It puts its feet under the table

A lot of fixes to make Quicksilver more welcome on your Mac. Quick Look integration is coming round next!

FIX: Honour the ‘Jump to action…’ preference when grabbing objects using the ‘Get Selection’ Service #643

FIX: Disable editing of tab names in the Plug-ins preference pane #644

FIX: Resolve proxy objects consistently #652 #621

FIX: Make the 3rd pane visible for AppleScript actions that expect a file #661 #603

on open _file

FIX: ‘Show Entry in Catalog’ action only shows for objects in the catalog #678

CHANGE: Allow non-admin users to set the Dock icon preference #690 #686 #689

CHANGE: Only allow disabling of the Catalog (by holding ⌥ on launch) in Debug builds

CHANGE: When using the ‘Move To…’ and ‘Copy To…’ actions, display the file’s parent folder in the 3rd pane #665

CHANGE: Allow Quicksilver to set URLs as ‘remote host’ types #497

CHANGE: Development settings and CHANGELOG creation method #599 #658

@LoveQuicksilver

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QuickReminder

Make a reminder for iOS devices using Quicksilver

Disclosure: I got this idea from a blog post at dirtdon.com about an Alfred extension. The AppleScript is all my own work though. The Action is only for users of Lion, iCloud and iOS 5.

Reminders on iOS is a great app for making and receiving todos and reminders wherever you are. If you’re on a Mac at the time though, the number of steps to make a reminder with an alarm becomes more apparent:
swipe, tap, tap, tap, tap, type, tap, tap, tap, tap, scroll, scroll, tap, tap.

9 steps to get here

Reminders can be added and synced to an iOS device using iCal, but I find its interface to be cumbersome and counter-intuitive (I’m not a regular iCal user).

Fortunately iCal is scriptable, allowing for this custom Action for Quicksilver: QuickReminder. Put the script in ~/Library/Application Support/Quicksilver/Actions/ and relaunch Quicksilver. Activate QS in text mode and type in a reminder using this form:

Shopping_2/9/12 10:00am_eggs

The date sets both the due date and a message alarm. Find the QuickReminder Action in the pane 2 to complete the command. For confirmation, the Action will return to Quicksilver the values of the created reminder.

Skip to 1:31 if you know how to install Actions

The two underscores in the reminder text separate the title, date and notes. The Action will also except Shopping_eggs and Shopping_2/9/12 as valid inputs.

The latter example will set an alarm for 9am - which seemed a better choice than AppleScript’s midnight default! The variable _defaultTime in the script holds the 9am value. Be careful with the time string - most variations that don’t follow to the ‘10:00am’ form will fail to be recognised.

The Action requires iCal for the creation and sync of reminders to iOS, and will launch iCal in the background if it’s not already running. The calendar named in the Action needs to match one used by iCloud:

I’m no iCal expert, so if you have any ideas for improvements, please leave a comment!

@LoveQuicksilver

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Quicksilver Drops By

ß64 says hello

No major changes this time - an indication of how far Quicksilver’s release cycle has come since ß59 - but lots of fixes and changes to make using Quicksilver that little bit smoother.

CHANGE: Update the QSDroplet icon to reflect the new style - #615

Great! What’s a Droplet? See here.

CHANGE: Show available details for objects and actions - #624

Some objects and actions have further information that QS now displays in the bezel.

FIX: Latest Download proxy works with a symlinked Downloads folder - #596 #616

FIX: Correctly display dynamically generated details for objects and actions - #591

FIX: Prevent all plugins from being deleted on launch - #636

FIX: Better handling of Dock icon preferences and crash protection - #587

The crash dialog should no longer appear on relaunch or system restart.

FIX: Correctly notify the user when there’s no internet connection - #640

FIX: Prevent a crash that could occur when the path to an AppleScript was invalid

CHANGE: Simplified the wording in the Setup Assistant

CHANGE: If the name and details of objects are identical, don’t show both - #613

FIX: The plugin download progress bar works

FIX: Accented characters no longer wipe out the search string - #539

FIX: Prevent some interfaces from showing ‘QSCommand 0xffff’ as the command

Coming soon: Quick Look in Quicksilver. Stay tuned…

@LoveQuicksilver

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Thank You

Dear Creators of Quicksilver,

I manage IT support for surgeons. I introduced your product today to one of our pediatric general surgeons on his brand new, first mac, an 11” Air. I walked him through your beautiful install routine and then showed him how to set the call. I used the command+1 as the launch because it’s where my hands fell and it didn’t overwrite another common command. For him, the natural command was command+space. Then he used it to call the app launch for our EMR. He had spent 30 seconds fishing it out of Finder. He turned to me and was incredulous. This is a man that deals with, every day, situations I can’t fathom. He was amazed that with a few natural keystrokes, he was where he needed to be. You should work with him.

Many thanks for your message! I’m sure it makes the developers very proud that QS is helping make a pediatric surgeon’s job that little bit easier. :)

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Creating Custom Catalog Entries to Rename Items

Today, we received a tweet from a Quicksilver user asking:

The Tweet

@LoveQuicksilver can you help me? I want “M” to default to Sparrow.app - my mail app without changing the name of Sparrow.

One feature of Quicksilver is that you can only search for letters in a name, so the user’s problem here is that there is no ‘M’ in the word ‘Sparrow’, so it was not possible to find it.

The Failed Solution

After a quick Twitter exchange, I’d come up with a couple of suggestions. One being to create a trigger with the letter ‘M’. This definitely isn’t the best solution. Clearly habits had got the best of this one user so he wanted a way of typing ‘M’ in Quicksilver’s search pane and getting Sparrow.

Surely it’s possible with Quicksilver, no?

The Brain Wave

After some brain storming, the idea of custom catalogs came to me. Custom Catalog Entries can contain any file or ‘object’ that you want, with the benefit of you being able to name them however you like.

The Custom Catalog Entry

First, head into the Catalog Preference Pane and create a new ‘File & Folder Scanner’ catalog entry:

Creating a File & Folder Scanner custom catalog entry

The next steps are fairly self explanatory. Find Sparrow.app from the file browser that pops up, and click ‘Open’. Next, the catalog entry’s sidebar should pop out:

Out pops the sidebar!

We only want to include ‘Sparrow.app’ in this entry, and none of its contents (‘Sparrow.app’ is actually a folder pretending to be a file - called a package), so we can leave this first pane as is. What we want to do is change the Catalog Entry’s name to include the letter ‘M’. By heading over to the ‘Attributes’ tab, this is possible:

Rename the catalog entry to whatever you want

With this done, it’s just a matter of reloading Quicksilver’s catalog (⌘R from within the Quicksilver interface) and getting Quicksilver to learn your new preference: