4. The search results will be displayed in the bottom part of the Sleuth window. You can explore your search results as you would any website.
  5. You can use the back and forward arrows at the top of the Sleuth window to navigate web pages.

Importing Sleuth Content into Curio

  1. Drag images, selected text, and web links from the Sleuth window to any idea space or the project library to save the results you like.
  2. Or right-click on an content in the Sleuth window and choose Send to Active Idea Space.
  3. You can grab the URL of the currently displayed page by dragging it from the status area located at the bottom of the Sleuth window.

Changing the Sleuth Site

  1. To see search results for the same word or phrase on a different site, click on the site menu and choose another site.
  2. You can also click on the up and down arrows next to the site menu to perform the same search on the previous and next sites within a category respectively.

Make the Sleuth Window Always Appear on Top of All Other Windows

  • Click the On Top toolbar button on the Sleuth window. Click again to turn off this feature.

Make the Sleuth Window Transparent so You Can See Through It

  • Click the Transparency toolbar button on the Sleuth window. Click again to turn off this effect.

Add or Edit Sleuth Sites

  • Click the Customize toolbar button on the Sleuth window, and follow the steps detailed on the next idea space.

Customizing Sleuth

Sleuth comes with built-in support for a number of the most popular Internet search sites. It also supports a flexible architecture that allows you to add additional Internet search sites to its list of supported sites.

Adding your own websites to Curio’s Sleuth tool can be as simple as drag and drop. It all depends on how search information is sent to the site’s server.

Note that Curio from the Mac App Store does not support remote, insecure http Sleuth sites.

GET or POST

An HTML form uses one of two methods to send information via HTTP to the server: GET or POST. When the GET method is used, all of the search criteria are passed to the server via the request URL. This makes it easy for Sleuth to extract the information needed directly from the request URL and automatically create a new site.

When the POST method is used, most of the search criteria are passed to the server in the body of the HTTP request. In this situation, Sleuth is unable to extract the necessary information from the resulting request URL to automatically create a new site. However, if you’re familiar with HTML and you have access to the HTML code for the search form you want to add to Sleuth, you can easily create a new site manually.

Add a New Search Site Based on the GET Method

  1. In Sleuth’s main window, click on the Customize button (the one with the pencil icon) to switch over to the Sleuth configuration view.
  2. Choose a collection from the list located along the left side of the window.
  3. In a web browser of your choosing, go to the desired website’s search page and execute a search for the word “Fish”. Searching for the word “fish” will allow you to skip step 5.
  4. After the search results are returned, drag the resulting URL from your web browser’s address field and drop it into the list of sites on the right side of the Sleuth window. You can position exactly where you’d like the new site to appear in the list.
  5. If Sleuth cannot automatically determine your search phrase, a dialog will appear asking you to select which word or phrase for which you searched. Select the word from the popup menu and click Choose. If your search phrase does not appear in the list, click None of the Above.
  6. The site information form will be displayed with the information Sleuth was able to extract. Type the name you want to give this site in the Name field.
  7. Click Save.

Add a New Search Site Based on the POST Method

  1. In Sleuth’s main window, click on the Customize button (the one with the pencil icon) to switch over to the Sleuth configuration view.
  2. Choose a collection from the list located along the left side of the window.
  3. Click the “+” button located under the list of sites on the right side of the window to add a new site.
  4. In the site information dialog, type a name for the site, type the action URL, select POST from the method popup menu, and add the necessary input parameters for this search engine.
  5. Click Save.
  6. The value for the search phrase input parameter should always be set to “%%PHRASE%%”. Sleuth will automatically replace this value with your search phrase when you execute a search. Take a look at how other sites are configured by double-clicking on them in the sites list for other examples.

Delete a Custom Sleuth Site

  • You can delete the selected site by pressing the Delete key.

Adding Search Site Collections

  1. In Sleuth’s main window, click on the Customize button (the one with the pencil icon) to switch over to the Sleuth configuration view.
  2. Click the “+” button located under the list of collections on the left side of the window to add a new collection.
  3. Type the name for the new collection.
  4. You can populate your new collection by creating new Sleuth sites or by dragging sites from another collection and dropping them onto your new collection.
  5. You can delete the selected collection by pressing the Delete key.

Enabling and Disabling Search Sites and Collections

  • Click the checkbox next to the item in the list.

KidSafe Sleuth

Curio’s amazing Sleuth internet research assistant is a quick and easy way to find images, videos, definitions, and other information on the internet. Since Sleuth can configured to search specific sites and the user simply enters the search phrase, it’s a wonderful way to restrict access to what a child can see.

Curio has a hidden option which will allow even more restrictive access via a KidSafe setting, which is perfect for school and home environments.

These restrictions include:

  • Only show KidSafe sites in its sites popup, such as Google Images with SafeSearch instead the normal Google Images.
  • Disallow Sleuth site customization.
  • Block any query phrase which contains profanity.
  • Block any query results which contain profanity.

To Enable KidSafe Sleuth

  1. Make sure Curio is not running then launch Applications > Utilities > Terminal and type the following and press Return:
    defaults write com.zengobi.curio “Sleuth Is KidSafe” -bool yes
  2. Or you can just click on this and relaunch.