Enable a slick Constellation menu in Quicksilver ?49
Macintalk has posted a how-to on enabling a really slick Constellation menu plugin for Quicksilver β49. Granted, this menu is quite a bit of eye candy, but if you follow Macintalk's post all the way through and assign this menu to a hotkey, it then becomes a bit of really handy eye candy.Keep in mind, however, that (as far as I know) you need the latest developer β49 to bring this plugin to fruition, so just like with the last slick Quicksilver Cube eye candy plugin, if you're not interested in the beta side of things, you should probably leave this one alone until it gets ironed out a bit more...
...but on the other hand: look at how cool that is! The entire thing is clickable, and it's also bigger in 'real life' - on my 1440 x 900 display it's 512 x 512 pixels, so it's much more legible than the 225 x 225 screenshot in this post. The small button just to the right of the iTunes icon in the middle of this menu, for example, displays a popup list of your playlists. Clicking on any of the larger slices, such as the albums or artists, pops up a second, similar menu you can browse through by using the down arrow at the bottom of the inner circle. The whole menu system seems pretty zippy too, once it takes a second to load all your iTunes information. Of course, I'm also using a 2.0 Ghz MacBook Pro with 1.5 GB RAM, so YMMV. Check out Macintalk's how-to if you're done drooling and want to get down to business.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Nate said 8:42PM on 7-26-2006
This is still just a nice proof of concept, and not much more. Keyboard navigation with Constellation menus is quite inefficient compared to the default QS menus, and reaching for the mouse completely negates the "breath" nature of QuickSilver.
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David Chartier said 8:48PM on 7-26-2006
Nate, you make some great points, especially about the detraction from QS's keyboard-focused use. And you're totally right; because of Quicksilver, I too have come to hate my mouse and glare at it with that "oh, not you again" look in my eye ever time I need to reach for it...
...but on the other hand, I have two words for you: eye candy!! :)
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Jarrod said 9:54PM on 7-26-2006
I would love whoever gets this to work with griffin's powermate. Imagine clicking in the powermate and getting access to a constellation menu. Rotate the powermate, and you navigate the menu. Ohhhh man. Anyone have any ideas to get this set up?
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WinnetouKoslowski said 3:41AM on 7-27-2006
Use Quicksilvers triggers and you will be fine.
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Dan said 9:10AM on 7-27-2006
Jarrod - I was thinking the same thing. Right now I've got my PowerMate controlling GimmeSomeTune (http://members.chello.at/eternalstorms/gstscreens.html). I just flick the nob forward to skip songs and press down to play/pause iTunes. But this might give me even more control.
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Wry Cooter said 1:03PM on 7-27-2006
Recreating the dock via Quicksilver is fools errand, and is a corruption of the power of Quicksilver to make something that is not quite as effective as command tab or the dock itself as it already exists.
Isn't the intent of Quicksilver to work FASTER?
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