blacktree
Latest
Quicksilver releases new beta 57
Macworld notes that my absolute favorite application, and one of the reasons I became a Mac user in the first place, is not quite as dead and gone as many people suspected. Quicksilver has released their first new stable version in two years, besides the developer leaving for greener pastures and setting the project completely open source. Unfortunately, there aren't many new features, but as Macworld says, let's be honest: you don't understand everything that's in there already. No seriously. No, seriously, you don't. What is new is compatibility with Snow Leopard (mostly -- some plugins are still lagging behind), and a host of background changes. Clang is being used as the default compiler, which the change notes say should speed up runtime significantly. Localization has been tweaked, and lots of previously buggy actions (mouse tracking on triggers, for one) have supposedly been smoothed out and improved. Not necessarily a marquee release, but at this point, any Quicksilver release is a good one. And if you've never actually used Quicksilver, well, now's a great time to start. Ostensibly, it's a app/file launcher, but the more you learn and use it, the more it becomes a "connector" for everything on your Mac. Your mind is connected to your fingers, and your fingers connect to the keyboard to invoke Quicksilver, but Quicksilver is connected to everything else.
Lifehacker interview on the future of Quicksilver
Today's Lifehacker interview with Quicksilver developer Nicholas Jitkoff (a.k.a. Alcor) has struck a note of gloom into the holiday spirits around TUAW's home office (currently located in an unoccupied storefront of the West Edmonton Mall). While Nicholas is still planning to do what he can to improve stability for the existing b54 branch of QS, the road is less clear for future feature development; he doesn't have the time in his off hours to advance the wildly popular launcher to the next level, and the existing version meets his needs (other than the problem of stability). His words: "that branch is condemned to a long slow death," and "I'm inclined to encourage users to move over to the more stable and well supported alternatives like LaunchBar." Ouch!This, of course, means an opportunity for some eager young guns to show the world what they can do with the source code to QS, available to one and all. The open source version of QS might never attract the attention and plug-in support of the original, but in the right hands... well, you never know. Visit the Google Code page to get involved with the trunk version of QS, and check out Nicholas' Google Tech Talk video on QS for more behind-the-scenes info. Reader Martin also points to one programmer who is already diving in and cleaning up the b54 code.
Quicksilver goes open source with Leopard release
It seems like this news has been around for a while, but we'd never heard it, and it's definitely worth taking a look at. Alcor, developer of Quicksilver, the little launcher that does everything, quietly mentions on the Blacktree forums that Quicksilver will go open source and Leopard only with the next release.What does that mean for Quicksilver's users? Probably not a lot, although with a few interested developers on board, it'll probably mean quicker updates and more responsive bugfixes. Even Alcor says in the thread that while bugfixes and updates are planned for Leopard, he has no idea when they'll actually be released, and an open source app would probably make specific fixes faster.As for a timeline on making it open source, Alcor doesn't promise anything too exciting on that end, either. He does say that the OS version of Quicksilver will be for Leopard, so we're looking at least at October, if not later. But if Quicksilver is going open source, it likely means that one of the Mac's best applications will only get better.[ via DJ ]
Quicksilver alpha builds, B50 Bulldog
HawkWings brings us two quick notes about everyones favorite OS X do-everything app, Quicksilver. According to a thread in the QS forums, contrary to many a users' expectations, setting QS to check for pre-release versions does not get you the very latest bleeding edge super Xtreme sub-alpha builds of the application. Instead, if you feel you are Xtreme enough to handle pre-pre-release builds of Quicksilver, head on over to the GetQS.com developer page. Speaking of ultra-alpha versions, Quicksilver B50 Bulldog was recently released, and although it doesn't sport much in the way of new features, it does have a sexy new menu bar icon.
