Trying Quicksilver
Published on 16 Jul 2006 · Filed in Musing · 326 words (estimated 2 minutes to read)This makes the third or fourth time I’ve tried to get into using Quicksilver. I’m OK with the whole pop-up bezel interface, since that’s the interface that VirtueDesktops, my virtual desktop application, uses. (The author of VirtueDesktops freely admits that he was inspired to create his interface based on Quicksilver’s interface.) Don’t get me wrong—Quicksilver (just “QS” from now on) is a great application, and it has loads of very useful functionality.
For example, here are a couple of the things that I love about QS:
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With QS, you can access Address Book information without having to launch Address Book. You can type a few characters of a contact’s name and there it is, and there are actions accompanying it that allow you to send an e-mail to that contact. You can’t do that with Spotlight.
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QS is extensible, allowing you to attach user-written AppleScripts to add functionality to the application. In addition, QS supports an system of plug-ins to add features or to add new interfaces, such as their Flashlight interface (based on the Spotlight interface).
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The bezel interface is pretty cool.
Somehow, though, even given the nifty and pretty handy things that you can do with QS, I just can’t get with it. I can’t integrate it into my workflow. I can’t get into the handy of invoking QS to do what I’m trying to do. I suppose I need to give it much more time than I am giving it; I’ve heard it said that you need to give it a week or more of using it before you get used to it.
Any QS users out there? If you’ve got any tips on getting “used” to QS, on how to integrate QS into your workflow and your modes of operation, I’d really appreciate it. I believe that QS could be a powerful tool to help make me more productive, but I’m just having a really hard time getting the hang of it.