Firefox/IE only (Windows/Mac/Linux): Browser extension Select-n-Go integrates inline search results into any page for quick research without all the tab clutter.
Once installed, select any text on the page and a small icon will appear near the mouse that, when clicked, will display an inline framed window with search results from multiple search engines. You can navigate between results from different search engines without leaving the page, handy for quickly doing research on a topic. Since pictures speak better than words, we'll go through a quick screenshot preview of how it works.
The default thumbnail view for Google Images is handy for finding related pictures for a search term.
The simple YouTube view is useful for quickly searching for related videos.
The first thing you'll want to do after installation is to change the activation delay to fit your preference—the default might activate the dialog a little too quickly for your taste.
In the Channels tab, you can choose to enable or disable any channels you don't want to see (Baidu might be an odd choice for english-speaking readers).
This extension could be worth a look for anybody doing research online, although the fly-out window isn't quite as convenient as it could be—in my testing the icon would appear in weird places sometimes. For a similar concept that previews links or media instead, check out previously mentioned CoolPreviews. If you'd rather put your contextual information in the sidebar, the Juice Firefox extension (original post) might be worth a try, or you could just stick with the trusty Context search extension and remember to close the tabs when you are done.
Select-n-Go is a free download, works anywhere Firefox or Internet Explorer does. Except IEs 4 Linux.
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