2007 
Mod +1 Launchy.
Couldnât live without it.
I was a little disappointed⌠I found this link via reddit and I thought it was going to be a comparison/study of sorts on click based navigation vs. typing. Unfortunately what I found is a hooray for Microsoft innovating whatâs been around as added functionality in both windows and OS X for some time now. Also personally I like the command line, I never have to hunt and peck with the mouse and tab completion eases the number of characters I have to type.
Somehow I donât think this feature is reason enough to switch to a substandard OS.
Is that a TI-99/4A Wumpus I see?
PL - Iâve always kept my start menu immaculate but establishing myself with Launchy was such an illuminating experience. I donât care what my start menu looks like now, because I never use it. Itâs legacy technology as far as Iâm concerned, the windowing UI has moved on.
This isnât like the command line on a Linux system, because search is integral: it is a very different thing.
The single-finger typing public may quite prefer the start menu, but for anyone with adequate typing skills it is a superior experience, even if they donât realise it yet. Someone should organise a contest - Iâd be totally confident I could do a variety of routine file/application manipulation significantly quicker then a mouse-clicker.
Reminds me of the Gnome Deskbar which Iâve been using for a few years:
the yunguns are getting more amusing all the time. some one of them gets all gooey over a feature of VT-100 database applications from about 1985. gad.
i suppose these folks also voted for BushâŚtwice.
This is great news! Iâve noticed that my hand hurts more from using my mouse than from typing (and yes, iâve tried all sorts of ergonomic mice). Iâm looking forward to this feature.
Another (and IMHO better) alternative to Launchy, Spotlight etc. is Find and Run Robot:
http://www.donationcoder.com/Software/Mouser/findrun/
Itâs fast, easy and very configurable.
View a flash demo here:
http://www.donationcoder.com/Software/Mouser/findrun/Movie_FindRun/FindAndRun3_ViewletCam.html
Version 2 will be released soon and will include folder searching, even more great skins, and more.
Mac OS X has Spotlight for this, and has for some time. To open TextPad, I type
Command+Space (to summon Spotlight)
Note
Command+Enter (to open it)
Itâs taken microserf six years to come up with pithy little substandard (pre-existing) improvements like this, and to the supposed amazement of its loyal masses? Windows users are sheeple. Fortunately they have the MS brand to guide them through these treacherous times. -dry heave-
âthose mentioning QuickSilver, what does it do better/different? Iâm really not going to waste a few hours just to find out so if someone doesnât mind sharing that would be great. Is QuickSilver an Apple product?â
Itâs extensible via a plugin system first off. This allows interesting integration with other applications. For example, using the iTunes plugin you can start playing a song or add a song to the party shuffle from the command window. (http://docs.blacktree.com/quicksilver/plug-ins/itunes_plug-in )
You can start an email to someone. Choose to send it directly without opening Mail.app or not. (http://docs.blacktree.com/quicksilver/plug-ins/email_support)
There is a list of plugins and instructions on how to use them here (http://docs.blacktree.com/quicksilver/reference). Spotlight doesnât cover nearly as much functionality as Quicksilver does and, to the best of my knowledge, the new Vista start menu doesnât either AND itâs not extensible. There are plugins for Subversion, FTP Programs, all of the iLife applications, iCal, iChat, other IM applications, you can run terminal commands from it, the list goes on and on. I have yet to find any application on the Windows platform, or any other application on the Mac, that comes close to Quicksilver. Itâs not hard to describe everything you can do with QS, it just takes a long time.
Wow, thatâs pretty extreme emotion. To summarise: you hate windows and MS?
âHe can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know.â Abraham Lincoln
Whoops, forgot to add this.
âthe iPhone seems to think that pointing is where itâs atâ
I think that the gestures in iPhone are the touch screen equivalent of keyboard navigation in Vista and Quicksilver. Rather than using nested menus or a stylus, you pinch or stretch a photo to resize it. Flip through your music collection instead of pressing âNextâ or âdown arrowâ a hundred times. Want to listen to the 4th voicemail in your mailbox? Just poke it instead of listening to the first three.
The Ferrari comments are funny. As a Windows Developer, wouldnât you think itâs more likely that Jeff has an MSDN subscription, which made Vista available a long time ago. Especially considering he has earlier Vista posts prior to the Ferrari scandal.
(Yes, Iâm bored waiting for my Vista machine to reboot. Itâs hung on âShutting downâŚâ)
Scott, Iâm not generally convinced by Macs: iTunes, fanboys and no games. However, my next computer will probably be a Mac, simply because Quicksilver is so totally awesome.
As long as the up/down arrow keys still let you navigate around this should be ok. The concern is that of handling a tech support call where you need to instruct the user to click Start, and then navigate to a selection to hit enter; if they get stuck in a typing box it becomes far more difficult to get them where they need to be.
Convenient, yes. But with the recent Microsoft/NSA/Vista collaboration in the news, I really wonder if Vista should not be shunned altogether?
You really need a checkbox for a comment post that asks âAre you a fanboy?â and if they check it to disallow them from posting.
The point stated wasnât to compare the Vista search capabilities to other OSâs and/or applications, but rather to compare it to previous versions of Windows. I donât care if KDE or OSX uses the same sort of search feature yet came out with it earlier. Iâll use the same analogy I use when people say that someone in the software industry âstoleâ a concept from another company.
How do majority of us get to and from work? Cars. Manufactures of which throw ideas back and forth constantly yet no one scrutinizes them for âstealingâ ideas. Get your fanboy heads out of your asses and get back into the real world. If companies didnât take advantage of a good concept there wouldnât be any initiative to make products any better.
Back on topic, I think the Vista search is a valuable, time saving component. I didnât notice much of a search lag, especially considering how long searches took in pervious versions of Windows.
âWindows Vista gets criticized a lot in the press, mostly for not being OS X ⌠But Vista has one killer feature up its sleeve âŚâ
Was this post a joke?