LiveWords Plug-in For Ben
The Heck of a Guy Tech Series Continues
After two days of posting about Heck of a Guy Search operations, we are ready to move on - to Ben’s petition, left in yesterday’s comment, for “a word definer - right click on a word - the definition pops up.”
Especially when conjoined with the pledge that “[he would] use that,” I could hardly ignore such a request while purporting to aspire to HeckOfAGuyness.
Researching the WordPress-compatible1 gizmos that performs tasks similar to the process Ben described, I found no exact matches.
Right Function - Wrong Location
There are a batch of tools that can be installed to the operating system of ones own computer or as a browser extension that connect a word on the screen with a reference site on the Internet. The Free Dictionary, for example, offers both a Desktop Assistant and a Right-Click Browser Add-on that looks up words at TheFreeDictionary.com.
Free Dictionary Desktop Assistant
Free Dictionary Firefox Extension
Off-Line Is Just Fine - For A Dictionary
For those of us whose Internet access is brittle, the excellent - and free - WordWeb program is - well, it’s excellent. Just hold down the Ctrl key, right click with the mouse on the word you want to look up, and you have got yourself one fine definition.
WordWeb has all kinds of extras, including the capacity to incorporate Internet sources.
I have used WordWeb for years and give it the highest recommendation.
Definition Tools for WordPress Blogs
Software that operates via a WordPress powered blog, however, is more limited. There are several that allow the blogger (that would be me) to designate words or phrases when composing posts that correspond to a glossary the blogger creates. Then, a right click, a hot key, or a hovering cursor pulls up that definition. These are especially useful for making technical posts accessible to non-geeks by defining terms in the context of the issue being discussed. I suspect, however, it would be difficult to guess which words at Heck of a Guy require definition; and re-writing the dictionary is not my idea of fun on the ol’ blog.
I finally discovered LiveWords, which empowers the WordPress reader (that would be you) to define any word or phrase in this blog by first highlighting it, which should trigger the appearance of a pop-up (more properly, a pop-over) box with a number of menu choices. In this example, I have highlighted “blog,” creating this menu of choices.
LiveWords Context Menu
Selecting a choice (in this example, I chose Wikipedia) fetches the definition from that source.
LiveWords Definition [Click to expand image]
This should be considered LiveWords’ audition for the cast of Heck of a Guy. If you have positive or negative experiences with it or if you know of a better alternative, please let me know.
Footnotes
- WordPress is the software that is the infrastructure of this blog. For those of you preparing for the SATs, Windows is to a PC as WordPress is to the Heck of a Guy blog. ~back~
- the free dictionary is the only one on the list that worked for me and after a time or two it began giving me advertisements instead of definitions -
Comment by ben — March 4, 2008 @ 7:53 pm