QuickSilver for Mac Lives
lovequicksilver.com
lovequicksilver.com
The last example shows all the menu items for the app in quicksilver, so I can search through it. Kind of like the search box in the app's help menu, but faster and easier (just make sure to bind that action to a key).
Select an item in finder, press [alt-cmd-space] and type "email", [tab], then type the name of the person (QS searches your address book) and then hit enter to send off.
EDIT: Not very stable though...crashed it just now when trying to use the proxy select to append to file.
It's a lot more stable now that I trashed the associated .plist and reinstalled.
For all of the Alfred-switchers in here - does anyone else find the folder navigation pretty unintuitive? Or am I doing it wrong?
LaunchBar / QS's approach: Type "Documents" to bring up folder, use up & down to select things, and left or right arrows to drill into them. Typing anything searches everything within the current folder. So intuitive to me!
Alfred: "Documents" brings up folder, Command+Down(?) to open it. Then use up & down to select things, and Command+Down to drill in. If you want to say, open a folder in Finder, you have to hit Command+O or "Enter" and "Enter". You can search but only by the first letters in the filename (not "pdf") .
So for your converts - what's the deal, do you prefer this style, am I doing it wrong, or do you just get used to it..?
E.g. Type "docu", Documents shows up as top results, right arrow, then pick your action either by arrow down or cmd + number.
If all you want to do is open a folder, prefix your search term by "open" or hit the spacebar first (shortcut for "open"). If you want to reveal it in Finder, just type "find" first, and if you want to search inside files, just type "in" first.
If you give Alfred a chance (and accept that it isn't trying to be Quicksilver), you'll really get into a groove with it.
Everything in QS is very regular, Object-Verb style interaction with fuzzy completion of both. Alfred has a wartier, more irregular interaction model: it's Verb-Object if you want to type the verb, but it seems to push you into command key combos, which operate on a Object-Verb basis, and there doesn't feel like much logic as to what's available as what.
To me, QS was more powerful, but Alfred was more polished.
I know Quicksilver has had some false starts before..
http://lipidity.com/apple/cleaning-up-quicksilver/
http://code.google.com/p/blacktree-alchemy/updates/list
http://www.43folders.com/2008/07/08/quicksilver-update
I'm curious - are these efforts building on each other, or is everyone starting from scratch each time?
http://www.shadowlab.org/Software/spark.php
It's an excellent free (but not open source) and complete Triggers replacement that has none of the bugs of Quicksilver's implementation.
Once I had a keyboard shortcut manager, I was happy to switch to LaunchBar, whose author, among other things, is also the creator of Little Snitch, an amazing interactive outbound firewall.
I loved me some QuickSilver in days of yore, but I'll never switch back; LaunchBar is too excellent, and it's burned into my brain at this point. :)
Alfred kind of bizarrely stops half-way there: you type anything to find the object you want to manipulate, and then... pick a verb by hitting the appropriate command key or arrowing through a list. My hands are already in the middle of the keyboard, just let me type the verb name!
Alfred is really just a launcher with a few nice bonus features (clipboard history & spell are my favourite) where as quicksilver is more like a command line power house.
examples:
open report.pdf - opens in default pdf application
find report.pdf - opens directory in finder
(Edited formatting)
I don't think I've every come across launch bar but I agree on the price.
1. Turn on fuzzy matching in the preferences under Applications (with or without anchoring, as you prefer)
2. Create a Spotlight Comment if you want to call it something completely different (e.g. label all your browsers with the keyword "browser" to launch them all at once) More on Spotlight comments here: http://help.alfredapp.com/features/applications/
The mac is the only platform where I haven't felt the need for a decent launcher app!
There are all sorts of actions, from relaunching apps, deleting, emailing, or moving files, running scripts (I use get ip frequently), reading text, etc. It also gives fast access to some non-file things, like address book cards (right arrow to drill in to contact information, which let's you make new emails).
There are addons for a lot of things like bookmarks for various browsers, mouse gesture triggers, Cyberduck bookmarks, etc. It's fantastic if you prefer a keyboard over mousing.
Unfortunately, QSB was a major memory hog on my system when compared to Quicksilver and Alfred.
http://groups.google.com/group/qsb-mac-discuss/msg/ded590b8b...