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Intermediate Quicksilver tutorial

Dan Dickinson: The Primary Vivid Weblog: Quicksilver: From A Better OS X To Even More

Dan Dickinson wrote the tutorial that inspired me to first try Quicksilver, lo, those eleven epochal months ago (via Todd). It’s now my favorite app on the Mac, partly because of (or in spite of) the fact that it continues to yield the 10,000 secret functions hiding in its many alcoves.

Dan’s new tutorial is an equally swell intermediate lesson that walks you through some of the sexier features in a clear, unintimidating manner.

Here’s an answer to one that’s been confusing me a bit for a while now:

Step #8 - Shift Can Be Better Than Tab

There’s a very small preference stashed away in the Advanced pane, entitled “Capitalized keys modify action in command window”. This lets you effectively type into both halves of the QS window at the same time. I find it much easier to type as one long string than breaking everything up with tabs - “safariKILL” is easier than “safari (tab) kill”. Given how most people are pretty adept at hitting the shift key while they type, this may be faster for you. Give it a try.

Nice work, Dan.


Not sure I’ve ever asked here, so spill: What’s your favorite novel use for Quicksilver? What place has it found in your workflow?


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Anonymous's picture

http://homepage.mac.com/jaortega/iblog/C439613276/E492330116/ind

http://homepage.mac.com/jaortega/iblog/C439613276/E492330116/index.html

Niall Ridge's picture

Between these two URLs, was...

Between these two URLs, was able to work this out. Thanks.

http://quicksilver.blacktree.com/docs/?page=Web+searches http://quicksilver.blacktree.com/docs/?page=Launching+and+opening

Forever Geek's picture

Quicksilver Tutorials When I got my...

Quicksilver Tutorials

When I got my Mac it was recommended to me by many people that I go and get Quicksilver because it “changes the way you use your computer” or some silly thing like that. Well I did go get…

Sebastian Keil's picture

I am nowhere near where...

I am nowhere near where you guys are in terms of using Quicksilver. So far I’ve used it mostly to open apps, but I just found out a couple of days ago that you can access everything that’s in your addressbook without opening it. I can write emails with it? Will try it immediately. Or, I have a txt-file where I have the html for including a link in my blog. By choosing this as a preference with the click on the mark it’s there so easy. Phew.

Dan Dickinson's picture

kadavy - there's a preference...

kadavy - there’s a preference under the Command panel called “ModKey” - this may be what you’re seeing. You can set it to any modifier and a selectable number of taps, too.

And Alcor pointed out one more feature to me last night - if you hold down a key in the target field (preferably the last key you typed in your search), after about three seconds it will automatically run the action displayed. The next time you do it, it’s much quicker (about half a second of holding), as you’ve taught Quicksilver you want to run the action with that key.

Alcor says he uses this to do all his app switching - this will be a godsend for me as I can unbind most of my app-run fkey triggers. Something new every day.

Niall Ridge's picture

Does anyone know if it...

Does anyone know if it is possible to pass a string to your web browser in order to invoke a specific search. eg. in firefox, by creating a bookmark and setting the location to http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=%s and the keyword to ‘dict’, a dictionary search can be performed by entering ‘dict foo’. So I’m wondering if you can say something like ‘call firefox with argument “dict blah”’. Any ideas?

John's picture

JoshD thanks for the mention...

JoshD thanks for the mention of Approcket! Going to testdrive that now.

JoshD's picture

@Dan: Upon careful consideration, I...

@Dan:

Upon careful consideration, I present the following response to the trick Alcor taught you:

Ohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygod!

ahem

Thank you for sharing. :)

kadavy's picture

Has anyone ever noticed that,...

Has anyone ever noticed that, rather than using Control + Space or Command + Space, you can just tap the Control key to invoke Quicksilver? It doesn’t work if you hold the Command key down for more than a few milliseconds. You have to tap it.

JoshD's picture

@John: Approcket is a kind...

@John:

Approcket is a kind of intermediate Launchbar/Quicksilver. Not as flexible as QS, but they’re trying. Shareware. I don’t have an URL, so google for it…

About Merlin Mann

Merlin Mann's picture

Bio

Merlin Mann is an independent writer, speaker, and broadcaster. He’s best known for being the guy who started the website you’re reading right now. He lives in San Francisco, does lots of public speaking, and helps make cool things like You Look Nice Today. Also? He looks like this, answers questions, and has something like a life.

Merlin’s favorite thing he’s written recently is a short essay called, “Better.”

 
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