Colibri Type Ahead - Today's Free File

Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Productivity, Freeware

Colibri Type Ahead - Today's Free File

by Jason Clarke Jan 26th 2006

Colibri was pointed out to us by reader Zach in the comments for the recent post about SlickRun. Zack points out that Colibri has some things in common with the highly acclaimed Mac launcher program extraordinaire, Quicksliver. Colibri is a learning application launcher, which means that once you choose a given application, it becomes the first choice for the initial sequence of letters you type. It's very quick and responsive, good things for a launcher to be, and has a pleasing look to it.

There are a couple of quirks that should be pointed out though, if you decide to give this launcher a try. Firstly, the documentation is all but nonexistent. Clicking help from within the application simply sends you to the features page from the websites. Also, upon first launching Colibri, it will do an index of your start menu and quick-launch folders, but gives no warning that it will be doing so, other than an enigmatic white orb that floats in the center of your screen saying, simply, "Start Menu" then "Quick Launch". No progress bar or anything like that. Finally, once it has installed and indexed, pressing the hot-key combination to bring it up (or clicking on the system tray icon) brings up a completely blank white rectangle in the middle of the screen. It took me three tries before I realized I need to start typing something at this point for it to go to work. Once you wrap your head around it (and it takes no time at all) you might find you've got an intuitive new way to launch all your favorite programs.

Tags: launcher, Quicksilver

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Jeff said 10:59AM on 1-26-2006

Anybody figure out how to activate the Volume Control or Colibri Settings as listed in the "Help"?

Jason said 11:38AM on 1-26-2006

There's a note on the Colibri page that says "(Note: not all of the described features are yet present in Colibri 9α)", so those features are probably not yet working.

Angel said 12:53PM on 1-26-2006

You should also check "Find & Run Robot" (yes, I know, the name sucks ;-)

I've tried all freeware (and shareware) application launchers and while I like Colibri (it looks real cool "Find & Run Robot" (FRR) is the best launcher I've used (and the only one that is still installed on my machine). It is _very_ customizable, from its looks (you can select among many cool skins) to the folders that it searches to the types of files that you want it to find and so much more.

Give it a try: http://www.donationcoder.com/Software/Mouser/findrun/index.html

Don't be put off by the picture in their website. That picture uses the default (windows) skin, which is ugly. There are many more which are much better.

Cheers,

Angel

Jason said 2:18PM on 1-26-2006

Thanks Angel - I'll be posting about Find and Run Robot tomorrow!

Raj Mandalia said 2:31PM on 1-26-2006

I emailed Colibri's creator, Michael and he replied promptly with help regarding the getting to the settings - check http://colibri.leetspeak.org/whatsnew/. Also he said in his email that to search Google its

Google Search Term

carl said 4:58PM on 1-26-2006

Jeff (#1): type "volume", then hit the tab key, then use the up or down buttons to select up/down/mute.

I just installed this and it works quite well. Then I tried SlickRun and didn't find it nearly as easy to use. Even if slickrun is more powerful, I'll probably just use colibri.

Tivac said 10:45PM on 1-26-2006

I can't get it to launch anything, pressing enter closes the Colibri window but doesn't actually launch anything. Is there something I'm just totally missing here?

Jason said 12:26AM on 1-27-2006

Tivac - once you get the window up, start typing the name of a program you use regularly - even Notepad. It should start bringing up program names and then pressing Enter should launch the one it's currently highlighting. Good luck!

Tivac said 5:09AM on 1-27-2006

Jason, I know how it works. It's just that beyond launching file paths (C:, D:temp, etc) Colibri just doesn't do anything. Even if I type in a name, hit tab to select the "Launch" option, and then hit enter. Colibri closes the popup and nothing happens. I've tried rebooting and making sure nothing else is running, but nothing has helped.

den said 6:44AM on 1-27-2006

I don't know why MS just create and provide us a similar tool NOW for XP. It's already part of Vista (check out the vid)

http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=114694 or
http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=114710

Sorry I can't remember which video it's in, but it's in one of these.

Jason said 1:16PM on 1-27-2006

Sorry Tivac, I misunderstood your original comment. I can't think of why it wouldn't be working though. :-(

carl said 1:26PM on 1-27-2006

I installed it on one machine and it works fine. On another machine, it mysteriously opens everything in my start menu, control panel, etc., except for my OpenOffice programs. Maybe it could use a little more work.

Bram said 1:04PM on 1-28-2006

I got some weird problems too, everything I want to launch using Colibri opens up in Notepad. It seems like instead of running the shortcuts it opens them in Notepad.

Dan Geech said 12:12AM on 1-29-2006

Awesome program. Thanks DownloadSquaud.
Really...It kicks ass.
ctrl+space

Taylor said 12:01PM on 3-14-2006

Try Launchy

http://launchy.net/

Uses way less resources than Colibri, but doesn't have volume control or anything. Works great, otherwise.

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