Unless I have not understood your post, I would say that the equivalent in Mac OS X would be the Spotlight search.
To launch Firefox, e.g.
cmdCmd-Spacebar, ff/cmd
As for the first comment re. iPhone, I think it is a natural way to use the finger to navigate on the touchscreen, at least for me.
What if you want to change the order in which things pop up? I know I’m going to want Notepad2 to come up before Notepad (though usually I replace the executable…).
Mr Coding Horror is slowly but surely becoming a member of the Great Unwashed Thurott tribe. Congrats.
Unsubscribed.
With google desktop installed, double-ctrl and then you have the pearls you described in this post.
typing trumps pointing, and Spotlight trumps Start menu.
Well actually I turned the new start menu off and went went back to classic mode because I prefer using the mouse, however I didn’t know Vista could do the filtering so I might give it another go.
Regards
Lee
it is an implied victory of textual search over traditional
point-and-click desktop GUI metaphors
nice to read this sentence.
do you know why i so strongly prefer Firefox over IE ? because, when i need to search a webpage, i just have to type “/” followed by the text i want; the search toolbar opens immediately, the searched text hightlights while i type.
under IE6, i have to hit Ctrl+F, wait (usually 2 to 5 seconds) for the dialog box to open (why is it so long to open a “find” box ?), type my search then hit the “next” button. that’s too long and by the time i complete the first step, i forget what i was searching for.
i do have a lot of similar examples, ranging from command-line completion to mobile phone menu shortcuts. this kind of features, when implemented right, are a real pleasure and a great improvement in productivity.
before reading people screaming about command-line completion: i am NOT a unix guru, command line completion works under windows (with a registry tweak under windows 2000, straight out of the box under XP) and the reason why i prefer multiple small command line tools over a single complex gui tool is that my typing skills are far better than my mouse-aiming skills.
I have started using Startease (http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2064897,00.asp) from PCMag and I rarely use the start menu anymore. If you are a normal geek you have too many programs installed and you battle to find them.
The is also great for getting aroung lame programs such as “Cyberlink PowerDVD” where you need to look under C for PowerDVD! Type dvd and you are done.
I’m a bit surprised that someone so focused on usability and so aware of all the great applications out there hasn’t been using some of these types of things on XP in the past (Launchy, Google Desktop, etc).
You come across just a little bit too enthusiastic about a feature that so many others have been enjoying for so long.
How’s that Acer Ferrari working out for you? 
2 quick points:
It might work better if you could fill a shortcut with metadata and type that in for that application as well. I.E, type ‘mp3’ and get Winamp, etc. Also- if you typed ‘mp3’ and Winamp is not in the menu- search for it, and Windows would add ‘mp3’ to the Winamp shortcut
Also, – Damnit!! I forgot the second one. It was good, too…
This must be your first post after getting your free laptop.
See, if you have a blog, once you discover something that’s been around for years-- that’s news.
I’ve never been in the habit of installing time-saving programs on my computer, or controlling everything from the keyboard, but I’ve always been surprised by the number of people who complain that Windows ends up with “too many programs” on the start menu. The simple solution is to create a directory called “utilities” (or whatever), and stuff all of the useless start menu shortcuts in there.
Sounds like Gnome Deskbar (very cool, still needs a bit of development) or Quicksilver. On that topic, what happens when you type an e-mail address or a calculation or a unit conversion into the start menu bar?
By the way, Launchy sucks compared to the others. The find-as-you-type is poor and it supports a very limited set of inputs.
I completely agree with you and hate the start menu. There are those alternatives (colibri, launchy) but they’re not as slick as Vista. I did find a start menu alternative here (http://vseproject.extra.hu/) but again, due to the limitations of the Windows API, it’s not 100% nor will ever be. Having said that, I’m still not moving to Vista as it just gives me nothing other than little perks (like this) vs the pain and suffering of say, oh, running IIS and SQL Server 2005 (which can be done, but I’m not about to create a haacked installation and jump through hoops of death to achieve it)
About the Find dialog in IE, I have noticed that the bigger the page is, the longer it takes to open - maybe it does some kind of indexing - or just stripping out the text from the HTML?
Launchy is a good deal better than Colibri, but neither of them is as nice as Spotlight, which doesn’t really compare to Quicksilver. It’s Quicksilver’s ability to provide context-sensitive options based on the selected program that put it above the rest. Plus triggers. Plus the ability to append to a text file. Or run a command-line command.
Launchy is the fastest of the Windows bunch, but also has the fewest features. For launching apps it rules, but for navigating folders AppRocket beats SlickRun, Launchy and Colibri - once you’ve found a folder you can drill into it using the arrow keys. It’s certainly the closest Windows app to the sublime Quicksilver.
Totally agree with the essence of the piece - all hail the keyboard!
I can promise you people in general will not like the removal of the normal folding out programs menu and this is a miss by Microsoft to remove it so completely.
People don’t want to type and use arrow keys to launch programs. Some people here might think the folding menu was flawed but I wonder if that wasn’t more a personal thing that they didn’t keep it properly organized.
I simply do not understand how people can think that typing to access everyhting is a step forward in the year 2006, we left this back in 1993.
Like I said previously, I have no objections to the search functionality in itself, it’s great as a complement to a normal point and click menu but should not replace it.
I wouldn’t upgrade to Vista for this for sure! I’ve been using Quicksilver (Mac) and AppRocket (Windows) for years. Also, I personally believe web 2.0 (primarily AJAX+DHTML) has dealt the final blow to Windows and beguns its gradual demise. I think Windows will be considered in 5 years what mainframes are considered now – legacy/dinosaur.