Quicksilver is one of those utilities that grows on you to the point where you really don't want to be without it. Defined by its developers as: "an evolving structure for manipulating any form of data; an application as slippery and mutable as its namesake. Modules can be added to accomplish almost anything." That is a pretty good summary, but leaves out the fact that unlike most utility software, Quicksilver has the unquantifiable quality of being pleasurable and fun to use as well.

With version b31, Quicksilver gets some visual changes. The formerly silver splash screen letters are now dark brown rimmed with bronze instead of the former silver color, and there is a new Dock icon. Personally, I preferred the former theme and icon.

Quicksilver's primary function is that it allows you to find what you need on your hard drive quickly and easily, while keeping your hands on the keyboard. For example, if you want to launch an application buried somewhere in a folder, simply activate Quicksilver with a keystroke, type a few letters of the application's name, then hit Return or Enter to launch it.

This is quicksilver-fast, and works for both applications and documents, which appear in a pull-down menu under the initial result.

When you don't need Quicksilver, it keeps out of your way, preserving screen real estate, yet you can summon it instantly with a key stroke.

Quicksilver indexes and parses selected parts of the contents of your hard drive (a process thattakes a couple of mnutes) in its "Catalog," so that it locates and displays the items matching your search almost instantly.

If you have programming skills, you can also extend and customize Quicksilver to do exactly what you want it to. The modular structure also means that the application will never be bloated: You only load the modules that you find useful.

By default, Quicksilver employs a bezel (a semi-transparent rectangle over the centre of the screen (like the built-in bezels for showing the volume or screen brightness levels) interface.

You can also choose the menu interface (which slides a bar over the main menu bar at the top of the screen).

The "flashlight" interface option emulates the menu interface appearance in a floating window. The menu and flashlight interfaces take up the least space, but the bezel and window interfaces put the information right in front of you, and the icons and text are larger and easier to read.

To activate Quicksilver:
• Click the Dock icon for the application
• Type the global activation hot key (Command-Space by default)
• Use the Services menu to send an item to Quicksilver (Command-Esc)

To search for an item, just start typing some letters that are in the name of the item you are looking for. Quicksilver's matching algorithm will try to choose the best option. For example, if you are searching for Preview, the letters prv, pre or prw would all find the application.

If the selected item is not the one you wanted, the chances are that you can find it in the results list that pops up automatically.

If you use the right arrow or slash to drill into the contents of a folder, you enter browsing mode. In this mode, any further searches you make by typing letters will search only the item and sub-items in the folder you have selected. For example if you select the Documents folder in your home directory, the search will operate only on the files and folders within Documents.

Numerous actions you can perform on your selected item are available. The default action for an application is Launch. The item you have selected will be shown in the first field with the default action (in this case Launch) in the second field. When you hit the Return or Enter key, the default action is performed, and your application is launched. If the application you selected is already running, Launching will bring the application forwards. If you want to use one of the non-default actions, select the second field by clicking it with the mouse or hitting the Tab key, then use the up and down arrow keys to select another action. Actions are discussed in detail in the section on the Command Window module.

So Quicksilver is a powerful and versatile Launcher, but there's plenty more you can do with it. For info on how you can customise the appearance and operation of Quicksilver, select what is indexed and therefore available for searching, see the section on Preferences in the online manual. If you want to read about the other modules - Browsing Results, Clipboard History or Shelf - you'll find them there too.

The Catalog is where you select the Sources to be scanned into Quicksilver, so that they are available for searching via the Command Window. There are a number of preset Sources, but you can add your own or disable some of the default Sources if you don't need them.

You can open the Catalog window by using the Quicksilver menu (Quicksilver > Catalog; see Menus), or by hitting Command-; while Quicksilver is activated. After you have added items of your own to the Sources list, you can modify the way they are scanned.

Moving items between folders can be a frustrating task, particularly if you have a deeply nested folder hierarchy. The Command Window removes the need to drill down into folders by giving you direct access to files and folders, and allowing you to shift items between locations with a keystroke. Just control click on the item, and the Actions pop-up menu will appear. (The Shelf can also be used to move and copy items, and can deal with multiple items.)

The following actions are useful for moving items around:

• Move To... - move the item to another location that you specify in the third field. The original item no longer exists at its original location.
• Copy To... - copies the item to another location that you specify in the third field. This effectively duplicates the item, leaving a copy in the original location.

The move and copy actions will try to ask the Finder to perform the action, so you will usually be able to undo them from the Finder if you need to.

'Delete' really does delete the item immediately (rather than moving it to the Trash). Be sure that this is really what you want to do.Since this is a destructive action, Quicksilver displays a dialog asking you to confirm the action.

• Move To Trash - moves the selected item to the Trash, but does not empty the Trash.

You can even email an item as an attachment using the Command Window:

• Email To... - immediately sends the selected item as an attachment to the contact you select in the third field, using Mail. Use this action with extreme caution because there is no confirmation of the action before the email is sent. It only takes a slip of the finger to send something very inappropriate to your boss. The subject is set as the name of the attached file, and the body contains the text, "Your files are attached to this message".

• Email To... (Compose) - opens a new email message using Mail, with the selected item as an attachment. The subject is set as the name of the attached file, and the body contains the text, "Your files are attached to this message". Unlike 'Email To...', the email is not automatically sent, giving you the opportunity to edit the contents.

Some of the actions allow you to manipulate items in other ways. These are the kind of tasks you would normally use the Finder or the Terminal to accomplish:

• Compress (Beta only) - compresses the item using the zip compression format. If you choose this action, the Command Window will show the zipped file in the first field. You can then drag this file off the Command Window using the mouse (yes - you can do this!) on to your desktop or another folder. Or you can select another action to send the zipped file as an attachment to an email, or to move it to another location.

• Lock - locks the selected item, as if you had used the command 'Get Info' in Finder, and clicked the 'Locked' checkbox.

• Unlock - unlocks the selected item, if it is locked (see above).

• Make Invisible - makes the selected item invisible. You can still see a listing for the item using ls in the Terminal, but it will not be visible in the Finder.

• Make Visible - makes an invisible file visible (see above).

• Make Link In... - makes a symbolic link (similar to an alias) for the selected item in the location you specify in the third field. If you are familiar with the terminal, the action executes the command ln -s . You can then double-click the symbolic link to open the original item.

• Rename - press Tab after choosing the Rename action, and you can type a new name for the item in the text box. Press Return or Enter to accept the new name.

Sometimes you need to find information on an item. The Command Window has a couple of actions that can be very helpful:

• Reveal - show the location of the item in Finder (or Path Finder, if you have selected 'Use Path Finder for selections and reveals' in the Actions Preferences).

• Get Path - copies the file path of the selected item into a text clipping. The clipping replaces your selected item in the first field, so that you can drag it off using the mouse to insert the text in a document at the insertion point. Or you can store the clipping somewhere by choosing the 'Move To...' action. The path is in the Unix format (for example /Users/me/Documents/memo.txt), so you can drag the clipping on to a Terminal window to make it easier to enter a long and complicated file path at the command line.

• Get Info - opens the Get Info window for the item in Finder (or Path Finder, if you have selected 'Use Path Finder for selections and reveals' in the Actions Preferences).

Along with being able to launch web bookmarks, the Command Window can perform web searches using a variety of internet search engines. Before you can search the web using the Command Window, you need to save a bookmark in one of the supported browsers (Safari, Omniweb or Internet Explorer) containing your search.

The Address Book preset will scan contacts from your address book. If you want to use a subset of your addresses, you can create a group.

The Shelf

Strictly speaking, the Shelf does not store the item, but a link to it. So deleting an item from the Shelf has no effect on the original item, but dragging it onto a folder will move the original.

The Shelf is a place for the temporary storage of almost any kind of object. You drag objects onto the Shelf, and then drag them off again. So what's the point of that? If you have to copy a file or a bunch of files from one part of a deeply-nested folder hierarchy to another, you'll probably need to open a number of Finder windows, or else do a lot of time-consuming mousing around. The Shelf can act as a convenient place to gather together multiple items to copy somewhere else.

Open the Shelf by choosing it from the Window menu of Quicksilver (Window > Shelf), or by typing Command-Option-S. If you drag the Shelf window to one edge of the screen, it will auto-hide itself; hover the mouse over that edge of the screen to pop the window up.

Drag and drop files or folders onto the Shelf window to store them there. If you drop multiple items, a special icon identifies it as a group of objects, and a red badge displays the number of items the group contains. Single objects are shown with their icon and their current path.

To copy the objects somewhere, simply drag them off to the new location. The Shelf acts non-destructively, so the objects are linked to, rather than moved, and still exist in the original location. Objects stay on the shelf until you delete them; select the object and press Delete.

You can also right or control-click an item to get a list of actions for it.

Clipboard History

If you've ever been frustrated by the fact that the System clipboard only stores the last item you've cut or copied to it, you'll love the Clipboard History. It stores all of the items you've copied or cut, limited only by the available memory, or by the limit you enter in the Clipboard Preferences

Show the Clipboard History window by choosing it from the Edit menu of Quicksilver (Edit > Show Clipboard), or by typing the keyboard shortcut of Command-L when Quicksilver is the front-most application. You can choose to leave the window open all the time, or to have it hide after you've pasted an item in the Clipboard Preferences. If you choose to hide the window, and position it at the edge of the screen, it will hide automatically - hover the mouse over the edge of the screen to pop up the window.

The list will be populated automatically with items as you cut and copy objects in other applications. In addition to text, the Clipboard History can store any of the image formats supported natively in Mac OS X (e.g. JPG, PDF, PNG, TIFF), as well as Rich Text with simple fomatting. If the object is text, the first few words are included in the list to help you identify the correct object. If the object is an image, the icon shows a thumbnail of it.

When you want to paste an object from the Clipboard history, click on the Clipboard History window to bring it forward, or hover the mouse over the screen edge to pop the window up (if you have set it to hide in the Preferences). You can then insert an item by double-clicking it in the list, or by typing the number to the left of the item. If you have the Clipboard History limit set to more than 10 items, only the last 10 items can be accessed using the number keys (0-9).

If you want to free up some memory (particularly if you have copied large images to the clipboard), or to remove some clutter from the list, click the 'Clear' button at the bottom of the Clipboard History window. This clears all but the last item from the History.

There are also a whole raft of plugin modules available for Quicksilver besides the basic Task Viewer, Shelf and Clipboard History. I've downoaded more than half a dozen of them and activated them in the preferences, but no joy. Other than the default plugins, I haven't been able to get any of the others to work or even show up in the Modules menu. I've tried trashing the Quicksilver Application Support Folder and reinstalling the plugin modules, but they still don;t work. This is not a big tragedy for me, becuse the basic functions of Quicksilver are what I'm most interested in, and they work fine. However, it is a puzzlement as to why I can't get the add-on plugins to work.

Discussion Forums - http://forums.blacktree.com/viewforum.php?f=8
Bug Reports - http://bugs.blacktree.com
Documentation - http://docs.blacktree.com

System requirements:
• Mac OS X 10.3 or higher

Quicksilver is freeware

For more information, visit:
http://www.blacktree.com/apps/quicksilver/

***



Charles W. Moore


Note: Letters to Moore's Mailbag may or may not be published at the editor's discretion. Correspondents' email addresses will NOT be published unless the correspondent specifically requests publication. Letters may be edited for length and/or context.

Opinions expressed in postings to Moore's MailBag are those of the respective correspondents and not necessarily shared or endorsed by the Editor and/or Applelinks management.

If you would prefer that your message not appear in Moore's Mailbag, we would still like to hear from you. Just clearly mark your message "NOT FOR PUBLICATION," and it will not be published.

CM

| RSS | Del.icio.us | Digg | Ma.gnolia | Reddit | Spurl | Newsvine | StumbleUpon |

(0) Trackbacks ï