Are you constantly hunting the WordPress Codex for functions and template tags? I know I spend a lot of time doing this whenever I am working on a new plugin. Andy Stratton too did the same until he created WPLookup.
WPLookup will take your query and take you to the corresponding WordPress Codex documentation in the function reference and template tags reference. If your search terms are not found, it will send you directly to a documentation search for your terms.
The site is very much in the nascent stages. And, I’m sure there is a lot more that can be added.
One suggestion could be that instead of sending the user directly to WordPress Codex, WPLookup can generate a search results page with a link to the codex article as well a link to the function declaration in the WordPress code using PHPXref.
The search results page can contain other related tags and links to their specific pages as well.
Any other features you would like to see added?
An auto-suggest feature to the box that maps it’s contents from the function list. It should parse what I type anywhere within the function name.
Although quite separate in scope, there used to be a WP Dreamweaver extension but is quite out of date. If someone has the skills/time/interest to get that back up to date (perhaps leveraging the new work that is being done to bring the documentation into the SVN) – that would be very awesome in my mind.
I have been hoping someone would update the Dreamweaver extensions for a long time. Though I admit not having things readily at hand and looking them up regularly has made me a better theme coder…
In addition to showing the source, any function could be a clickable link taking you to the code immediately rather than a new search.
From a brief use, a Google search is still far more useful to me.
As you mention, it would be far nicer if the tool had it’s own results page, showing some combination of Codex documentation, actual function code, and perhaps user’s notes on the function.
It’s a step in the right direction. I mean, the Codex docs are great but we’re long overdue for something more.
Here’s a suggestion……often times I know what I want to do, but don’t know the name of the function……I start with the Template Tags page on the Codex and browse a few that sound applicable until I find what I need……so maybe WP Lookup could return suggested functions based on a keyword or phrase?
I agree with David’s suggestion of WP Lookup having its own search results page. This has the potential to be a great tool also if it could segment search results to show Codex results first, suggested related functions, then perhaps some of the top Google results, which is often how I figure out how to use a function to do what I want.