Quicksilver 60 Free Application Launcher Released – Mac OS X At Your Fingertips

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Mac OS X 10.7 Lion will include a new LaunchPad feature ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launchpad_(Mac_OS_X ), but your editor expects to remain a Quicksilver devotee.

Quicksilver is a light, fast and free Mac OS X application that gives you the power to control your Mac with keystrokes alone.

Want to start the Mail application? Just type mail and hit return. Too much typing? Just type ‘m’ and select Mail from the list of results. Quicksilver learns what you mean by certain abbreviations as you use them. Do this a couple of times and Mail will become the top result.

This isn‘t limited to applications. It applies to anything in Quicksilver’s catalog.

Launching Is A Gateway Drug

Saying that Quicksilver is an application launcher is like saying a car is a drink holder. You can do almost anything with Quicksilver. A list of specific features would probably make you say So what? – I can do all of that now. You can, but it takes work. Quicksilver blurs the line between thinking about something and simply having it done.

Find It Fast

Quicksilver gives you quick access to the stuff thats important to you. With only a few keystrokes, you can get to your applications, files, contacts, bookmarks, music, etc. But dont get distracted. Quicksilver is about doing, not finding. Finding things is simply a necessary prerequisite (that it happens to handle extremely well).

Type It Like You Think It

Using something like Spotlight to find an Address Book entry for John Smith would require you to search for part of the name, like john. What if you want to find it just by typing js? Quicksilver lets you abbreviate using letters from anywhere in the name. And that means anywhere, not just the beginning of words. Use ps to find Photoshop or tun to find iTunes. Use abbreviations that make sense to you.

Stay Where You Are

Theres no need to stop what youre doing and switch applications for simple tasks. Move the file you just downloaded to your Documents folder without ever leaving your web browser. Paste a URL into an e-mail message without switching to your web browser and without copying and pasting. Add something to your To Do List as soon as you think of it and get right back to what youre doing.

Grab And Go

Select files or text and do something with them immediately. Quicksilver can grab the current selection from almost any application. Use text to search the web or append it to a file. Grab files and delete them, move them or send them.

Do It Backwards

Many actions are reversible. You can select a search engine then enter some text to find. But if you already have the text selected (or copied to the clipboard), you can do the reverse: grab the text then select a search engine to send it to.

You can select a contact and e-mail them a file, or you can select a file and e-mail it to a contact.

No Thinking. No Planning. No Adjusting. Just Doing.
Keep Finder At Arms Length

Quicksilver allows you to do all sorts of things with files, including moving, copying, renaming and deleting. It also allows you to navigate your entire file system (including hidden files) whether the files are in its catalog or not. Just add a few important top-level folders to the catalog and you can drill down from there as needed.

Still Not Fast Enough?

If you find yourself doing something frequently, you can speed up the task even more by assigning a trigger to it. Triggers can be activated by keyboard shortcuts or mouse movements.
Do more

There are many plug-ins that extend the functionality even further. Change the interface appearance. Access information from web-based services. Access your browsers bookmarks and history.

What About Spotlight?

Spotlight is fantastic and it certainly has its place, but its no substitute for Quicksilver.

Spotlight knows about everything. Quicksilver concentrates on just the things you care about.
Spotlight is about finding things. Quicksilver is about finding things (faster) and then doing something with what youve found.

Spotlight only deals with files. Quicksilver gives you access to things that dont necessarily exist as a file. Spotlight can show your dads entry in the Address Book. Quicksilver can show your dads work phone number.

Spotlight forces you to think when you search. Quicksilver allows you to just start typing and get what you want. Maybe not the first time you type it, but the third or fourth time for sure.

New in version 60:

New:

  • NEW: Search by file extension. e.g. type ‘mp3’ will show you all .mp3s (or files with mp3 in the name)
  • NEW: ‘Delete’ and ‘Move to Trash’ actions now give sound notification of completion (like Finder’s behaviour)
  • NEW: ‘Running Applications’ proxy object (Issue #221)
  • NEW: Interfaces sorted by name within the Preferences (Issue #294)
  • NEW: Optimisation and memory management improvements using CLang’s static analyser
  • NEW: Recent documents for applications by right arrowing into them (e.g. Preview) in 10.6 (Issue #109)
  • NEW: Creation of ‘Actions’ folder in Quicksilver’s support folder to make saving custom actions easier (Issue #266)
  • NEW: Superior string sniffing. Quicksilver now knows that define:word and a.b.c.d are not a URLs. (Issue #214)
  • NEW: Quicksilver correctly selects the 1st item in the list after using the ‘show contents’ action (Issue #226)
  • NEW: 60+ versions of Quicksilver will not launch on 10.4 machines or below (Issue #279)
  • NEW: 1st object in the results list is selected by default when viewing children of objects (Issue #226)
  • NEW: Quicksilver source is now distributed via MacPorts (for install, see http://qsapp.com/wiki/Building_Quicksilver )
  • NEW: Asynchronous loading of icons; no beach balling when finding file icons (Issue #98)
  • NEW: Show link’s images when browsing URLs/websites in Quicksilver (Issue #316)
  • NEW: Web Search Icons now show the magnifying glass and the URLs favIcon (thanks to http://g.etfv.co and http://potatolondon.com) (Issue #315)
  • NEW: Python HTML Link extractor for browsing in Quicksilver. Adds image title or alt to image labels (Issue #317)
  • NEW: Reduced open/close/resize times for the Bezel Interface. Now feels more responsive (Issue #323)
  • NEW: Rename action no longer selects the file extension in the 3rd pane (mimicking Finder’s behaviour) (Issue #328)
  • NEW: Preference that allows jumping to the action automatically for actions that return results (Issue #225)

PlugIns

  • PLUGIN: Items labelled with this tag are for new/updated plugins available from http://qsapp.com/plugins
  • PLUGIN: Renamed the ‘Current Webpage’ proxies to reflect which browser they come from (Issue #59)
  • PLUGIN: Fixed right arrowing into ‘Current Web Page (Safari)’ proxy object (Issue #59)
  • PLUGIN: Mail Module rewritten to fix right arrowing into Mail.app
  • PLUGIN: OmniWeb plugin rewritten to be more consistent with naming of proxies and added documentation
  • PLUGIN: UI Access plugin fixed to show icons of windows for ‘Windows…’ actions, speed increases
  • PLUGIN: UI Access plugin includes a new ‘Show all Menu Items’ action
  • PLUGIN: Made Window Interface appear on all spaces (Issue #61)

Changed:

  • CHANGED: Task Viewer modified to make it more robust
  • CHANGED: Localisation improvements and refactoring (Issue #260)
  • CHANGED: Implementation of fast enumeration for easier reading and possible speed improvements (Issue #323)
  • CHANGED: Small speed improvement to object ranking (Issue #336)
  • CHANGED: Get Path renamed to Get Absolute Path, new Get Path action returns things like ~/Documents (Issue #331)

Fixed:

  • FIX: Crash when Quicksilver tries to combine the same object (Issue #342)
  • FIX: Searches like “Itchy & Scratchy” are now correctly passed to the browser (Issue #313)
  • FIX: When using Quicksilver to browse the web (right arrow into URLs), the correct icons are shown (Issue #302)
  • FIX: Websites with any top level domain (e.g. .uk) can now be browsed within Quicksilver (Issue #316)
  • FIX: Link parser now correctly returns all the links on a page (Issue #316)
  • FIX: Crash when changing interfaces (Issue #272)
  • FIX: Task Viewer no longer shows ‘null’ when rescanning catalog entries (Issue #276)
  • FIX: Down arrow does not wipe the result of an action, returned to Quicksilver (Issue #282)
  • FIX: ‘Latest Download’ proxy no longer causes conflicts with cataloged items (Issue #308)
  • FIX: Correct numbering of results (1 of 1) when an action returns an object to Quicksilver (Issue #282)
  • FIX: Exception when entering nonBaseCharacters (Issue #275)
  • FIX: TextMate String Ranker now works as previously (Issue #14)
  • FIX: ‘Type to Search’ text in the command window panes (and more localisation fixes) (Issue #250)
  • FIX: Pressing ‘/’ to enter items could accidentally drill down to the root (Issue #63)
  • FIX: The about window stops rendering images when closed
  • FIX: Assignment of mailto: strings as objects with Email actions (Issue #267)
  • FIX: Always display the interface when Quicksilver returns a result (Issue #232)
  • FIX: URLs with |#”?$! characters are parsed properly
  • FIX: Copy To… action only shows folders in the 3rd pane
  • FIX: ‘Visible Applications’ proxy displays only apps that aren’t hidden (Issue #221)
  • FIX: Bezel and Primer interface names display correctly in the preferences (Issue #190)
  • FIX: Changing interface properly registers ‘.’ as a special character to enter text mode (Issue #233)
  • FIX: Incorrect size settings for two .xibs
  • FIX: Size of result window remembered on relaunch (Issue #176)
  • FIX: Possible crashes when installing plugins (Issue #241)
  • FIX: 1st pane (and comma items) are cleared when an action returns an object (Issue #203)
  • FIX: Primer interface appears on all spaces (Issue #64)
  • FIX: Preference pane appears on all spaces (Issue #64)
  • FIX: Result window size saved on relaunch (Issue #176)
  • FIX: Get Path action returns strings instead of files (Issue #182)
  • FIX: Get Path action works with the comma trick (Issue #203)
  • FIX: Search results ‘x of y’ showing correctly in the result window (Issue #207)
  • FIX: Clicking ‘Defaults’ in the Appearance Preferences would crash Quicksilver (Issue #212)
  • FIX: PlugIn file path renamed correctly for compilation on case-sensitive systems (MacPorts) (Issue #309)
  • FIX: Compilation fixes for 10.5 and isSnowLeopard method (moved to a new class) (Issue #287)

System requirements:
• Intel
• Mac OS X 10.6 or later

For more information, visit:
http://qsapp.com/

Versions of Quicksilver for Mac OS X 10.3 – 10.5 are available here:
http://qsapp.com/download.php

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