View source for 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:
* '''Google'''
* '''Dictionary'''
* '''Thesaurus'''
* '''Translate'''

The Dictionary and Thesaurus entries link to [http://dictionary.com dictionary.com] and [http://thesaurus.com thesaurus.com], respectively. (Both of which redirect to their respective subdomains at [http://reference.com reference.com].)

The Translate feature automatically populates Yahoo's [http://babelfish.yahoo.com/ 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 '''[[Documentation Conventions and Nomenclature|[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 [http://google.com Google] looks like this:
<blockquote>Google,<nowiki>http://www.google.com/search?q=%s</nowiki></blockquote>

And an entry for [http://wikipedia.org Wikipedia] might look like this:
<blockquote>Wikipedia,<nowiki>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%s</nowiki></blockquote>

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.