Messages

1

LaunchBar Commander / Re: One thought and one possible bug

« on: December 02, 2011, 02:23 PM »

I guess the question is -- what would it mean for a dock to be the child of another dock? Do you mean that you want the child "dock" to be treated as if it were just a child menu?  Or behave like root level items? Or do you want it to behave like a dock.. and what would that mean?

-mouser (December 02, 2011, 02:09 PM)

Ah ha, a seemingly simple idea has a lot more to it below the surface. I'm not familiar enough with the vocabulary of LBC and the ramifications of the distinction between a child menu, root-level items, and a dock to give a definitive answer to your question so let me say what I was hoping would happen. When I clicked on the link node in my quick-links dock I was expecting the associated dock to be displayed just as if I clicked on its icon in the notification area or if I typed the hot-key sequence for it. What does that make it?

Bill Wetzel

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LaunchBar Commander / Re: One thought and one possible bug

« on: December 02, 2011, 01:57 PM »

A dock cannot be a child of another dock.. so that would be a problem.

What exactly are you wanting to do?  Do you basically want to embed the contents of one dock in another or in a menu?

This is a small point and not worth a lot of effort. The need arises as follows. I have two main docks, one for portable apps, another for installed apps, each bound to a hot key, normally hidden, and exposed by the hot keys. I have a third dock for frequently used programs that I leave visible on the desktop permanently. This takes the place of Windows quick launch icons in the taskbar. I was trying to add nodes in the frequently-used dock to point to the portable and installed docks as a convenience so that I could access them with a mouse-click in the frequently-used dock and not have to go to Windows notification area or type the hot key sequence.

Why can't a dock be a child of another dock, are you afraid of recursion? If so, you could test for it. Or, perhaps it is a more fundamental program structure issue?

Thanks,
Bill Wetzel

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LaunchBar Commander / One thought and one possible bug

« on: December 02, 2011, 01:29 PM »

Re: v1.127.01

I am using LBC with Windows 7 as a launcher mainly for portable applications, a few non-portable, and as a replacement for quick-launch icons on the tool bar. It has worked quite well for this.

Possible bug: I'm unable to make a link to a "Node Type: Dock". A link to a "Node Type: Command" works fine. That is, a node of type "Link" with a "Link to Node ID:" of a Command node works fine but with a "Link to Node ID:" of Dock does not. I would like to have entries in one dock point to other docks.

Suggestion: When adding a node for a portable application I find myself continually having to edit an absolute path in the "Icon:" and "Application/Command" text boxes to a relative path. For example, after dragging an application into the dock the Application/Command value is: "C:\Portable\bin\puttyportable\puttyportable.exe". I have to edit it to: "%APPDIR%\..\puttyportable\puttyportable.exe". It would be helpful to have an option to make this change automatically.

Thanks,
Bill Wetzel

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LaunchBar Commander / Problems, suggestions, and comments after substantial work with LBC

« on: February 21, 2010, 04:09 PM »

I configured LBC for use with a large collection of portable apps a couple of months ago. With an apology for the late posting and that this post concerns a release a revision old I offer my thoughts and suggestions. Some of this may be redundant with an earlier posting but I'm including all my notes here for completeness.

Environment: LBC 1.108.01, Windows XP SP2, AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+ 2.61 GHz, 4 GByte ram

1) It would be convenient to be able to drag-and-drop an application onto a dock or menu to add the app to the dock or menu.

2) It would be convenient to have a toolbar on the dock including "hide" to hide the dock, "configure" to show the configuration menu, and so on.

3) I suggest a "profile" facility for managing multiple configurations. Each dock/menu entry could have zero or more associated tags. A profile menu would provide a way to restrict the entries in a dock/menu to those containing a given tag or tags, or all. I would use this to reduce the complexity of my menus for day-to-day use while still supporting all of the apps I use for less frequent maintenance tasks.

4) I suggest a "print" facility to create a report showing the full dock/menu tree with an indicator for missing applications.

5) I have/am finding it difficult to insure that all installed apps are represented in the dock/menu. It would be helpful if LBC could search the folder containing applications (c:\Program Files typically but I use C:\Apps) and display a comparison of installed executables vs. ones in the dock/menu.

6) Multiple monitor support - I can't be specific here but it appears that LBC is not aware of configurations including multiple monitors. On many occasions LBC appeared to loose track of the location of a window/dock/menu when it was displayed on a second monitor.

That's all for now. I have a long list of others but too much time has elapsed since I created it and I have forgotten the details.

Bill

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N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 - Pledge to Participate Here

« on: January 01, 2010, 10:28 AM »

I pledge to release an Adobe InDesign script for creating photo book layouts. See:

   http://wrwetzel.com/...booktools/index.html

Bill Wetzel

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LaunchBar Commander / Is there a way: Global edit of drive letters + more?

« on: November 07, 2009, 01:54 PM »

After using LBC for a few weeks I find that I would like to make a small change in the folder layout of my portable applications. All are presently located in J:\bin. I would like to move them to J:\proot\bin or some variant thereof. LBC has no trouble finding apps when the drive letter changes but it is a different matter when the drive letter and folder changes. Is there some way to make a global change as described above. Better yet, I would prefer to replace J:\bin with "%APPDIR%\..\" so that I can easily change my mind yet again.

I had hoped to find the configuration stored in an ascii xml file or similar that I could edit with a text editor, but I found none.

Any way to make this global change without having to go through all of my configured apps, one by one? Alternatively, any way to get an editable configuration file?

Thanks much,
Bill

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LaunchBar Commander / Re: Node type to launch one dock from another?

« on: October 20, 2009, 11:59 AM »

BTW, I'm accumulating a list of little things that I found, a few little rough edges here and there. I'll save them until I have some more usage time on LBC so as not to dribble them out one-by-one. They are little things and I don't want them to detract from the admiration I have for the program overall.

Bill

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LaunchBar Commander / Re: Node type to launch one dock from another?

« on: October 20, 2009, 11:56 AM »

Ok.
Thanks,
Bill

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LaunchBar Commander / Re: Node type to launch one dock from another?

« on: October 20, 2009, 11:50 AM »

I experimented with that node type a bit a few days ago. It's nice and I suspect I could find a way to use it but it lacks one feature that a full tabbed implementation would have - the prompting benefits of having the names of all tabs visible at once. That's one of the things about FSL Launcher I find so attractive.

Bill

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LaunchBar Commander / Re: Node type to launch one dock from another?

« on: October 20, 2009, 11:23 AM »

Let me add a little more...

I'm attracted to LBC for lots of reasons but the one that stand out the most is that it supports nesting to arbitrary levels. That's important to me as it allows me to construct a launch structure that respects good UI design (limited choices per level, limited number of levels) and that reflects my application usage patterns. If FSL Launcher allows arbitrary nesting I'd probably not be exploring LBC.

When I have had some more time to think about it I'm going to suggest that you incorporate tabs (in the strong sense of the word - tabbed browsing, tabbed file managers, etc., not as you currently use the term) as an alternative to menus. I'm not ready to yet as I have not thought it through enough. A node type of "dock" would give me a partial means to explore how I would use tabs but without the work of implementing tabs.

Another reason to justify a dock node type: you clearly have a sense of the importance of regularity and generality in design - it is obvious from looking at LBC. Including a "dock" node type is just one more instance of that generality and will produce options for use that you and I probably cannot imagine at the outset but which will accrue as others explore it.

Bill

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LaunchBar Commander / Re: Node type to launch one dock from another?

« on: October 20, 2009, 11:08 AM »

Let me try. There appears to be two slightly different paradigms at work here, that of the dock, and that of the menu. At this point in my exploration I have a slight preference for the dock over the menu. This is in large part probably influenced by my prior use of FSL launcher, which provides tabbed-access to multiple pages of docks.

I would create a dock called "Photo Apps". I would create a node in another dock with a title "Photo Apps" that has a node type of "dock" and references the Photo Apps dock. Clicking on that node would display the Photo Apps dock just as it would display had I bound it to a hotkey and hit that hotkey. The Photo Apps dock would receive focus and I could select nodes just as with any dock.

Bill

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LaunchBar Commander / Node type to launch one dock from another?

« on: October 20, 2009, 10:50 AM »

I search a bit in the forum but could find no mention of this...

LBC clearly supports multiple docks. Is there a way to launch one dock from another? That seems like such an obvious thing, especially given the regularity of LBC, yet I can find no way to do it. It would appear that a new node type would be appropriate.

Thanks,
Bill

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LaunchBar Commander / "Configure Preferences and Options" Node in Dock? & Initial thoughts.

« on: October 19, 2009, 09:34 AM »

During this period where I'm just getting started using LBC and building my first dock I find that I'm continually going to the "Configure...." window by right clicking on the dock to bring up a menu.

Is there a way to place a node on the dock that brings up the configuration window directly? If not, please accept this note as a suggestion.

--------------

I have explored many, many application launchers before settling on the FSL Launcher, which I have used for the past several years. I just discovered LBC and I must say that it is impressive, very impressive, and has specific features that I need that not in FSL. Most importantly, it is rock solid. It works exactly as I expect in just about every detail and was very easy to learn. I am evaluating it by using it as a portable application launcher on an external drive. So far, so good though I expect to have a few suggestions as I use it more.

Thanks for a great tool.

Bill Wetzel