Quicksilver

August 30, 2006 / I’m so late to the party. But in case you’re as late as me, and you’re a Mac OS X user, you have to try Quicksilver. This is one of those short “just take it on face value” recommendations. Go to the Quicksilver home page, download the installer (2.0 MB) and add the program to your Applications folder. Launch it and read the installation walk-through. Then start using.

[Quicksilver screenshot]

I’m so late to the party. But in case you’re as late as me, and you’re a Mac OS X user, you have to try Quicksilver from Blacktree Software. This is one of those short “just take it on face value” recommendations. Go to the Quicksilver home page, download the installer (2.0 MB) and add the program to your Applications folder. Launch it and read the installation walk-through. Then start using. Quicksilver is a marvel of thoughtful interface design. It will allow you to move around the OS so much faster. Your keyboard will seem like a Ferrari. No more digging through levels in the finder with your mouse. Your file system and all of your applications are there at your fingertips. If you’ve sized your Dock pretty small then it will probably be faster to use Quicksilver to open an application than to hit the pixel-area with your mouse. I know that there are other similar applications out there, but I had heard this one mentioned so often I had to know what all the fuss was about. And while I’m on a roll, I’m so over the Apple one-button mouse. My next purchase will likely be a Logitech MX1000, because it’s about the same price as a Mighty Mouse, and I hear they haven’t been reviewing too well…

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6 responses

  1. Dan Todd

    Let me second Quicksilver. It was the second application I downloaded when I got the MacBook (after Firefox). What are your other invaluable apps?

    August 30th, 2006 at 5:27 pm #

  2. Ads

    Well, there’s Dreamweaver and Photoshop, and I use MS Word and Excel a lot too. On the Apple side there’s Mail, Safari, TextEdit and iTunes. But in terms of the really useful stuff from smaller developers, here’s a short list:

    NoName Scriptware’s Cache Out X
    Coding Monkeys’ SubEthaEdit (especially for editing .htaccess files)
    Dave Nanian’s SuperDuper!
    Marcel Bresink’s TinkerTool
    Panic Software’s Transmit
    And I totally love Ian Page’s Mactracker which comes in really handy when buying RAM, HDDs, used Macs, etc.

    And I vouch for all of the browsers listed in the page footer!

    August 30th, 2006 at 6:24 pm #

  3. Dan

    My list is:

    Kevin Walzer’s Port Authority for Linux Ports
    Web Edition’s MAMP
    CyberDuck
    Growl
    Mark Space’s Missing Link [fixed]
    Skype
    GIMP

    An honourable mention also goes to:
    Adobe Lightroom

    August 31st, 2006 at 6:56 pm #

  4. Dan

    I broke the link fot Mark Space’s Missing Link. That one should work.

    August 31st, 2006 at 10:43 pm #

  5. Ads

    MAMP is pretty good I have to agree. I’ve just started using it. And I’ve also been hearing a lot about Growl, so maybe I should gave that a spin. By the way, your second post got trapped by Spam Karma because of all the product links! I guess WordPress thought you were trying to sell me something ;-)

    September 1st, 2006 at 6:23 pm #

  6. Dan Todd

    I’m always selling something!

    September 1st, 2006 at 7:55 pm #

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