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Quicksilver, summarized well

quicksilver:whatisquicksilver [docs]

This page from the Quicksilver wiki describes the program and its power much better than I ever have.

Quicksilver’s greatest strength, however, is not search. Any item you are able to find, drag, or otherwise pull into its universe is endowed with many potential uses. Hitting <tab> takes you to the action field, where you can use the same adaptive search to select what you would like to do. Among other things, files can be emailed, copied, compressed. Text can be modified, transmitted between programs, or searched for on the web. Some actions even support an indirect object, so you can send an item to a person, move files to another folder, or open files with a specific application….

In the end, Quicksilver has one very important effect. The effort associated with frequent tasks fades into the background and you are able to act without thinking. After an adaptation period, Quicksilver becomes an extension of yourself; the process fades away leaving only the results.

I realize that this may sound like a pretty fruity, hippiefied way to talk about a piece of software, but it’s actually quite accurate in my experience. Quicksilver may not click the first hour, day, or even week that you use it. But if you spend a little time to learn its subtle tricks, the return on investment is undeniably worth the effort.

brian's picture

Simple tutorial (though possibly outdated...

Simple tutorial (though possibly outdated by now): http://vjarmy.com/archives/2004/03/quicksilver_a_b.php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

 
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