Author Topic: DoMercury & QiiNinja - other Quicksilver/FARR type programs (Read 22,292 times)

nontroppo · « **on:** November 09, 2007, 04:10 PM »

A kind-of QS clone, though I don't think it uses any of QSs source:

http://www.odierno.com/domercury/

nontroppo · « **Reply #1 on:** November 14, 2007, 12:46 AM »

If anyone wanted to try DOMercury - don't. Ugly and underpowered (needs more plugins and a radically new UI skinning system). I hope it improves as it develops...

Armando · « **Reply #2 on:** November 14, 2007, 03:27 AM »

Thanks for the feedback nontroppo !

odiernod · « **Reply #3 on:** November 15, 2007, 04:29 AM »

DOMercury used to be ugly and underpowered. That radically new skinning interface you asked for, it exists now.
Some new plugins are on the horizon too.
I say its worth checking out...
http://www.odierno.com/domercury

justice · « **Reply #4 on:** November 15, 2007, 03:26 PM »

Hello developer welcome to the DonationCoder Forums

nontroppo · « **Reply #5 on:** November 15, 2007, 05:16 PM »

Hi odiernod, sorry to have sounded harsh, I do very much welcome the possibility to get something close to Quicksilver in functionality terms on Windows (and thanks for the portable version!). Will check out the new version and give people here an update - I suspect you'll need some time before there are usable skins though (the gree/yellow/brown one on display on your page is little better than the last one). Will you allow PNG/alpha transparency? If so I may take a stab at making a skin when you've published more details...

Visually, unless you've seen Quicksilver, you cannot appreciate how amazingly beautiful the UI is. Screenshots simply don't do it justice. The UI is animated in subtle ways, and is always just fluid (CPU is simply unmeasurable). Alcor did an amazing job making everything flow together. This elegance is functional, for example DOMercury shows the arguments pane always, whereas Quicksilver only shows it when needed. I've never seen anything on Windows that does anything similar.

odiernod, you may also want to have a look at FARR, as it has some wonderful features such as user-modifiable matching heuristics, powerful alias system, and extensive tweakability:

http://www.donationcoder.com/Software/Mouser/findrun/index.html

nontroppo · « **Reply #6 on:** November 15, 2007, 06:55 PM »

Hm, I tried to skin it, but it doesn't yet allow PNG transparency...

odiernod · « **Reply #7 on:** November 15, 2007, 10:55 PM »

I'm working on that whole alpha channels thing. It does allow transparency of completely transparent pixels though. As far as the beauty between DOMercury and Quicksilver, its the difference between an app thats been out for a few months vs a few years. I wanted to focus on functionality first and have just recently got into making the thing look nicer. That and I understand its a little underdocumented at the moment. But there is only so much time in the day

mouser · « **Reply #8 on:** November 15, 2007, 11:07 PM »

Welcome to the site odiernod

I'm adding DOMercury to the list of these kinds of programs in the FARR help file.

Darwin · « **Reply #9 on:** November 15, 2007, 11:48 PM »

Yes welcome, odiernod

This software segment just keeps growing. I have a real soft spot for these sorts of applications and have yet to settle completely on one. At the moment, I'm not using any regularly (ie don't have any set to start with windows) though I have ActiveWords, FARR, DirectAccess and Dash Command installed. It's a weakness...

Anyway, will HAVE to give DOMercury a try now that you've posted about it!

nontroppo · « **Reply #10 on:** November 18, 2007, 12:02 PM »

Another Quicksilver clone (though again not using the source I suspect):

http://www.qiininja.com/
http://www.littlebigtomatoes.com/blog/qiininja/what-is-qiininja-anyway

This actually looks very nice using the noun<->verb<->argument model and only showing the argument if needed.

gyurisc · « **Reply #11 on:** November 20, 2007, 04:21 PM »

Quote from: nontroppo on November 18, 2007, 12:02 PM

Another Quicksilver clone (though again not using the source I suspect):

http://www.qiininja.com/
http://www.littlebigtomatoes.com/blog/qiininja/what-is-qiininja-anyway

This actually looks very nice using the noun<->verb<->argument model and only showing the argument if needed.

Hi nontroppo.

Thanks for mentioning QiiNinja. It is my hobby project and I am trying to grow it to be a usefull tool for people. I am a QuickSilver fan too and this is where I got the inspiration :)

If you have any feedback about QiiNinja, please let me know!

Thanks!

nontroppo · « **Reply #12 on:** November 20, 2007, 05:35 PM »

Welcome! Actually at the moment your installer is not working for me, I see the dialog and progress bar zip by then nothing.

nontroppo · « **Reply #13 on:** November 20, 2007, 05:54 PM »

Actually it did install I just didn't get a "done" message.

First impressions: Nice! Very clean and minimalist launcher, you have a fast and elegant base to work from. Things I would work towards (kinda in that order):

1) Customised stores, along with customised searches (I don't use favorites for example). Quicksilver's catalog is a great goal to aim towards, containing both physical path locations and proxy objects (selections, recent items).
2) Learning heuristics (see my post above).
3) Path browsing and file selection (not just .lnks)
4) Multiple selections. You use the "," trick in QS to add a number of items.
5) Make your features modular: Plugins

You are off to a great start.

f0dder · « **Reply #14 on:** November 20, 2007, 06:00 PM »

nontroppo: I remember adding Sleep() calls in an installer for a program once, because otherwise you wouldn't get a chance to see the progress bar, even on 486's... actually, I think I've done it twice.

And I'm pretty sure CoolEditPro did it as well, helluva annoying. Same goes for those transition effects in some installers, where install pauses during background transition.

nontroppo · « **Reply #15 on:** November 20, 2007, 07:15 PM »

QiiNinja is only 468kb on disk which is why it sped past so fast ;-)

gyurisc · « **Reply #16 on:** November 20, 2007, 08:32 PM »

Quote from: nontroppo on November 20, 2007, 05:35 PM

Welcome! Actually at the moment your installer is not working for me, I see the dialog and progress bar zip by then nothing.

Yes, you are right. There is no indication of the end of the instalation at the moment and it is confusing. I am planning to make some sort of first run wizard what would explain to the user what to do with this application.

I am also planning to add the file navigation feature in the future. right now I am working on the text entry mode, so email sending or other text related task will be possible.

Thanks a lot for your comments! I will make sure to add them to my future release!

nontroppo · « **Reply #17 on:** November 20, 2007, 11:16 PM »

Yes, text entry is very useful too

odiernod · « **Reply #18 on:** December 07, 2007, 03:33 AM »

Been a while since ive been on this thread, which is too bad because I like this community, I will join more often. ANyway, I just updated DOMercury to 2.3. THose of you on 2.1 will love all teh new updates, including the QSKin. Still dealing with the Transparency thing. I can get it to kind of work, but still to buggy to release that yet. I have added some cool new functionality though. http://www.odierno.com/domercury

Check it out!

Armando · « **Reply #19 on:** December 07, 2007, 04:03 AM »

thanks for the info!

nontroppo · « **Reply #20 on:** December 07, 2007, 04:41 PM »

Yep, the new skin is much better - I would get rid of the default skin, or at least make QSkin the default. DOMercury is advancing quickly!

Why do I need to use [ALT]+[ARROW] when exploring the file system, the arrow key alone is easier.

I also got the following error a few times:

Code

System.ArgumentOutOfRangeException: Index was out of range. Must be non-negative and less than the size of the collection.
Parameter name: index
   at System.ThrowHelper.ThrowArgumentOutOfRangeException(ExceptionArgument argument, ExceptionResource resource)
   at System.ThrowHelper.ThrowArgumentOutOfRangeException()
   at DOMercury.Forms.Mercury.lbItems_DrawItem(Object sender, DrawItemEventArgs e)
   at System.Windows.Forms.ListBox.OnDrawItem(DrawItemEventArgs e)
   at System.Windows.Forms.ListBox.WmReflectDrawItem(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.ListBox.WndProc(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.OnMessage(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.WndProc(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow.Callback(IntPtr hWnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wparam, IntPtr lparam)

odiernod · « **Reply #21 on:** December 13, 2007, 11:44 PM »

Yeah, I got that one fixed in the upcoming release: Early next week. I am also adding a few more features to it, such as allowing you, using the Folder Indexor Plugin, to add folders themselves to the index. I also reduced the amount of background search calls so hopefully it will hang less as well. I am also creating a priority scheme that is somewhat inspired by FARR. No FARR source code, and my own variation of the idea, but some similiarities exist.

'On the Pretty side, I added a Fade in animation for those who like a little bit more pizazz.

odiernod · « **Reply #22 on:** December 17, 2007, 04:41 PM »

As promised, DOMercury 2.4 is up now

Darwin · « **Reply #23 on:** December 21, 2007, 09:34 PM »

I just tried DoMercury 2.4 (first time using DM). I couldn't get it to change skins - it was stuck on default AND (more importantly in my estimation) it kept cylcing up to 80% or more of CPU and 150MB of VM. I left it alone for an hour and it was still doing that when I returned. Either you need to include some sort of mouserover popup that indicates what's going on in the background (indexing?) or tame the beast! In operation I found it to be pretty good, but couldn't get over the default GUI

Looking forward to putting 2.5 through its paces, though...

odiernod · « **Reply #24 on:** February 19, 2008, 12:24 AM »

It's been 2 months, but I finally released another version, 2.5,

get it here: http://www.odierno.com/domercury