Launchy

Gnomie Peter Schwankl writes:

Hey, Chris!

Cygnus here. Just saw your dock broadcast, and enjoyed it.

I was with you for a long while, using a dock to augment my start menu, using it as a quick way to launch every day applications and games. It really made my computer more enjoyable and easy to use.

I would suggest the dock to any workstation user, but the main drawback I had was that I couldn’t play games full screen and have the dock open at the same time, as whenever my cursor hit the bottom boundary of the screen, it would (very choppily) animate the auto-hide feature.

So, I had to quit the dock whenever I played games — a minor inconvenience.

It wasn’t until I got my laptop that I looked for a different solution for launching applications. I didn’t like the idea of having to use my track pad to get to the dock and click an icon, and my friend had told me about a very nice text based application launcher for OS X called Quicksilver.

Well, looking for a Windows solution, I found two. Colibri, and, soon after, a more fully featured, 1.0+ version of a similar program, Launchy.

The basic operation of both is easy. You pull it up (using a keystroke) and then start typing the program you want and hit ‘enter’ to launch it.

I really like Launchy for several reasons:

• Pops up with a determined and changeable bound keystroke (I like ctrl+space, as it’s almost never used in other programs, and is very easy to hit quickly when you want it).
• Text string search. Even if you mistype, it usually finds what you’re looking for within a few letters of me starting to type.
• It can launch Web sites if you simply enter a URL into launch and hit enter. It should work with your default browser, (I’m using Firefox, and I know you use Maxthon last I knew) This isn’t a feature of the bare bones program, but is a plug-in that comes with the standard install.
• Can quickly go through local disk file structure by entering C: in the search, and hitting tab, then entering the next file. eg. C: [tab] Prog [tab] Mozil [enter] and it pulls up the file C:/Program Files/Mozilla Firefox/ — very smooth and faster than having to open a disk with either Win+E or the start menu.
• Skinable, plugins, and utilities. Open Source. Nice user community. Not very large, but there is one.
• Portable mode. I’m yet to try this, but my guess is you can drop it on a USB key and just launch it from that on any computer for functionality and familiarity on the go.

Colibri is relatively the same thing, but is in a pre-release currently, so I’ll keep my eye on it for when it comes into a 1.0 or higher release to see if it has incentives to make me switch. My biggest problem with Colibri right now is that it doesn’t find all of the programs I use on my computer (the only one missing is OpenOffice.Org, but everything else shows up when I look for it).

I suggest you try either Quicksilver for your Macs, or Launchy for your XP/Vista machines. I find them a joy to use, and have somehow managed to replace my steadfast liking for the dock.

Cheers, Cygnus

[tags]dock, launchy, colibri[/tags]