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Quicksilver posts

Filed under: Internet, Productivity, Search

Quicksilver-like chosr is made for web browsing

by Christina Clark Aug 4th 2008

chosr
chosr is a web based bookmarking and productivity tool. It uses a Quicksilver type interface and apparently, if you're a Quicksilver user it's very intuitive. If, like me, you're not, it takes a little bit to get the hang of the interface. (More about Quicksilver).

The idea is that basic keystrokes move you through a three panel screen. So if I want to search for Download Squad in the first box I would use the period key to open my text entering mode and type in Download Squad. I would then press the tab key to move to the next window where I would again press the period key to enter text. You can type in various search methods like Google, wikipedia, YouTube, etc. Tab over to the third square and the default for searching "in new window" will probably already be there. Press enter and a new window with your search results will open.

Want to bookmark it in your chosr file? Copy the url, paste into the first box, after hitting the period, tab to the second box and type bookmark and you will be ready to go. Then you can bookmark all your daily sites, tab through them and basically eliminate your mouse for some things.

I have not used Quicksilver before so it seemed very awkward to me. For example at one point I got to a list where one of the options was to change the background. I was happy about that since the normal background is rather ugly. I couldn't get the right combination in the right boxes to actually make it work though, which was frustrating.

If you're a regular user of Quicksilver and you enjoy it, you should definitely check out chosr. If you're looking to use your keyboard more and have a few minutes to play with it, then check it out. And if you can change the background, let me know how!

Tags: chosr, Quicksilver

Filed under: Design, Developer, Macintosh, Productivity

Bezel HUD and Showcase: seamless Quicksilver interfaces for Leopard

Macby Jay Hathaway Feb 15th 2008

Bezel HUDWe've written before about Quicksilver, the indispensable launcher app that lets you quickly get to any file on your Mac with just a few keystrokes. Quicksilver is a nice-looking piece of software, but the default interface fits a lot better with the overall look of Tiger than it does with Leopard. Fortunately, German designer Julius Eckert has created some impressive new skins that are particularly well suited to the latest version of OS X.

Bezel HUD is a sleek, compact improvement on Quicksilver's built-in bezel interface. The translucent black look will be familiar to users of HUD-based applications like Twitterrific. Because the design is modeled on an element of Leopard itself, it feels like part of the operating system, which is exactly how Quicksilver is meant to feel.

Eckert has released a second interface called Showcase, built to take advantage of the larger icons in OS X 10.5. Although it takes up a huge amount of screen real estate compared to Bezel Hud, Showcase is perfect for showing off Quicksilver to the uninitiated. It displays your icons at their largest size and reflects them against a black backdrop, which is visually striking and makes it easy to see exactly what you're doing in Quicksilver.

We love the interface work Eckert has released so far, but we're even more excited about what's next. Eckert has posted screenshots and a demo video for SilverFlow, his upcoming Quicksilver UI based on OS X's Cover Flow feature. His sense of how Leopard apps ought to look is so impressive that it's hard to believe he just got his first Mac in December.

Tags: design, Leopard, OS X, OsX, Quicksilver, skin, UI design, UiDesign

Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Productivity, Microsoft, Freeware

Enso Launcher now free

Windowsby Jason Clarke Feb 10th 2008

Enso launcher About a year ago we first discussed an intriguing but flawed program launcher called Enso. The big knocks against it in our review were that it had a large memory footprint, and that it was a commercial application competing against a number of very good free launchers.

For some people, memory footprint will continue to be an issue. However, memory continues to drop in price, and it's not uncommon to be running 2 to 4 GB of system RAM today. If you're in that situation, does an application eating up 45 MB of RAM really matter that much?

If price was your main reason for not trying Enso Launcher (or for not sticking with it), it's your lucky day. The folks at Humanized have decided to make Enso a free product.

There's no doubt that Enso is a beautiful application launcher, and with a price tag of free it becomes quite compelling. We'd still like to see them change the syntax so that instead of verb-subject (i.e. Go Firefox) it was structured subject-verb more like Quicksliver on the Mac. That's really a minor quibble though. If you value style as much as functionality on your PC, Enso Launcher is certainly worth a second look.

Tags: Enso, Enso-Launcher, launcher, program-launcher, Quicksilver

Filed under: Utilities, Macintosh, Productivity, Freeware

Quicksilver ?51 Available

Macby Jay Savage Sep 6th 2006

QuicksilverQuciksilver, the popular, perpetually in googlebeta "unified, extensible interface" for OS X has been updated to β51. If you haven't seen the little update screen yet, you will soon. The update is mostly bugfixes for the core plugins; It looks like all of them got overhauled. More interesting is the release note that build 3800, a.k.a. β51, is "Final Tweaks," capital F, capital T. Does that mean the next version will be a release? I hope so. The developers have put a lot of work--3800 builds and counting--into this little gem and, while I've enjoyed the free downloads, they deserve to make a little money off it.

For those of you who aren't sure what a unified, extensible interface is, it's difficult to explain. In it's most basic form, it provides keyboard shortcuts for application launching. You hit CTRL-Space at any time, type the first few letters of an application name, and it launches. With the core plug-ins, it can be tweaked to use to also find files through spotlight, mail, Address Book contacts, and even iPhoto photos. That's pretty powerful. The really nifty part, though, is the "extensible" bit. Authors can write plugins for virtually anything, allowing you to tie almost anything, from system events to Automator actions to keystrokes and other triggers to control everything from your destop picture to your GMail. Think of it as Mission Control for your Mac.

Tags: application launcher, ApplicationLauncher, Quicksilver

Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Productivity, Freeware

Colibri Type Ahead - Today's Free File

Windowsby 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

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