launcher posts

Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Open Source

Could open source Blaze be the best Windows application launcher ever?

by Lee Mathews Sep 24th 2009

Just as with Launchy or Gnome Do, there's not a heck of a lot to see in a screenshot of Blaze's main window. The orange-ish command box really only gives a glimpse as to what's possible with Blaze, however.

For starters, it's smart enough to find what you're looking for even if you should happen to stumble over your keys a bit (e.g. the butchered Photoshop entry above). Lurking behind the scenes is a powerful automation handling system and plugin support (skin support is coming soon).

The automator watches silently in the background, waiting to observe you performing repetitive tasks. When it spots something, Blaze will alert you and offer to create an action to handle the task next time. On the project page, the author demonstrates this functionality by renaming a directory full of photos. Blaze can also record macros -- so you can just press record, start doing what you need to do, and presto! You've got a new action.

Blaze ships with .dll plugins to provide several handy functions, like creating emails, performing calculations, index the ID3 tags of your MP3s, and more.

I can see myself enjoying Blaze on my netbook even without all the advanced functions. Since my typing isn't quite as accurate on the scaled-down keys, it's nice to know that Blaze will still be able to launch apps even if I hit a few wrong keys here or there.

edit: forgot to mention, .NET 3.5 is required - sorry, running Windows 7 you sometimes forget that it's still an additional download for some!

[via MakeUseOf]

Tags: application-launcher, launcher, launchy, open-source, portable

Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Freeware, Windows x64

Create a custom launcher using a Windows 7 jumplist

by Lee Mathews Jun 25th 2009

Windows 7's jumplists have a lot of untapped potential. Very few applications are taking advantage of them yet, though that's sure to change once the RTM has dropped.

One slick use I discovered (thanks to Shell Extension City) is Hedgehog's Jumplist Launcher. The free program allows you to create a customized menu with links to your favorite applications and folders which you can access by right-clicking the launcher's icon. It's a Windows 7 take on adding a new toolbar to your taskbar and creating custom shortcut folders.

Launch the app and pin it to your taskbar, and start building your list. Now, it's a little rough around the edges, so don't expect a totally hassle-free experience. Create a group (games, apps, etc.) and then add shortcuts - I found it easiest to drag and drop them from an Explorer window. Folders can also be added, though you can already pin them to your Explorer icon.

Back to the "rough around the edges" bit. Sometimes when you add a new app, several of your icons will change. Also, its interface is still in a half-German, half-English state. If that's offputting to you, wait for the next release.

Icons aren't all that important to me and I was able to deal with the language mix with no real trouble, so I think I'll keep Jumplist Launcher around and play with it some more.

YouTube clip after the break, for those of you who want to see it in action!

Tags: jumplists, launcher, windows-7

Filed under: Utilities, Macintosh, Productivity, Browsers

Quickfire add-on opens your Mac apps from Firefox

by Jay Hathaway Apr 25th 2009

There are a lot of slick ways to launch an application on a Mac. OS X's built-in Spotlight does the trick fairly quickly, and a lot of people swear by Quicksilver. If you're a Firefox addict, though, you might like having the ability to open your apps from the Firefox URL bar. Quickfire does just that.

Once you install it, app names will autocomplete in the Firefox Awesome Bar, just like URLs you've bookmarked or visited before. For my money, you might as well get the power of Quicksilver, which opens from anywhere and does more than launch applications. But if you're in Firefox all the time, and you have to be able to do absolutely everything from the browser, Quickfire might be worth a look.

[via Webware]

Tags: extension, firefox, launcher, quickfire

Filed under: Utilities, Productivity, Mozilla, Browsers

TaskFox, Ubiquity in Firefox, releases a prototype

by Jay Hathaway Apr 8th 2009

Following right after the news that Mozilla plans to integrate the powerful command-line task interface Ubiquity, there's now a TaskFox prototype and a demo video available. The prototype and the demo give you good a taste of the way people will probably interact with tasks in their browsers in the very near future. Although the appearance of the TaskFox interface is obviously pretty rough so far, this preview does cover a lot of the major things users do in Ubiquity.

TaskFox actually improves on Ubiquity in an important way: results are entire keyboard-navigable. Being able to accomplish tasks mouse-free is one of the major advantages of a product like Ubiquity, so it's exciting to see TaskFox taking it to the next level. There are also some cool "tear-off" features, where you can drag out TaskFox results that you want to leave on your screen. If this is the future of Firefox, count me in.

Tags: firefox, launcher, taskfox, ubiquity

Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Productivity, Freeware, Windows x64

Magic Formation is a flexible circular (or not) dock for Windows

by Lee Mathews Mar 5th 2009

TokyoDownstairs' Magic Formation is a flexible, highly customizable dock for Windows.

If you're not into circular docks, fear not! Magic Formation can also display your dock icons in a straight line or in a completely manual layout of your choosing. As with any good dock app, icons for your programs can be selected from exe, ico, and png files (like the transparent Paper Mario guys I'm using).

To make your dock appear, just move your mouse in a circular motion. Actions are supported for both clockwise and counter-clockwise movements and you can change where your dock appears by clicking the center icon and dragging it to your preferred location. Magic Formation also supports hot keys, skinning, and a bevy of other options.

With the sensitivity turned down and more than half way, I had a very hard time getting my dock to appear - likely the result of using a crummy, 5-year-old optical mouse. The program itself worked flawlessly and was fairly light on resources (less than 15mb of memory in manual formation).

Magic Formation is a free download for Windows, and there's nothing to install - just unzip the files and launch the executable.

For a little more visual sizzle, you might want to check out Circle Dock, with its cool-yet-dizzying spiral effect.

[ via Shell Extension City ]

Tags: circle-dock, dock, launcher

Filed under: Internet, Mozilla, Browsers

SiteLauncher adds a hotkey panel with visuals to Firefox

by Lee Mathews Dec 24th 2008

Sure, Firefox has built-in hotkey support, but sometimes it's nice to have a visual reminder. SiteLauncher is a new experiemtnal Firefox addon that does just that.

It's highly customizable - colors, font sizes, and transparency can all be changed. If you'd prefer a wide display, you can use up to eight columns. Don't like rounded corners? Square them off. Your list can also be ordered by hotkey or shortcut title, or you can arrange it manually. To display your list, just press ctrl+space (a la Launchy).

You can also choose to dispay SiteLauncher at startup instead of your home page.

The author has chosen to map ctrl+shift+s as the combo to quick-add your current page to the list, which will cause issues if you've got the Delicious addon installed - that's also the default combination for its bookmark search.

[ via gHacks ]

Tags: addon, extension, firefox, launcher

Filed under: Developer, Text, Windows, Productivity, Commercial, Freeware

PhraseExpress is so much more than an autotext app

by Lee Mathews Nov 30th 2008

A good snippet manager or autotext tool can save just about anyone a little time and effort. For those who do a lot of typing, it can even help prevent repetitive stress injuries. If you're looking for an application like this, take a look at PhraseExpress.

Apart from point and click insertion of pre-defined text and auto-completion of recognized words and phrases, Phrase Express packs a clipboard monitor, macro support, and system-wide spell check.

Though the settings window presents only two buttons - new folder and new phrase - you're able to do a whole lot more than add commonly used text. PhraseExpress' included macros provide a wide array of powerful functions, including:

launching external applications
changing window focus
opening files, folders, and web pages
trimming, formatting, and replacing text
embedding autotext suggestions
time and date stamping
inserting Windows environment variables

Since hotkeys are also supported, you PhraseExpress makes a very capable launcher application as well. Unlike some other launcher/hotkey apps, you're able to utilize the Windows key. Despite its numerous features, resource usage is very light - about 10mb of memory on my Vista install.

PhraseExpress can be installed, or you can download the portable version and extract it to your USB flash drive. It's free for personal use and $49.95 to register for commercial use. There's also a network edition that allows groups to access a shared library that runs $44.95 (or less, based on volume) per seat.

If you're already using PhraseExpress, share your experience. If you don't, what apps do you use (if anything) to handle these tasks?

Tags: autotext, clipboard, launcher, macro, portable, snippet

Filed under: Web services, Search, Web

Keyboardr: no need for a mouse on this launcher-style homepage

by Jay Hathaway Nov 25th 2008

Some people just don't want to use a mouse. Sometimes site designers take this demographic into account, sometimes they don't. But if you're a keyboard-only person: Julius Eckert has built a homepage just for you. Keyboardr returns search results from Google, Wikipedia, Youtube, Google Blog Search and others, and gives you a cursor to navigate the results entirely via arrow keys.

The experience of using Keyboardr is slick, but it could be better with one tricky little improvement. The list of results from each search engine seems to function as a separate element on the page, so hitting a right or left arrow takes you to the top of the adjacent list, not to the result that's directly across, as you would expect. This isn't a big deal, but it would make Keyboardr even faster if Julius could get around it. As more features are added (customization would be amazing), I'll give serious consideration to Keyboardr as my primary homepage.

Tags: homepage, keyboardr, launcher, search

Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Productivity, Freeware

Looking for a portable hotkey app? Try QOpen!

by Lee Mathews Oct 28th 2008

I'm not generally inclined to make use of program launchers. Instead, I prefer to use the tools that are built in to my Windows OS to save mouseclicks and keystrokes.

QOpen, however, is an interesting alternative for me. It's portable, insanely light on memory usage (about 2mb) and incredibly useful on my service bench.

By default, QOpen is invoked by pressing win + space. Once the window is displayed, entering your preferred abbreviation launches the specified application: NP for Notepad, for example. It also supports drag-and-drop creation of new hotkeys from shortcuts or programs, allows you to specify command line arguments and working path, and can launch applications maximized, minimized, or hidden.

When would this be useful? A lot of the systems I repair on the bench require the same applications, which I store either on a network share or on my USB flash drive. By launching QOpen first, I can execute obnoxiously long commands like "c:\windows\system32\oobe\msoobe /a" (to open the Activation Wizard) by typing something simple like "act" into QOpen.

Its size and low resource utilization is key. I still see the odd Windows XP machine with 128 or 256 megs of memory that needs tuning - some people just love their old beaters and don't want to upgrade or replace them. QOpen is a handy, light way to access apps like CCleaner, HijackThis, and Adaware from my file server and it doesn't bog down older machines like Launchy does.

Tags: hotkey, hotkeys, launcher, launchers

Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Freeware, Search

nDroid: Windows keyboard application launcher

by Simon Kerbel Apr 10th 2008

Keyboard application launchers are all the rage, and we're always on the lookout for any new entries into the field. One such entry is nDroid, a simple keyboard launcher that performs basic launch tasks, but also has a few tricks up its sleeve.

nDroid is launched by a default hotkey: CTRL+ALT+Z. The hotkey combination brings up the default nDroid window. Type in the name of an application, a document, etc...and nDroid will find any appropriate matches on your computer. In our test searches nDroid was very fast and found relevant results.

nDroid also has a few extra niceties:

Type a ? followed by a mathematical expression and nDroid will calculate the answer.
Shift + Enter will open the application's parent folder in Windows Explorer.
CTRL + Enter will run the typed text as a full command, just like the "Run" option in the Start menu.

So nDroid essentially takes the place of the Run command, the calculator, and to a certain extent, Windows Explorer. Very sweet.

nDroid is built with an open architecture, which means that anybody can build plugins to extend nDroid's functionality.

nDroid is a free download, and Windows only.

Thanks for the tip, Chris!

[via the Wired Blog]

Tags: launcher, nDroid

Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Freeware

sTabLauncher

by Brad Linder Feb 18th 2008

Dock-style program launchers are great if you have 10-15 applications that you use all the time. But if you have dozens of applications that you regularly need to launch, you can quickly fill up a utility like RocketDock with more program icons than you can fit on your desk. sTabLauncher solves this problem by letting you create tabs in your dock. You can populate each Tab with as many icons as you like.

sTabLauncher is highly customizable. You can change the appearance of the whole dock, lock it to the top of your screen or the bottom, or customize individual tabs. Right-clicking on a tab lets you add programs and descriptions. You can even rearrange tabs by dragging and dropping them.

sTabLauncher also happens to be free and doesn't eat up much RAM.

[via CyberNet]

Tags: launcher, program-launcher, rocketdock, stablauncher

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

Enso Launcher now free

by Jason Clarke Feb 10th 2008

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: Windows, Productivity, Freeware

PStart: Portable app launcher

by Jordan Running Feb 2nd 2006

So you put all these portable apps installed on your USB drive only to discover what a pain it is to start them? Try PStart. It's a freeware Windows app launcher that you can run from your USB drive that remembers where to find your portable apps even if your portable storage device gets assigned a different drive letter. When you're not using it PStart hides behind a tray icon out of your way, and it looks fairly customizable. As a bonus, it has a built-in notes function so you can take your shopping list or mad scrawlings with you wherever you go.

Tags: app, launcher, portable, pstart, windows

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

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

Rock-it launcher, Freaky Friday Find

by Victor Agreda, Jr. Jan 20th 2006

Most of my Mac brethren have become accustomed to QuickSilver, a keyboard app launcher (oh it does other things, many wonderful other things). I used to use it before my piteous iBook succumbed to the monster known as "Tiger" (I curse the day I ever heard of Dashboard). At any rate, I did so love QuickSilver, and have been on the lookout for a PC replacement. So I stumbled upon Rock-it, which looks like a pretty good option. It's just an app launcher, but it does it well. So well I may never jump into my overburdened Programs folder in the Start menu ever again. Because you shouldn't have to set your monitor to film res just to see all your apps— which I had to do in the past...

Tags: launcher, rock it, RockIt

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