Friday Software Spotlight - Quicksilver
posted in Software |
I’ll start with hyperbole. Quicksilver is perhaps the most useful software you will ever install on your Mac. Exagerrated? Maybe. To be taken literally? You bet.
Here’s why Quicksilver gets such rave reviews, from this author and many others.
The developers, Blacktree, bill Quicksilver as “a unified extensible interface for working with applications, contacts, music, and other data.” Perhaps more to the point, it’s the quickest way to access almost anything on your computer.
Quicksilver is an application that runs in the background, invoked by customizable hotkeys (control-space by default). Activate it, and start typing. Quicksilver almost instantaneously generates a list of files on your computer that match what you type. Type in a name like Harper, and a list of matching items appear in the list, including your best friend Sarah Harper in Address Book, and Ben Harper in iTunes. Scroll up and down using your cursor keys to choose the right item, then use the right cursor to choose any sub-items (e.g., for contacts in your address book, sub-items include phone numbers and email addresses).
Press the tab key to access a list of actions associated with the application and data you selected. For example, if you select a phone number as a sub-item, you’ll have 9 actions to choose from, such as Large Type. Select an email address, and you’ll have 6 actions to choose from, including composing an email. Each of the items, sub-items and applications change contextually based on the type of object you select from Quicksilver’s initial match list.
Perhaps the best thing about Quicksilver is that it is imminently extensible. It supports a plug-in architecture to expand the number of supported applications. You’re not limited to Address Book, Mail and iTunes; you can include Panic’s Transmit 3 FTP application, Firefox, BBEdit and many more. And adding plug-ins to your configuration won’t likely result in any perceptible degredation of responsiveness.
If you’re a heavy iTunes user, you’ll appreciate Quicksilver’s ability to control many aspects of iTunes, from increasing the volume to increasing a song’s ratings to pause, mute or jump to the next song. If you just like to be efficient on your Mac, you’ll quickly love to learn Quicksilver for how quickly you can get mundane tasks accomplished.
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