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After having read that QuickSilver was no longer supported by BlackTree and has since gone open source, I noticed more and more people switching to/suggesting other app launchers i.e. Buttler and LaunchBar.
Is QuickSilver still relevant? Has anyone experienced any instability since it's gone open source?
Quicksilver is still alive and well. There are at least a couple of endeavours to keep it going, up to date and restructure and clean up the code base. Check out the code from Google Code.
As for launching apps, not even Spotlight comes close to how fast it is in Quicksilver.
Of course the real joy of Quicksilver is past just launching apps and using triggers, scripts and the many plugins. My workflow goes to a new level with Quicksilver. I'd be lost without it.
Update: Since posting this I switched and use LaunchBar for a while. This was during the time that QuickSilver seemed to be almost close to death. Loved LaunchBar and didn't need to switch back to QuickSilver. Recently though, I have left LaunchBar and have been using Alfred. I would highly recommend it. For me, LaunchBar and Alfred are pretty close. But, aesthetically and operationally, Alfred suits my tastes more than LaunchBar.
It still runs stably for me. I would be miserable without it.
And yeah, I would recommend switching if you only use it for an "app launcher", but launching apps is like white belt Quicksilver. I don't know of any program that lets you simply tell your computer what to do in such a simple way. And even Spotlight won't remember the keys you usually type to identify an object or action.
Ubiquity for Firefox is pretty good, but it's locked inside a browser...
I haven't used OS X in a while, but the impression I get is that Spotlight has largely negated the reason for using a launcher in the first place. Quicksilver has some cool things like direct objects built in, but by and large it was mostly used for launching apps, and Spotlight can now do that just as fast.
I also gave up on QuickSilver for a while when Leopard came out. I tried Spotlight. I gave up on that and returned. QuickSilver is much faster, and it does so much more that I missed.
I have not noticed any instability (Leopard) running B54 (3815) - it looks like the open-source version is B56A3 though.
QuickSilver is awesome when integrated with Parallels/VMWare Fusion to launch Windows apps too. You don't get the deep integration as with the various OSX plugins, but it definitely helps the dual-OS usability.
I love QS and agree that it is so productive that I am willing to put up with its flaws. I usually have to launch it several times before it gets up and running, though. To fix that issue I created a little quicksilver launcher app.
I use quicksilver all day (on latest version of OSX); and no spotlight doesn't negate it... quicksilver is still much faster for launching applications.
After Quicksilver stopped being updated for a while, I migrated to LaunchBar. Quicksilver had some occasional crashes and could be very resource intensive. LaunchBar has largely the same functionality without these problems. It is not free though.
The one thing I do miss was using QS to quickly send attachments via email to people in my address book. Highlighting the file, activate QS, Current Selection tab Mail to.. tab Person's name was just awesome.
After the 10.5.5 update, I find Spotlight to solve 99% of the things I originally used Quicksilver for and the speed is nearly identical now. Spotlight is invaluable for finding information you may not remember where or when you last saw it. Unless a major rewrite of QS causes me to reevaluate it again, I suspect Spotlight will be all I need and use.
There are a couple branches out there that are active, I think I'm currently running B56 and loving it. I have too many scripts, triggers, objects that I rely on daily...I would be lost without it.
It's 201 and it's still running strong!
QuickSilver is still alive, and well.
You can find the hub-website for all activities at http://qsapp.com/
GitHub (used for source code and issues tracking) is at https://github.com/quicksilver/Quicksilver
The latest version, B58 (3841) is quite stable on Snow Leopard (10.6.6).
No. It's back, baby.
I didn't know Quicksilver wasn't being as actively supported.
It does all I need it to do at the moment though.
Just installed LaunchBar but I can't set it to be Option + Space to "launch", I can't deal with it not using that, I'm too use to Spotlight on Command + Space and Ctrl + Space is for VS 2008 :P
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I'm surprised no one has asked this yet. What's the best way (if any) to get a Vi experience in Xcode? I know about ViMate but TextMate doesn't come close to Xcode in terms of integration and code completion.
BTW, I am using Xcode 4.
You might want to try out xVim which seems to be an active project. The currently indicate that it works with XCode 4.2, Espresso and Chocolat. Presumably you could selectively enable it with other applications.
Here's another plugin which I made a few weeks ago.
http://programming.jugglershu.net/softwares/xvim.html
This is currently developed for personal (my) use. So you may feel bad with some lack of implementation. Give me a feed back(feature request) then. I'll add some keybinds if I have enough time.
The closest you'll get is http://www.corsofamily.net/jcorso/vi/, or configuring an external editor. This has been a long-standing deficiency with XCode. (If you ask any vi user that is..)
OSX and XCode in general favors Emacs key bindings.
More info on general key-binding strategy for OSX: http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20060317045211408
Right now, I productively use XVim†. I'll probably try $20 ViCiOUS, which seems more polished; I like having source access to my tool-chain, but this is for Xcode, so c'mon me.
† Not xVim, which I just discovered, but apparently face down in the pool. In the [Xx][Vv]im namespace, Xvim (à la Xcode) would have made more sense to me. There, I said it.
Here's another choice: KeyRemap4MacBook.
I have recently been trying to make a keylogger for macs (since I work on one) JUST FOR FUN, no intent to use it. I have literally been looking around for 10+ hours and have found zero documentation of hooks for macs. Could anyone point me in the right direction?
Make a KEXT and load it up!
http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Darwin/Conceptual/KernelProgramming/About/About.html
Might need to read a good bit of this...
http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/DeviceDrivers/Conceptual/IOKitFundamentals/Introduction/Introduction.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP0000011-CH204-TPXREF101
Lots of overhead involved if you aren't up to speed.
If you want to get right to it, there was a good phrack article on osx rootkits an issue back...
http://www.phrack.com/issues.html?issue=66&id=16#article
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Does anyone have good examples of software that has a fantastic first run experience? Some software obviously just works "out of the box". However, there is significant software that requires some configuration before it's usable.
Any examples would be much appreciated.
Cheers,
Yi
I was very impressed by Opera the first time I tried it; within a week I switched from Firefox. It comes with a lot of features such as an IRC and Bittorrent client, which is important to me at school, where there is a quota of 50 megs on disk space! Most of Opera's features are eventually available/copied to Firefox as plugins, but I still prefer Opera at home because the text looks better.
Time Machine for Mac OS X 10.5. If you have a Time Capsule, all you do is flick a switch in a control panel to turn it on. When you need a backed-up file you can visually go back to a point in time when you knew it existed. You can browse your hard drive (or just the directories that were backed up at that point in time) as it was in the past to retrieve it, and when you do, you can see it being copied to the present time. Gimmicky, but now I love deleting files just so I can restore them later.
Basecamp has an incredible out-of-the-box experience. This is a result of keeping things extremely simple, having a hosted solution (no install/setup) and also brief but noticeable welcome messages explaining how to get things started.
Some other examples of things that work the first time and work perfectly as soon as you start using them would be TripIt, FogBugz and BlinkSale.
How about the iPhone? Almost all Apple product are shipped with minimal manuals.
Most things from Google are good in that regard. Firefox is alright, as is OpenOffice (albeit a bit slow, but can be tweaked).
I don't think it's possible to answer this question in absolute terms. What's a fantastic "out of the box"/"first run" experience depends on what's the expectation of the person running it. If the product meets or especially exceeds that expectation, that's a great experience.
Here's a simple example. I consider Google Chrome browser to be a great first run experience because it is simple, installs nicely, and is super fast. For some others (especially many reading stackoverflow.com), it might be flawed because their expectation is that Chrome can also seamlessly import their Firefox or whatever other plugins, which was not part of Chrome's original features. So for them, it would not be a great experience because they were expecting something that wasn't there.
Apple, iPod and iTunes are other classic examples. Many people (myself included) consider finding and buying music from iTunes a great easy experience. Many others find it appalling because until recently, the music wasn't (and some of it still isn't) DRM-free.
OS X, Parallels
Windows 7, Vista (somewhat controversial I suspect)
I would say Ubuntu has a good OOB experience. It was a very simple to get installed and running. I've never bothered with the Live CD but I hear that's also great and it's fantastic how that allows you to try Ubuntu without actually having to install it.
My machine is seriously underpowered, and I think I need to start conserving every spare cycle. I know that my Gnome environment seems to underperform compared to my coworkers' KDE setups. But if I'm going to make that big of a switch, I might as well consider running something even lighter.
Is it possible to survive on a lightweight window manager and still run modern apps (Firefox, Eclipse, OpenOffice)? What's a good candidate window manager for me to try, and what do I need to know?
The window managers listed below all subscribe to the lightweight and fast approach.
They are faster than fully fledged window managers like KDE or Gnome and trim down on most visual distractions. Which one you pick will be mostly determined by your own taste and what you can get to run.
There's a subfamily of these window managers, notably those which attempt to let you do everything by keyboard and let you tile your applications with minimal screen real estate waste. These can feel funny if you come from mouse-oriented window managers. XMonad and ratpoison are members of this family.
xfce
ratpoison
fluxbox
awesome -1, cannot handle minimize to tray
XMonad
dwm
fvwm (codebase for another WMs)
icewm
Englightenment
wmii
openbox
pekwm
I like XMonad. It's very stable, has very low overheads, and has an active user/developer community.
XMonad is almost as minimal as ratpoison, but it displays multiple windows by tiling them, and even allows floating windows if you really need them (e.g. for modal dialogues or GIMP). It's certainly given my underpowered Ubuntu box a new lease of life!
Edit: I forgot to mention: XMonad is keyboard-based rather than point'n'grunt, so there's a bit of a learning curve, but once I got the hang of it I found that I was much more productive.
Fluxbox is a good alternative and very lightweight.
http://www.fluxbox.org/
Icewm is quite nice and lean (used it for a while on an underpowered box but moved to KDE when the box was upgraded).
The first thing you should would be to build your own kernel, with just the things you need. That will save tons of resources.
Then, choose a lightweight WM. Ive found Enlightenment very light and awesome, give it a try.
Later, you should look for lightweight replacements of the apps you use.
You can replace OpenOffice with Abiword, Gnumeric.
Just google, and you will find very nice alternatives to those ram-eater software.
The thing I would recommend will be to avoid Java software, they'll run VERY slow on a low resources PC.
Also, check for the services that are currently running on your PC, and disable the ones you don't use.
Consider changing your current distro for a low resources distro. I found Debian very customizable and lightweight.
Good Luck!
I use FVWM for 7 years. Most of WM based on FVWM, but strip any flexibility of FVWM.
FVWM is just "interface" to Xlib so it bring to you all what in Xlib.
If you want currently popular tiling - just: FvwmPiazza::Tiler
Google for ~/.fvwm/config as get own from scratch is too difficult, this good one from which I started: http://zensites.net/fvwm/guide/
Also look to:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/FVWM
http://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/FVWM
https://wiki.debian.org/Fvwm
I'll second xfce, it's probably the most popular of the lightweight WM's out there (perhaps due to its inclusion in Xubuntu). I've also had good experiences with Fluxbox (it came with Damn Small Linux when I used that as a lightweight Linux VM (back when VMs were slow :-) ).
There is definitely an ease-of-use learning curve to reckon with when migrating to these more lightweight WMs, but the performance benefits aren't hard to see on older hardware (menus appear instantly, navigation is pretty snappy).
I used Fluxbox for a long time, which is great for people used to having windows floating around like in KDE, Gnome etc. It's pretty small, pretty fast and highly configurable, plus it doesn't look as ugly as some other "minimalist" window managers. ;)
A few weeks ago I switched to awesome because I like how efficiently it places and resizes my windows. It's perfect for me since I almost always have just a full screen terminal on one screen and a browser on another screen. It also supports mixed window styles, so you can have windows managed by awesome and floating windows on one screen (e.g. I have almost always a managed full screen urxvt open and a small floating mplayer window in one of the corners). It's as lightweight as fluxbox, if not even faster, but doesn't offer as many options for customizing the look and feel.
I am using fluxbox too. Compared to a desktop envionment, using only a window manager is not as convenient. You choose every component yourself which is both a strength and a weakness. ROX file manager and usbmount are great companions to fluxbox. Also take your time to find some dockapps that may be useful.
Enlightenment (v16) is actually very lightweight compared to gnome/kde these days, and it is very configurable (although, nothing seems to be as configurable as fvwm) Florian's suggestions are all good, but if you're used to gnome/kde, then you probably won't like ratpoison / xmonad.
icewm has done me good for several years. I don't need most of the crap that the big-time desktops offer, but i do like a clock and CPU usage monitor running in the bar along the bottom - icewm does have these. It is noticeably lighter in feel than the popular desktops. No weirdness such as tiled windows or anti-mouse attitude. Customizing the root menu is also easy, much easier than doing so in KDE or Gnome, which i never did figure out adequately. At one place i worked, the sysadmin saw my screen and decided to give it a try. AFIK, he's still using it.
I'd recommend openbox. Its lightweight, very configurable, and works great without getting in the way. Very functional, and can do pretty much anything you want. I love it.
I tried PekWM for some time. I really liked it. It allowed me to group programs of the same type, for example: Terminals.
I myself have used 'lwm' or lightweight window manager for quite a while now and have been very happy with it. I use it with xfce4-panel which I use for a clock and better window manipulation. Lwm is truly light weight even more than xfce, icewm, pekwm and others.
I've used everything at one time or another, but I keep coming back to WindowMaker. I like the concept of the clip, the multiple workspaces (I keep one for each type of task) and the fact that it looks good with theming that is ridiculously easy.
Docker is an essential app to add to the desktop to keep nm-applet and other applets in the WindowMaker dock.
Don't judge it by the default theme. Use the Wprefs tool to customize it to your liking.
Cheers
KG
Over the years, I've downgraded the WMs of my machines. Since the more mainstream WMs, like Gnome or KDE become more and more resource hungry, it wasn't long, before I replaced Gnome with XFCE on laptops and desktop computers.
In fact, I've been using XFCE longer than any other WM. It seems to me, as if the niceties of things like Gnome and KDE are great when seeing them for the first time, but after using them for a few weeks and months, the novelty wears off, and it makes more sense to go back to a more streamlined environment.
The problem with XFCE is, that it's not as lightweitght as it needs to be for some of the older laptops I still have. I decided to use LXDE on those, and to be honest, I kinda have a love/hate relationship with that. It works fine, in the sense that it's quite resource friendly, and it's quick to log in, etc. But certain things don't seem to work that well. One of which is the task bar. It seems some of the icons don't fit, because they were designed for things like Gnome or XFCE. The icons still do work, but it's next to impossible to make the whole LXDE experience look the part.
Blackbox (+ bbkeys) is a little bit weird, but pretty nice thing. Also you can check the comparison table of window managers.
I'd like to start experimenting with Cocoa and programming for Mac OSX. I'm not terribly concerned with Objective C syntax/constructs/bheaviors at this point, but more curious as to an efficient setup on in terms of an editor and/or IDE that will get me going quickly. Is there any IDE even remotely similar to Visual Studio (since that's where I've spent most of my time over the last 7 years) in terms of it's solution/project concept? Any other tools, tips, suggestions and/or resources to get up and experimenting quickly?
I'd like to avoid a lot of the intro stuff and get into things like "If you want to create an Mac desktop application, you can use Acme IDE and set up your project like this."
I was afraid Xcode was going to be the answer! :P I tried playing around with that -- literally just getting it off the DVD and just diving in with no idea what to expect (before I even knew that you used Objective C as the language). I figured, the wise guy that I am, that I could just sort of fumble around and get a simple app working ... wrong.
#Andrew - Thanks for the insight on those config settings. Based on my Xcode first impression, I think those may help.
I'd suggest you pick a fun little product and dive in. If you're looking for a book I'd suggest Cocoa Programming for Max OSX which is a very good introduction both to Objective-C and Cocoa.
XCode is pretty much the de facto IDE and free with OSX. It should be on your original install DVD. It's good but not as good as Visual Studio (sorry, it's really not).
As a long-time VS user I found the default XCode config a little odd and hard to adjust to, particularly the way a new floating window would open for every sourcefile. Some tweaks I found particularly helpful;
Settings/General -> All-In-One (unifies editor/debugger window)
Settings/General -> Open counterparts in same editor (single-window edit)
Settings/Debugging - "In Editor Debugger Controls"
Settings/Debugging - "Auto Clear Debug Console"
Settings/Key-binding - lots of binding to match VS (Ctrl+F5/Shift+F5,Shift+Home, Shift+End etc)
I find the debugger has some annoying issues such as breakpoints not correctly mapping to lines and exceptions aren't immediately trapped by the debugger. Nothing deal-breaking but a bit cumbersome.
I would recommend that you make use of the new property syntax that was introduced for Objective-C 2.0. They make for a heck of a lot less typing in many many places. They're limited to OSX 10.5 only though (yeah, language features are tied to OS versions which is a bit odd).
Also don't be fooled into downplaying the differences between C/C++ and Objective-C. They're very much related but ARE different languages. Try and start Objective-C without thinking about how you'd do X,Y,Z in C/C++. It'll make it a lot easier.
The first document to read and digest is the Mem management guide, understand this before moving on. This is a great guide to objective-c too. Infact the developer site at Apple is very good - but you would probably want to read the Hillegas book first.
In regards to Xcode vs Visual Studio - they are different. I wouldn't say one is better than the other - Windows developers come over from VS and expect it to be the same. This is just an arrogant attitude and please don't fall into this crowd. Having used VS since the AppStudio days and Xcode for a year or so now, both have strengths and weaknesses. Xcode is something that out of the box (and especially when coming from VS) doesn't seem that good, but once you start using and understanding it - it becomes very powerful.
Also, there are a lot more tools included with Xcode et al, such as Instruments and Shark that you simply can't get with VS, unless you open your wallet, and even then IMHO aren't as good.
Anyway, good luck. I still enjoy C#, but Objective-C/Cocoa somehow makes programming fun again once you get into it...
Don't bother digging up your OSX DVD as they've released a new version (3.1) of XCode since then.
First, you'll want to join Apple Developer Connection (it's free, and you need it to access their version of MSDN) - it uses your Apple ID so if you've ever had one for the itunes store etc, it's that same username/password
Once you've done that, click on downloads, then click on developer tools, to view this page, and go for the XCode 3.1 Developer DVD
One other suggestion: If you have feature or enhancement requests, or bugs that you've run into, be sure to file them at Apple's Bug Reporter. It's the best way for developers to communicate their needs to Apple, because every issue is tracked through the system.
You might try the demo of textmate and see how you like it for working with objective-c or any other type of text really. It will import xcode project settings so you can still compile and run from textmate rather than having to go back to xcode.
Xcode is the standard for editing source files, though you can use another editor in conjunction with the command line xcodebuild tool if you really want. I used Vim for all my Cocoa editing before finally giving in to Xcode. It's not the greatest IDE in the world, but it gets the job done, and the recent 3.x releases have had some nice improvements.
The real power tool of Cocoa development is Interface Builder. IB does not generate source code like many UI tools. Instead it manipulates real Cocoa views, controls, and objects which it then bundles into an archive (nib) that is loaded by your program at runtime. Most Cocoa programs use at least one nib file, and often many more.
No matter what IDE/editor combination you choose for hacking on source files, I recommend using IB where you can. Even if you're not a fan of other UI layout/generation tools, I suggest keeping an open mind, giving "the Cocoa way" a chance and at least learning what Interface Builder can do for your development process.
AFAIK, pretty much every OS X developer uses Xcode.
That, and Interface Builder for creating the GUIs.
FWIW, try to get hold of a copy of Hillegas's book, as it's a great introductory tutorial, and the reference Docs Apple provides really aren't. (They are generally very good reference docs, however).
Cocoa is huge. The hardest part of learning how to write apps on Mac is learning Cocoa. By the way. You do not need to know ObjC (though it helps tons). You can write Cocoa apps with Python or Ruby (right in the IDE).
I agree VS is a better IDE then Xcode. But if you throw in Interface Builder and all the other tools, I'm not so sure. Mac development is not about 1 giant IDE for everything. But VS is "kinder" on the developer then Xcode is.
Also if you want to do cross platform apps look at RealBasic. A fine tool (Basic though. But it runs on Linux too.) You'd be surprised how many Mac apps are written with RB.
I've heard the books currently out there are pretty out of date. The whole ecosystem seems to evolve very fast with dramatic changes made in every OS release.
He wrote a tutorial which pulls together some Apple documentation and other tutorials which should get you started. I think it covers the basics of using the IDE, writing simple apps, and then goes on to more advanced stuff.
I've been dabbling in Cocoa for the past couple years, and recently picked up Fritz Anderson's "Xcode 3 Unleashed." Highly recommended for getting into Xcode — especially with some of the big changes 3.0/Leopard brought.
Don't forget Hillegass' defacto Cocoa bible, "Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X - Third Edition."
#peter I don't know why you had trouble with getting a simple app working, right off the bat without doing anything your app gets a lot of benefits from the Cocoa framework. If you mean you were trying to do stuff like connect a button to an action and have it print a alert on screen or something like that then yes I could see where your going with it being difficult.
The problem for me starting with Cocoa many years back is that it was so different from anything else that it had a little bit of a learning curve. Whereas many other systems are compile time oriented Cocoa is very dynamic and runtime oriented. Once you get past learning how actions hook up to classes it just becomes a matter of learning how the Cocoa frameworks work.