Lean, efficient, with the least amount of crud possible. or, if you don't like bezels, it can take over the menu bar temporarily like this:īefore I finish, let me express my hope that Quicksilver remains simple. The difference is that it's fully graphical.Īnd it doesn't have to look like a menu - my favorite display mode fills the center of the screen with a nice, semitransparent bezel (like the Cmd-Tab task switcher) that displays 128x128 icons and image thumbnails, making the whole experience much more enjoyable: So now we can try to precisely define what Quicksilver does - it lets you juggle every piece of information inside your computer (files, contacts, URLs, etc.) by doing a series of small tasks on it, in a way that is not entirely unlike a UNIX command shell (i.e., with short bursts of typing to invoke simple, powerful commands). (And I guess simpler applications wouldn't hurt either, but that's besides the point right now.) The Graphical Shell The unwashed masses, not completely missing the point, called it " vim with wierder keystrokes", and it's definetly not something that can change your entire computing experience at this point.Īs I see it, THE has focused far too much on text editing (which admittedly is what people do the most with computers) and taken its "we do not need applications" line a bit too far.īesides its rather lackustre site and academic stance (which doesn't help its popularity), THE tries to bite off more than it can chew - people don't want entirely new interfaces that require them to learn a bunch of new keystrokes and replace their applications in one fell swoop, they want new, simpler ways to use their existing applications. The problem with THE is that despite vigorous assertions to the contrary, it is still little more than an obscure text editor (albeit with a really efficient interface). Oh, The HumanityĪll in all, the experience is uncannily similar to what I always expected Jef Raskin's THE (The Humane Environment) to feel like. You just keep typing - s i m o n and it displays the closest Address Book match as you type - complete with contact photo.Īll of this without leaving the Quicksilver window - you haven't opened a single Finder window, haven't launched the Address Book and there's no need to touch the mouse (which makes this an almost essential tool for laptops).Īnd you can also do it the other way around: start typing a contact name right away, pick Email item. There's another thing that it does beautifully. For instance, you can compress the item you found or e-mail it to a contact.Īnd how do you pick a contact? Aha. It lets you press Tab and pick from a set of actions (not just launch the file). here's the first clever bit that sets it millions of miles apart from LaunchBar. It rifles through your files, displays "Notes on Nemo.doc" on its menu and. For a lark, let's say you type in n e m o. Quicksilver pops up instantly, and you just keep typing. And it does just that brilliantly, in a way that should make user interface gurus like Bruce Tognazzinni and Jef Raskin take note - actually, Tog was the one who led me to LaunchBar, and I think he'll be delighted with Quicksilver. Like its new moniker puts it, it lets you "find Nemo in a keystroke". It's an activity menu that lets you search your entire computer in a few keystrokes and instantly manipulate what you find. It's not an application menu or a task switcher. Okay, so what? Here's the catch: It's not yet another pre- Exposé hack. Looking at a similar program called LaunchBar (which I used previously until its nags put me off) doesn't help much either, since it looks just like a menu.Īnd that's precisely what it is - a keyboard-driven menu, activated by Command-Space. One of the reasons for that is that its home page lacks screenshots, so most people are left wondering. Now, what is this Quicksilver thing, I hear you ask? No, it's not Mercury.īut it is every bit as fascinating as the Neal Stephenson novel with the same name, and it is as difficult to describe to anyone who hasn't come across it. I had already spotted it a couple of weeks back, but being swamped with work and spending most of the time at my iMac VPNing to the office, I had little interest in fooling around. Update: I've found the Quicksilver Documentation and have updated this post with some links and pictures.Īfter (as Simon put it) seeing Quicksilver being blogged to death, I decided to give it a go on my iBook.
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