Dude, we’re Mac users. We are fruity and hippiefied.

Bertram, you realize talk like that scares those of us who just bought our first Mac, right? ;-)

yeah try using it for like 3 months then sit on a computer at work that doesn’t have it and then watch the hair pull out!!! ahhhhh man i love quick silver!

Excellent summary. I do not want to think of what I’d do without Quicksilver, now that I’ve grown accustomed to it.

QS is so useful that you might consider paying to get the original one: LaunchBar. ;) Because, in case you didn’t know, LB does everything QS can do (better IMO), and since NEXTSTEP.

Even if search is not all, everything is based on finding things quickly to do whatever you want with them after, and LaunchBar’s algorithm is a thousand times better than QS’ one. Worth the 20$.

Redde Caesari quae sunt Caesaris

Don’t believe the hype, yet. As you can tell from the above mentioned quote the documentation leaves a lot to be desired. Most Quicksilver documentation is either missing or very hand-wavvy, as above. I mean, what does “pull into its universe” mean anyway? What universe?

I know its beta, but still, someone should be using the fabu power of Quicksilver to document some of those plugins so I can figure out how they work!

Yes, Quicksilver is promising, but it drives me nuts at the same time. Plus I’m cranky right now, and my dog doesn’t come when I call and…..

“After an adaptation period, Quicksilver becomes an extension of yourself; the process fades away leaving only the results.”

Hmmm. Sounds like what we hold farts have been saying about the command line.

“Sounds like what we hold (sic) farts have been saying about the command line.”

Pretty much, yes. Imagine, if you will, a command-line for GUI apps. Now, make that command-line a GUI, but don’t take away any of the power or usability. That’s Quicksilver.

I completely agree with the fruity language. I’ve grown disgustingly dependent on Quicksilver, and I’m constantly lost when I try to accomplish a task on another computer. I’ve even been stuck in a perpetual search for an equivalent program for my Windows box. The closest I’ve found so far is App Rocket… but it’s nowhere near as powerful as Quicksilver.

On my dad’s computer and finding it hard to cope without it. Very hard.

Simple tutorial (though possibly outdated by now): http://vjarmy.com/archives/2004/03/quicksilverab.php

I certainly agree with the addictive nature of quicksilver. I love that it logs my 10 most recent clipboard contents, I love that I can do easy calculations without launching my calculator. I think it’s so neat that i can just jot something down and email it to my friend without switching to my email client or any other program for that matter. Drilling down through my keychain for a password is clever. Appending/prepending text to an existing text file…. wee! it’s fun, powerful stuff.

Launchbar may be more powerful but I just don’t see it. It may be as powerful, and I’m sure not saying that it’s not powerful. I just dont see the benefits of switching to it. And I also think it’s pretty neat that LB has been around since NeXT

Brian, I can assure you, I’ve been keeping the damn thing as up to date as I can. :)

Let me add another (possibly gushing) endorsement for LaunchBar. The best thing about it is that it works - consistently. Many new features, elegantly executed, have been added to the latest version. Well worth a free test drive, IMHO.

I should have checked, sorry Dan. I had read the thing back when you wrote it. It’s what helped me get started w/ QS and from then I was hooked.

I’ve always judged the power of apps like QS on how many times I (unconsciously) try to use them on other OS’s. Exposé is like that as well. The amount of times I sit infront of an XP box and try & hit Cmd+Space are too numerous to mention. QS’s greatest strengh is it’s unobtrusive, ‘hand-wavvy’ attributes. Sure, it seems like a black box when you first start, but when it clicks, you realise this is the one gui app you will never live without. Plus, it’s perdy. ;) — And yes, it is the commmand line for gui apps.

i have been using quicksilver since i got my new powerbook. i find it very hard to get along without it, especially on my windows machine at work. i have gotten so used to navigating using it, i’d have to agree with the author of the documentation blurb… its use really fades into the background… unless you don’t have it for some reason. it has certainly set the bar pretty high for me with regards to UI navigation and interface design.

For those of you who are forced to use a Windows machine at work, you should check out SlickRun (http://www.bayden.com/SlickRun/). It’s no QS but it’s got a lot of potential. It’s particularly gratifying for those of us who find ourselves hitting ctrl+space at work. Set that as the keystroke to invoke SR, then you get a little box popup for you to type into. Then type in one of the default “magic” words or one you’ve added and SR can do things like launch an app, go to a website, do a google or dict search, etc. Again, no QS, and much more manual than automatic, but it does make switching between Mac+QS and Windows less jarring.

Note to self: keep copy of quicksilver on ipod.

Then when i’m at someone elses mac who doesn’t have quicksilver, i can just run it off the ipod. they wont mind the extra inocuous files in their User Library, and at least I can work better when on their computer.

Damn, you sound like crack addicts. “It’s not easy to get into it, but once you’ve used it, you can’t do without it.” You also sound like command line freaks. “Oh it’s so much easier hitting ctrl tab -i —xyz than wasting time schlepping a mouse around to hit pretty buttons.”

Sorry, I took a look and walked away. I type “sil” and it returns “silicon implants” even though I had “Silver Lake” in mind. Why not wait for me to press the “v” after the “sil” ? Too eager to please instantly. I guess I could have typed “svl” instead. But then I’d have gotten “soviet law”. Then you want to slap the thing and tell it “shut up - WAIT - and listen”. Seems there is no such option and I didn’t have a week to figure it out.

We are Mac users. If it doesn’t make sense in 5 seconds it’s not for us.

for Windows users with our noses pressed up against the Mac/quicksilver window … try Activewords. A different implementation of the same Zen. A bit more work from you at first, and less mindreading, but then you’ve got personally meaningful keyboarding shortcuts to do just about anything.

links for 2005-04-24

Quicksilver, summarized well On 43 Folders, a summary of a summary, but whatever. I have to explain what Quicksilver is constantly, this short clip will hopefully relieve some of the pain. (tags: quicksilver productivity :osx 43folders)…

[…] Quicksilver for a better tomorrow When you have a lot of windows open, it’s often a pain to go back to the Finder to use it to look for files or launch applications and other tasks. Enter Blacktree’s Quicksilver, a free utility that can be called from anywhere within the operating system to launch applications find files, search websites, scale images, and much much much more. It’s like a Swiss army knife for doing almost any Finder related task. I could go and on and on with the joys of Quicksilver, but here are some better written, more in-depth overviews and tutorials written by productivity guru, Merlin Mann of 43 folders: Quicksilver, summarized well Quicksilver: Setup & Troubleshooting Quicksilver: moving around and training yourself Six cool Quicksilver plugins you might not know […]

[…] Quicksilver summarized well […]

[…] I’ll admit it. I’m Quicksilver addict. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, go look over at Merlin Mann’s 43 Folders and in particular this post. Without it, I’m lost. […]