Prompted by a TUAW reader comment on my post the other day about some Quicksilverfundamentals, I thought I would take a crack at posting some short tutorials on what Quicksilver actually does, andhow to get started with it. I'm talking about the most basic of the basics here for anyone who is curious but stillconfused as to what the heck they're looking at the first time they launch Quicksilver. To anyone who can't make headsor tails of it: I don't blame you. It took me quite a while to wrap my head around all this stuff, so I hope I can doyou some justice with this post.
Disclaimer - I use a somewhat modified version of Quicksilver and I'veadded a lot of extras, but for this demo I *think* I've properly fixed my copy to look like a default Quicksilveri tall.
eaking of my scree hot - let's get started.
Quicksilver's we ite says it is a "unified, exte ible interface for working with a licatio , contacts,music, and other data." Basically, that mea it's an easy way to search for just about anything on your Mac and*do* something with it - kinda like otlight except, as of this writing, Quicksilver can't really searchi ide of files like otlight can. Quicksilver rises above and beyond otlight in that it allows you to dofar more with Mac OS X and the items you search for, as you'll soon find out.
By default, you can invokeQuicksilver with ctrl - ace, and you should be presented with a window like the scree hot above (yes, you can changethat shortcut in the preferences). This window contai two main sectio called %26quot ubject' and "Action."These sectio are Quicksilver's bread and butter: the Subject section allows you to search for something, just likeyou would with otlight. You can begin typing and Quicksilver will immediately begin to show you results, as seen inmy next scree hot:
One of the first "gotcha quot; to remember isthat Quicksilver will reset your i ut (near the top left of the window, in this case I typed "TUAW") if youpause for about a second and begin typing agai it doe 't act like otlight. If this irks you, there is a setting inthe preferences that will allow you to extend the amount of time Quicksilver waits to reset the i ut field.
Once you stop typing, Quicksilver will open the fly-out window you see on the right containing a list of otherchoices it found based on your i ut. Its first choice is already placed in the Subject section, but in case you wantto chose something else, you can simply arrow down to the selection you want and the Subject section will change toreflect the items you're arrowing to.
This is where the Actio section, on the bottom of the Quicksilverwindow, comes into play. That Action section tells you what is going to ha en with the item in the Subject sectiononce you hit the return key. In this case I have selected a bookmark for TUAW, and the Action will be to open thatbookmark in my default browser. It's pretty straight-forward, and not much unlike using otlight so far, right?
This Action section is where I believe Quicksilver becomes truly useful. I tead of hitting enter on theitem you've found with Quicksilver, hit the Tab key to move from the Subject section down to the Action section (noticehow the blue highlighting shifts down the Action. You can also use shift-tab to jump back < an style="font-style:italic;">up to the Subject section). Now, hit the right arrow, and you'll get another fly-out window to theright that contai a list of actio . These allow you to chose what you want to do with the item you've found, andthis list will change depending on the item you search for. In this case, with a bookmark, I can chose to (in order onthis list): open it (the default action), copy its URL to the Cli oard (a plugin I've i talled), open it with a ecific browser, amongst a few other actio we won't get into for now. For an example of how Actio can changedepending on the item you've found, check out the actio that are po ible with a contact that I searched for fromAddre Book in my next scree hot:
Here, I searched for the TUAW Team contact that I havein Addre Book. Now the default action, as you can see, is to send an email to this contact, which I think is far moreuseful than otlight, since it merely ope the contact in Addre Book. If I hit return, Quicksilver will open a newme age in my default email client (Mail.a ) and automatically addre that me age to the TUAW Team addre . Butlet's not stop there - check out all the other actio that are po ible. I can still show that contact in Addre Book, open that contact in Addre Book immediately for editing, copy the TUAW Team email addre to my cli oard, andall sorts of other stuff. Try searching for other types of items, such as a licatio , and tab down to the actio section to see what's po ible with them. Hopefully, this will help get your first foot in the door with howQuicksilver works, and what is po ible.
If you don't like the default action or the order actio arearranged, you can check out the Actio panel in Quicksilver's preferences like I recommended in my last post (eitherthrough the icon in your menubar or by hitting cmd-, when Quicksilver is invoked) for a complete list of all thepo ible actio , in which case you can toggle some on/off and reorder them. Looking through those might also help youexplore all the things that are po ible with items you find.
One last tip before I wrap this up is thatQuicksilver, as its we ite states, is incredibly exte ible. If youaren't a Safari/Addre Book user, you can get plugi for most other browsers as well as a plugin for Entouragesu ort. There are a boatload of plugi available that allow you not only to find stuff but control a licatio too,like changing music in iTunes with hotkeys, browsing through NetNewsWire headlines, searching the web with hundreds ofsearch engines, creating archives of files/folders you search for and much, much more. Once you getused to the fundamentals in this tutorial, feel free to start exploring, as that becomes part of the fun of learninghow Quicksilver can completely change the way you use your Mac.
Hopefully this tutorial did you some good,but if it didn't, feel free to post questio and requests in the comments. I'll try to do my best to help you out, andyou can always check tutorials from other sites that have already posted quite a few of their own such as 43 Folders and Blacktree themselves.
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