Egon (EGG) Kuster's Home Page - Blog: Mac OSX Searching: LaunchBar vs Quicksilver

November 20, 2004

Mac OSX Searching: LaunchBar vs Quicksilver

I have been using Objective Development's LaunchBar software for quite some time to quickly launch applications on my Macs. LaunchBar is a brilliant piece of software, but today one of my friends told me about Quicksilver that provides a very similar capability but for free (really it is donateware). For the price do not think that this is a shoddy piece of software as it is not this at all, in fact it is much better than some software you can pay quite a lot for. Quicksilver also has the concept of plugins that allows for additional modules to be added so as new application are developed and people want to search through files in these applications or connect to the application's internal database these plugins can be used. Already quite a number of plugins are available including ones to connect to iChat, Apple Address Book, Firefox, iPhoto, Sherlock, Entourage and many more. In comparison Quicksilver is much faster to use than LaunchBar and the ability to extend quicksilver means it will be more capable over time and support many more applications than LaunchBar could hope for.

Links
LaunchBar Site
Quicksilver Site
Quicksilver Plugins

Posted by Egon Kuster at November 20, 2004 12:35 AM

Comments

Unfortunately, after much searching, I haven't found a way to get it to index Stickies, which would be really useful, since I jot lots of wisdom in them ;) Posted by: Matthew Phillips at November 22, 2004 04:27 PM

You could write one the plugin API is open have a look at the forums as there is lots of people talking about plugins there. There is also a request forum so you could request a new plugin to be developed that searches stickies. Posted by: Egon Kuster at November 22, 2004 07:20 PM

Had a look at the forum. There is a request, but the author responded that Stickes is not scriptable, so it isn't possible to show and highlight the search hit in the note. You can add StickiesDatabse manually, but without it being able to find the actual note, it's not much use. Posted by: Matthew Phillips at November 22, 2004 07:24 PM


	« External Firewire RAID drive \| Main Blog Page \| Sorting HTML Tables » November 20, 2004 Mac OSX Searching: LaunchBar vs Quicksilver I have been using Objective Development's LaunchBar software for quite some time to quickly launch applications on my Macs. LaunchBar is a brilliant piece of software, but today one of my friends told me about Quicksilver that provides a very similar capability but for free (really it is donateware). For the price do not think that this is a shoddy piece of software as it is not this at all, in fact it is much better than some software you can pay quite a lot for. Quicksilver also has the concept of plugins that allows for additional modules to be added so as new application are developed and people want to search through files in these applications or connect to the application's internal database these plugins can be used. Already quite a number of plugins are available including ones to connect to iChat, Apple Address Book, Firefox, iPhoto, Sherlock, Entourage and many more. In comparison Quicksilver is much faster to use than LaunchBar and the ability to extend quicksilver means it will be more capable over time and support many more applications than LaunchBar could hope for. Links LaunchBar Site Quicksilver Site Quicksilver Plugins Posted by Egon Kuster at November 20, 2004 12:35 AM Comments Unfortunately, after much searching, I haven't found a way to get it to index Stickies, which would be really useful, since I jot lots of wisdom in them ;) Posted by: Matthew Phillips at November 22, 2004 04:27 PM You could write one the plugin API is open have a look at the forums as there is lots of people talking about plugins there. There is also a request forum so you could request a new plugin to be developed that searches stickies. Posted by: Egon Kuster at November 22, 2004 07:20 PM Had a look at the forum. There is a request, but the author responded that Stickes is not scriptable, so it isn't possible to show and highlight the search hit in the note. You can add StickiesDatabse manually, but without it being able to find the actual note, it's not much use. Posted by: Matthew Phillips at November 22, 2004 07:24 PM