Shortcat: Spotlight for OS X's UI | Hacker News Reader

Shortcat: Spotlight for OS X's UI

shortcatapp.com

28 pointsXyzodiac12 comments

This works surprisingly well! I especially like it in apps like Messages and Finder (try holding shift to see the hierarchy of the UI). It's also a good measure of site accessibility when used in the browser. Cool!

The Messages app doesn't work too well at the moment due to a weird way they expose the attributes of the conversation list, but I'll be adding a workaround soon.

I'm hoping this app will cause developers to try to make their apps/sites more accessible now that more people benefit from more accessible UIs.

I always thought that one of the main UI advantages of Windows vs. OSX is the keyboard control (at least until Microsoft made it a lot worse with the introduction of the Ribbons). This might be a very cool addition to OSX! Keep at it, this has IMO a potential market similar to better touch tools.

Yeah, I never figured out how to navigate around the UI with the keyboard on OSX as well as I did on Windows... I'll be adding faster menu access as well!

Well, because you can't. Mac OS in its essence has traditionally been developed for a Mouse/Keyboard combination - Keyboard only is not regarded as the "Mac way". I'd say that this is actually a pretty good match for Laptops, since the touchpad is very close - as long as the touchpad is good you can work pretty efficiently with this combination. However, on Desktops I've always felt limited by OSX compared to Windows and I think this is because your app is missing ;).

Let's just hope Apple will never shut the doors for Apps like yours. Given their current direction it's not unthinkable unfortunately.

There are ways to do it, like focusing the menu bar and what not, but I never remember shortcuts for that, which is one of the reasons I wrote Shortcat. Shortcuts themselves are another thing to have to remember, and I have a terrible memory. Until a shortcut becomes muscle memory, I find them annoying.

I don't think Apple will shut the door for Shortcat unless they're willing to remove the Accessibility API completely. That said, the Mac App Store doesn't allow apps that use the Accessibility API which is rather annoying...

This is awesome! I use Vimium, an extension for Chrome that does something similar, but have always wanted to be able to use my keyboard for the entire OS. http://vimium.github.com/

Hey, I'm the developer behind Shortcat. Feel free to ask me about the app!

Nice work Jack! Going to see if I can work this into my Alfred flow.

Only a small request from me - a smaller menu bar icon and/or an option to hide it altogether (though I'm using Bartender to hide it for now).

Thanks!

Right now, I'm working on making it faster and more stable before I move to cosmetics, but if you request it at http://shortcat.userecho.com/ and enough people vote it up, I'll make it a priority :)

Also, is Bartender more stable now? I had issues with it not working well when I first heard about it a few months back.

It's been pretty stable for me, the latest feature of momentarily unhiding icons if they change is great. Allows me to see when Dropbox is syncing or Time Machine backing up. Only issue I have is with apps that have transparent modals that won't trigger via keyboard shortcuts (Translate Tab). Definitely recommend it though if you like things tidy.

“Movement saved: 242,553 pixels”.

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