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March 13, 2008
Quicksilver is a productivity tool that will catalog everything on your computer including applications, folders, files, emails, iTunes and much more. As you type, Quicksilver searchs its catalog gives you several actions you can take depending on what the results were. For example, if you search an application you can launch that application or open the folder where that application is stored. What makes Quicksilver so great is that is has plugins for A LOT of programs.
The best part is Quicksilver is adaptive. This means that it will start to recognize what you search for the most and place it at the top of the results. You can even search using keywords or abbreviations. The main thing to remember is Quicksilver is much more than just a search tool. For more information click here. This program is only available for Mac OS X 10.4 and newer.
Once you have downloaded Quicksilver, open the preferences and click Run Setup, if it hasn’t already prompted you to do so. You will see a window like this:
You do not have to read any of the information on the following pages on the setup, however I find it to be very informative. When you are ready to go on, click Continue.
Next, agree to the terms of the license and click Continue.
The next dialog box allows you to enable plugins to use with Quicksilver. These are what add the functionality to the program. Since the size of each plugin is extremely small, I recommend installing all of them in order to maximize the effectiveness of this program. Once you have selected the plugins you wish to install, click Continue.
On the next page you can configure the hot key used to activate Quicksilver. The default hot key is Ctrl+Spacebar but you can change it to whatever you prefer. Also, on this page you can change how often the catalog is updated. The default option is every 10 minutes. This appears to be the best option as updating the catalog does not seem to affect system performance. Once you have selected your options, click Continue.
The next page has some information on how to use Quicksilver. Click Continue to navigate to the last page of the setup. This page has links for support such as forums and how to report bugs, since this program is still in Beta. Click Finish and you should see the Quicksilver command window appear. This is where all the action takes place. All you have to do is start typing and let Quicksilver take it from there.
Quicksilver has a few more options you can configure, such as the appearance and what actions are available for each command input. Many people prefer the look of the “Bezel” command interface. Here is a screenshot of the Bezel command interface showing my favorite website :-) .
If you would like to see Quicksilver in action, check out this youtube video.
Even though Quicksilver is only available for Mac, Linux users should try Gnome Launch Box and Gnome Do which are similar programs. There are also a few Windows alternatives.
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[...] QuickSilver has been created by the clever folks over at Blacktree and can be downloaded here. For detailed installation instructions check out this guide. [...]
[...] “272″, “http://wlmtips.com”); Have you ever used Quicksilver on a Mac? Or maybe GnomeDo on a Linux system? If not, then I will explain what these programs do. [...]
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