topbanner_forum
  *

avatar image

Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.
Did you miss your activation email?

Login with username, password and session length
  • Thursday March 28, 2024, 3:28 pm
  • Proudly celebrating 15+ years online.
  • Donate now to become a lifetime supporting member of the site and get a non-expiring license key for all of our programs.
  • donate

Author Topic: Quick Search Box — Quicksilver redux…  (Read 4743 times)

nontroppo

  • Charter Honorary Member
  • Joined in 2005
  • ***
  • Posts: 649
  • spinning top
    • View Profile
    • nontroppo.org
    • Donate to Member
Quick Search Box — Quicksilver redux…
« on: January 13, 2009, 10:11 AM »
Google have just released a new launcher-type app (currently Mac only) called Quick Search Box (QSB):
Picture-2.png
http://code.google.com/p/qsb-mac/

What is interesting is that the lead developer is Nicholas Jitkoff (aka Alcor), who was the creator of the legendary Quicksilver (QS). Just as with Quicksilver, it uses a simple launcher interface, but allows powerful object—verb—modifier to be used; you take something, do something more to it with additional input.

It has a nice data sources plugin system, pulling in address book items, music items, allows access to your google docs, calender and mail accounts (not fully functional yet), and is fully open source.

One very cool thing, it can search within pages for more content. Notice in the screenshot above I have wikipedia searching for robot. In the list, QSB has already done the search and given me the wikipedia pages that contain robot. I can select one page and then search just that page for another word (drreams, screenshot below), getting the contextual part of the page in QSB's interface without ever visiting a webpage!!!
Picture-3.png

Can hook into spotlight. Not as visually beautiful or elegant as QS, nor can it manage triggers (noun-verb-modifier blocks bound to keystrokes), no general plugins.

It certainly is no replacement for Quicksilver for power users, but it is a very nice basic launcher nevertheless.

FARR Wishes: Performance TweaksTask ControlAdaptive History
[url=http://opera.com/]
« Last Edit: January 13, 2009, 10:20 AM by nontroppo »

Darwin

  • Charter Member
  • Joined in 2005
  • ***
  • Posts: 6,984
    • View Profile
    • Donate to Member
Re: Quick Search Box — Quicksilver redux…
« Reply #1 on: January 13, 2009, 10:38 AM »
That is interesting, nontroppo. Thanks for pointing it out to us :Thmbsup: This is more basic the QS, but if Google is paying Alcor to work on it (rather than this being a project he works on in his spare time), perhaps it will be more feature rich in the future.

nontroppo

  • Charter Honorary Member
  • Joined in 2005
  • ***
  • Posts: 649
  • spinning top
    • View Profile
    • nontroppo.org
    • Donate to Member
Re: Quick Search Box — Quicksilver redux…
« Reply #2 on: January 13, 2009, 10:56 AM »
I doubt it personally. Google will probably want it cross-platform at some point. Alcor is a real Apple developer, using Apple's core APIs to the max. The more features he adds, the more impossible it will become to port to other platforms. The source of QSB doesn't share much with his current next-generation Quicksilver trunk. I'd love it if he at least gets Elements, the new plug-in framework, and Catalyst, the new triggers framework integrated for extensibility.
FARR Wishes: Performance TweaksTask ControlAdaptive History
[url=http://opera.com/]

Darwin

  • Charter Member
  • Joined in 2005
  • ***
  • Posts: 6,984
    • View Profile
    • Donate to Member
Re: Quick Search Box — Quicksilver redux…
« Reply #3 on: January 13, 2009, 11:31 AM »
Ah... good point. I was thinking strictly in terms of Mac versions... Hadn't thought it through WRT it being cross-platform compatibile. Being on Tiger, I haven't been following QS developments and hadn't realised that there is significant on-going development. Anyway, interesting nonetheless  :)