Use triggers for repetitive text

Lifehacker has posted a nice tutorial on setting up Quicksilver to type often needed text snippets for you. Very nice!

satisfy all your searching needs with Quicksilver

You can use Quicksilver to search the web (Google [maps/images/groups/...], Wikipedia, imdb, youtube, amazon, ebay and many many more). For this purpose there is a special plug-in, named Web Search Module. To enable Quicksilvers web searching capabilities you have to

1. install the Web Search Module by selecting it in the Plug-ins section of the Quicksilver preferences
2. add the various search engines as a source for Quicksilver. You do this also in the preferences of Quicksilver: go to the Catalog section, there choose Modules, in there should be an entry called Web searches (from docs.blacktree.com). Check the box right next to it.

Now let’s do our first web search with Quicksilver:

1. invoke Quicksilver
2. type for example “yout”, the YouTube Videos Object should already be selected or at least one of the first ones in the list. You should see now three panes, where the second one is labeled Search for …
3. Now hit Return, which should bring you directly to the third pane (a text input field). Just enter your desired search query and hit Return. For example enter “quicksilver” to find a 10 minute Quicksilver video tutorial.

As said above, there are a lot of other search engines already included in the Web Search Module. Another nice thing is, that you can do this in reverse order also, like first enter a search term and then decide where to search for it. The appropriate action is Find with … instead of Search For …:

1. invoke Quicksilver
2. hit “.” to enter text mode, enter a search term, “yellow submarine” for example
3. tab to the second pane and choose Find with … as action
4. tab to the third pane and select your desired search engine, in our example case discogs.com would be an appropriate search engine

This is a very powerful plug-in. I use it every day, and it’s so much faster than going to a search engine website, locate the search field and enter the search query. You can do different searches without having to enter the search term more than once because the text you entered stays in Quicksilvers text input field until you enter something else. I use this often for translation (dict.leo.org), getting a quick info about a movie you just downloaded (yes also bittorrent search engines are included) bought, while watching in fullscreen with VLC (imdb.com), of course googling like hell (find with google maps is very handy) and wikipedia all the time.

You can also add your own search engines, but chances are that it’s already included. Short example for this task, it’s easy:

1. go to your favourite search website and find out the search query URL, sometimes you can extract it out of the address-bar of your browser, sometimes you need to look into the page source to find out. For example we will search your favourite Quicksilver blog Qism . Just type “something” into the search field in the upper right of this page and hit “search”. You notice, that the address-bar changed to “http://qism.wordpress.com/?s=something”. So we guess, that the string after “?s=” is the search term.
2. now bookmark this page, give it a name like “Qism Search” and save it.
3. now we need to modify this bookmark, you can edit bookmarks in all browsers I’m aware of, so go and edit the bookmark (in Camino this works by Bookmarks -> Show all Bookmarks -> select desired Bookmark -> get info)
4. change the bookmarks target URL to qss-http://qism.wordpress.com/?s=***, I hope you get the idea, add “qss-” in front of “http” and replace the search query (”something”) to “***”. Save the bookmark.
5. invoke Quicksilver and hit Command-R to force Quicksilver rebuilding it’s catalogue, so that our new bookmark is recognized by Quicksilver. Voila a new web search for Quicksilver is born:

“scroll” through your music

If you like me listen to a lot of new music every day, you also know that there’s a lot of crap out there too. To find the pearls faster it might be useful to use fast forward to “scroll” through a track or podcast. This is now possible with Quicksilver and a little help of AppleScript. If you follow the instructions below you’ll have a trigger for fast forward, and if you want, also for rewind. You can do this even without knowledge of AppleScript (to be honest, I’m clueless too ). Let’s go:

1. open Script Editor (/Applications/AppleScript/Script Editor.app)
2. paste the following code into the editing window of Script Editor, this is going to be the script which will later be triggered from Quicksilver:

   property secondsToRewind : 5
property iTunes_is_paused : false
on run
rewindiTunes()
set iTunes_is_paused to false
end run
on reopen
if iTunes_is_paused then
rewindiTunes()
set iTunes_is_paused to false
else
rewindiTunes()
end if
end reopen
to rewindiTunes()
tell application "iTunes"
if player state is not stopped then
set pos to player position
if (pos is greater than secondsToRewind) and ¬
(pos is less than finish of current track) then
set player position to pos + secondsToRewind
play
end if
end if
end tell
end rewindiTunes

3. hit compile and save this script somewhere with a name like qs_fast_forward.scpt (I suggest ~/Music/)
4. the only thing left to do now is to set this script up as a trigger. You can do this the normal way via the Quicksilver preferences, but because you’re a kool kid you’re gonna do this the direct way with Quicksilver, follow me . Invoke Quicksilver, locate the script saved in step three, TAB to the right pane and select “Run” (if it’s not already selected), hit CTRL-Enter, now the right pane should have changed it’s icon to the Quicksilver application icon, that means that the complete action “run qs_fast_forward.scpt” is now in the left pane and you can do something with this specific action. In our case we want to set up a trigger for it, so in the right pane select “Add Trigger”. W00sh, the Trigger preferences are popping up with the trigger already set up. Now it’s up to you to bind a key to our new and shiny trigger. I use CTRL-ALT-COMMAND-right for this.

I hope you could follow the instructions (otherwise, please ask in the comments), it’s always hard to describe those kind of things, it’s much easier than it reads. Now if you want the same thing for rewind, just change pos + in the script to pos -, save it under another name and trigger it accordingly. You could also alter the amount of seconds to be skipped when doing fast forward/backward, just change the number in the first line from 5 (seconds) to something else.

As said before I’m no AppleScript master either, so this trick is originally from Unburst. Thanks for this one Unburst.

launch applications with a keystroke

I know, launching programs with Quicksilver is very fast, but it’s even faster when triggered. I set up triggers for applications like Mail, Vienna (the best rss-reader out there), Skype, AdiumX and some more. You could also set up ONE trigger to start them all at once, using the comma trick. Invoke Quicksilver, select an application, press comma, add another application, …, open them via “open” in the second pane. Of course this works with all other objects too (not only applications).

Let Quicksilver speak to you

This is nothing advanced, but it’s funny and most people are impressed if you show it to them.

1. invoke Quicksilver
2. hit “.” and enter some text in the first pane
3. change to the second pane and select “Speak text (say)”
4. listen to the voice saying what you typed

If you don’t like the voice change it in your Mac OS X System Preferences -> Speech (preferabely you go there using Quicksilver by invoking it and typing “speech” in the first pane).

A possible use of this besides the fun is a spoken reminder. To let QS speak something to you at a certain time or after a certain amout of time you need to make this a timed event. Do the above steps 1-3, but don’t press return, instead press CTRL-Return. Now choose “run after delay” or “run at time” and enter something like “10min” or “10:20pm”.

Of course the last trick works with all other kinds of actions too. Maybe quitting iTunes at 12pm (music stops, time to go to bed ). Feel free to use the comments if you have any questions or other ideas on how to make use of this.

The beginning

Hi Quicksilver fans,

I’m going to make this short. This blog is dedicated to the program Quicksilver for Mac OS X. For those of you not knowing Quicksilver yet, throwing a glance at Quicksilvers Wikipedia article might be helpful. I’m always looking for new ways of using this wonderful piece of software, so I thought why not share my own favourite usages of it. So the main theme here should be example ways of using Quicksilver. Of course, if there are important news or other interesting articles or aspects of the program, there’s room for this kind of content too. This blog is not an installation/setup/faq for Quicksilver, this topic is already covered elsewhere. I hope that the information presented here is useful to you. If you have a great example of using Quicksilver of which you think it might be useful for other people too, feel free to leave comment or contact me directly. Let’s go!