Blog FeedThe Computer Toolbox
OK, so Chris has been badgering me to write something for the Blog since he offered to allow me to do so (and then opened the door to pretty much every Tom (Medium or otherwise), Dick and Harry, which kinda lessened the honour) and I’ve been unable to think of something to write about. This is rather odd since I can often think of something to post in the Forums (but generally don’t) but when it came to a Blog entry nothing seemed right. I’ve still got an entry in draft at the moment about how the television you remember as a kid generally sucks when you become an adult and watch it again, but haven’t posted it since I thought it was pretty dull. Anyway, I’ve decided to write about utility software today since I’ve ended up downloading a new application on the basis that it looked kinda cool and may end up saving me a bit of time. Since my primary excuse for not having written anything for the site before was that I didn’t have enough time, perhaps time-saving utility software is worth talking about.
This morning I downloaded a bit of software for my Mac called Quicksilver. It’s a fairly innocuous name that frankly doesn’t say a lot about it, but the upshot is that it’s an extensible application launcher. For some odd reason these sorts of applications have suddenly started appearing on the Mac (others include LauncherBar and Butler), but pretty much all do the same sort of thing. Anyway, the application allows you to run ANY application on your computer in a couple of key presses following invocation of Quicksilver (via a global Cmd+Space combination). The gain from this comes when you want to access those applications that you either haven’t added a shortcut to (either in the Mac’s Dock or Windows’s QuickLaunch area), or simply don’t want to take your hands off the keyboard, since it saves you from wading through your Applications folder or Start menu.
If launching applications were all that Quicksilver did, however, it wouldn’t be all that interesting, although even that is saving me a bit of time. The extensible nature of the application is where it appears to come into its own since it can find pretty much anything on your computer or network, such as files, Contacts in your AddressBook, music in iTunes, etc. as long as a plug-in is available. Further, for each type of object found by Quicksilver, a variety of actions are available (such as playing a playlist from iTunes or sending a file to an contact) and these can be extended fairly simply as well. For example, using an AppleScript Quicksilver is now able to call someone for me using Skype without me ever having to leave my current application. Further, the application learns what you do and adjusts its results and options accordingly so that you spend less time telling it what you want to do.
Using Quicksilver to find an image file and open it in Flash
Anyway, regardless of the merits of Quicksilver as a utility application, what I was writing about here really were some of the unsung heroes of your hard drive. I think Quicksilver may become indispensable once I get used to reaching for Cmd+Space rather than the mouse, but other indispensable utility applications exist on all computers. WinZip on the PC immediately springs to mind and some may consider GameSpy Arcade in a similar light. Regardless of your OS, utility applications are often invaluable for getting work done faster than could otherwise be done via other means. Ultimately, this is kinda the point of this post as I’ve come to the realisation that I am incredibly unorganised at the moment and need to be spending more time doing important stuff rather than wrestling with the actual decision process of what needs to be done next. Quicksilver may be very small part of this since it should (in theory) allow me to be doing important stuff sooner rather than navigating my maze of files/applications. At the moment I’m looking through a web site called 43Folders that is an offshoot of Getting Things Done, which apparently might be what I am looking for. Whether any of this will make a difference remains to be seen, but if I post here a bit more often then you can assume that something has changed.
28th March | Reply
A while ago I decided that I didn’t want any icons on my actual desktop, so I wiped them off and put my most used programs into little shortcut toolbars on my taskbar. One for the basic Quicklaunch, plus a couple more for games and other programs. Needless to say it didn’t last long. I have my taskbar at the top of my screen (because I like it there), and too many times I’d accidentally be loading up Unreal Tournament or something when all I meant to do was press the red X to close Firefox.
But I do much prefer the easy access that the taskbar gives for most things - it’s about as efficient as it gets for me without looking for actual utilities like ObjectDock.
As far as the unsung heroes on my hard drive go, I have to give a lot of credit to Notepad2. It’s a freeware replacement for Notepad and comes with a bunch of extras that make it useful for actual coding, while still retaining the simple interface and the lightning speed so I can use it for my To-Do list or any other things I’d normally just whip out a small .txt file for.
28th March | Reply
my Desktop is extremely cluttered with icons (40 at the last count) but I dont find this to be a problem. I also dont mind having to look for a file as it doesnt usually take that long (although occasionally there will be one that no matter how hard you look, you cant find it for hours!).
And about that Childhood nostalgia topic Kelmon, post it!
28th March | Reply
When it comes to Quicksilver, I’m presently interested to see the direction that it takes. An application launcher is quite useful for me as I’d otherwise end up with a cluttered Dock (holding area for one-click launching of applications) or going through my simulated Start Menu (an alias to the Applications folder on the Dock where right-clicking it presents you with a list of applications stored in it), which is relatively slow to display. However, its the extensible nature of the application that appeals mostly at the moment and I’m interested to see what other actions are added to it in the future. The makers also seem to have some interesting plans for the application as the next version will require OS X 10.4 Tiger and is expected to be plugging into the meta-data stores. However, it should be noted that it is only really an intelligent version of UNIX pipes that have been around for years (probably about 30 years).
In terms of text editors, I had forgotten about Smultron. It’s a basic editor for programming that doesn’t do a whole lot EXCEPT provide syntax colouring for every programming language that I can think of (and a load that I’d never heard of), perform indentation, and provide line numbering. Aside from that, you still have to compile everything manually and it won’t do fancy IDE stuff like highlighting errors or suggesting corrections. But, as a basic program editor that you can use whilst you are learning a language (I’m back to learning Java again) rather than learning an IDE, it’s perfect. It also supports XML, and this is a boon at the moment for me at work since most Mac XML editors want money and this one is free and does the job.
Aside from Quicksilver and Smultron, I’m also highly appreciative of MacJanitor (runs UNIX housekeeping jobs that only run normally during the night if the computer is switched on), Activity Monitor (an awesome task manager), MacStumbler (wireless network detection program), and CocoaMySQL (adds a graphical interface to MySQL and an easy way to import CSV files).
I’ll think about posting the nostalgia topic but it needs a rewrite as it’s crap at the moment.
29th March | Reply
I use a UI called Blackbox instead of the standard windows UI. With blackbox there are no icons on your desktop at all. Everything is accessed via a right click menu. Here are a few examples of how my desktop has looked in the past:
example 1
example 2
example 3
example 4
The first 2 are the basic state of the UI without anything going on. The last 2 are the same skins/backgrounds with programs and right click menus open. Its highly customizable with many little aps to run in the UI. Most often I see analogue clocks, CPU monitors, quick bars and etc etc on other people’s BB set up but I prefer clean. The 4 workspace areas and easy to customize right click menus means everything is where i want it.
31st March | Reply
Interesting. The Windows interface is a classic that has been borrowed by pretty much ever OS going to some degree, so it’s interesting to see a different way of interacting with it. One question that does occur, however, is how do you launch applications if you have existing windows open that entirely cover the desktop? I’m not noticing an obvious replacement for the Start button in the screenshots and I presume that the right-click menu works as normal in applications.
An extension to this, perhaps, is the quad-menu system used by 3D Studio. A right-click in 3DS brings up 4 menus arranged around the cursor and so has the advantage of both being able to organise options and provide more of them, and also keeping the distance that the cursor needs to travel to select an option to a minimum. Seems to be a logical extension that works well in that application but could also work well in any other program as well.
1st April | Reply
Theres always a clickable area somewhere even if a window is maximized. Also you can set a hot key to open the menu (or any meny).
1st April | Reply
Sounds reasonable then. I’ve got a number of utility applications that provide the option of hot-areas of the screen, or hot-keys, but I always use the hot-key option as using the mouse seems as though it’ll cause problems during normal use of the screen. Apple’s Expose technology (organising windows on-screen so that you can see all those open or only those of the current application) provides the option to move the mouse to various corners of the screen to trigger the desired function but that just sounds like a recipe for disaster. Besides, when I’m running dual-screens, that can be a long distance to travel, so hitting F9, F10, or F11 is much easier.