Quicksilver screencast at the Apple Blog

You could always checkout http://www.ScreenCastsOnline for a new screencast each each via iTunes. I've not covered quicksilver but there are some screencasts on LaunchBar which offers similar functionality.

Check here for a complete list of available screencasts!:

http://screencastsonline.com/sco/info/scoarchive.html

Don

Bill - no worries. :) No offense taken. The trick it seems, is fitting in explanation with all the settings, and trying to keep the screencast from being, well, movie length. It's a work in progress...


The Bandwidth was a temporary issue - a cap put in place by our fearless leader. has since been removed. download away if you're still interested.

I have to say, I was put off by the Quicksilver site, and the generally difficult nature of explaining what it does. I eventually had 3 hours of time spare (hah, that doesn't happen often) and decided to have a poke around with a few of the Mac apps I've been hearing a lot about. Having spent most of that time playing with QS, I'm now happy I've got it set up the way I want it.

I love it. It's completely indespensible, especially as I'm a Mac newbie and as such, have become very used to Spotlight being on my system... QS is just a million times faster than Spotlight for opening apps, finding favourites, etc, and it handles typos far more elegantly.

I use it for opening apps, opening URLs to my favourite sites, and as a quick calculator (tip: Install the calculator plugin then to calculate anything it's just =blah+blah). I love the eye-candy, and it seems to have no appreciable drain on system resources (says the man with 1.5Gb of RAM in his PowerBook).

The whole "Quicksilver is what you make it" paradigm is excellent, but, much like the way Opera's earlier versions weren't at all newbie-friendly, QuickSilver needs a default setup that is very easy to work with, and some startup documentation to explain what it does, in its initial form. Users can worry about extending it later.

I have read ONE useful explanatory article about Quicksilver, and its actual advantages, enough to make it seem attractive.....BUT....

It has generally been marketed virally, and the word of mouth (AND THE MANUFACTURERS MAIN SITE !) does not really do the best job of selling its function. The home page may not be FLASH, but it might as well be, the two times I have been there it is just a minimal logo you have to click thru to any real content.

That is, the web site is so idiotically counter to good interface design, it makes one wonder how the app itself could possibly be well designed and useful.

Wanted to check it out. Too bad the site's bandwidth limit has been exceeded.

"The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to the site owner reaching his/her bandwidth limit. Please try again later."

That's all fair. QS, like everything else, is only as good as the options installed. But on a similar note, it's only as good as how well the user understands what they're clicking.

I didn't mean to be rude (honestly, I didn't expect you to see the comment =), but I did feel a bit "blown by" as it were. I think I'll just have to download QS myself and give it a shot....more than likely, I'll find that I'm unable to live without it :) And when you get into more of the features of the program, I'm sure I'll follow a little closer to the rest of the group.

.....so, sorry for the over-the-top reaction, and thanks for the feedback.

Thanks for the nod Scott.

Bill -
Yes, it was a lot of clicking - but the magic in Quicksilver comes from having the right things setup. Gotta put in the time before you can play...at least if you want things to work correctly.

With all those things installed/setup, my Quicksilver folder measures just under 15mb. Not a deal breaker in my book. Plus, I monitor my CPU load habitually - and Quicksilver rarely registers a blip. Even in Beta mode!

And yes, the audio was bad (which is why I mentioned redoing it). But I recorded the visuals a week or so ago, and then did the voice-overs for the movie last night. You try remembering all those settings! :)

hope you'll check out the more fun screencasts to come now that we've got the 'work' out of the way.

cheers

Okay, so I watched it, and while QuickSilver has this amazing auora of mystery surrounding it (to me, at least)....that screencast told me nothing. He basically installed the app, clicked 8,000 checkboxes (with little to no explanation about what checking it did) and then he checked another 3,000 boxes (all while reading the words next to the box he was clicking), and then he was done.

Can someone else explain what the heck just happened? Also - is it just me, or did those 11,000 clicks imply to me that QS was about to chew up a ludicrous amount of space (clearly I may not know what I'm talking about, so please don't kill me if QS only takes up 2k of space when all is said and done)?