Quicksilver: act without doing

Mac geeks in the know have been raving about the wonders of an application called Quicksilver for a while now, usually saying how it saves them so much time. But none of them seemed able to clearly convey how Quicksilver accomplishes this. Well, a picture (in this case, a high definition moving picture) is worth a thousand blogs.

I’ve just watched MacBreak (video podcast) episode #12, in which Leo Laporte interviews Merlin Mann of 43 Folders, who spent about 12 minutes demonstrating what Quicksilver does. Seeing it in use, with my own eyes, I got it right away.

I won’t try to explain it with mere words here. Watching Mr. Mann use it persuaded me that Quicksilver will make the moment by moment flow of my work at the computer easier -- and I’m all for making life easier. So today I downloaded this free tool, and I already see it speeding up ordinary tasks. No one thing done with Quicksilver saves any significant amount of time; rather, it’s the cumulative reduction of keystrokes, cursor maneuvers, clicking through windows, and drilling down into folders, that adds up to save real time and effort.

If you’re usually multi-tasking on your Mac, and are comfortable using the keyboard, take a look and see if it appeals to you. You can read more about it -- but it’s easier to just install it and start using it. Once you’ve got the gist, then learn more about it, perhaps using some of these bookmarks -- and your Mac user experience will enter a new dimension.

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Sunday, 30 July 2006