.::output >> /dev/null::.

F10 Launch Studio
The first launcher I used was F10 Launch Studio. However, it was very very limited. I was not able to (or do not know how) to make sure that it does not list my developmental applications. Its "intelligent" searcher will add an application to the list every time that application is launched. There seems to be no easy way to make it exclude some folder. And I definitely do not want to move my development folder to somewhere obscure just to hide it from the "intelligent" F10 navigator. Anyway, F10 Launch Studio is fast and that was quite useful. However it remains a launcher and nothing more. Moreover, it takes up the whole screen. So it makes it quite wasteful. And it is not free or cheap either.

Quicksilver
After that I abandoned F10 for Quicksilver. I was really impressed. It would appear that something this powerful and customizable would require a steep learning curve but that is not true. Quicksilver makes it simple for a beginner to use it. And as I used more of it, I got to know more of its cooler features. It not only serves as an application launcher but it is able to perform simple file operations on files. For instance, you can rename the file, lock the file, hide the file, etc. Moreover, it enables you to search through Safari's history and bookmarks, a feature that I have always wanted. (Another application by the name of Safari Hound does this I believe, but it is too cumbersome.) There are lots of other things that Quicksilver can do and it is constantly being improved upon. And it is fast, really fast. The only down side is the occasional crashes which causes some form of dilemma because now that Quicksilver has crashed, you cannot use its command+space to launch itself! The other down side is that it requires Panther. One more thing: Quicksilver also has an interface called Flashlight that emulates how spotlight will look on Tiger. Very nice.

Butler
Today however I realized that I needed something like Quicksilver on my girl friend's iBook which is running Jaguar. There are only two popular alternatives to Quicksilver: Butler and LaunchBar. Since Butler is free and the members of macosxhints.com seems to find it better than LaunchBar and even Quicksilver (god forbid!), I downloaded it first. Being a small download and having an easy installer made me think that this program might actually be good. However initial setup was pretty bad. First it displayed those annoying icons on the menu bar. The iBook has a 12.1 inch screen so there is very little screen estate to spare. Then I noticed that it tried to include Camino, iCab etc. bookmarks. Problem is: I do not even have those applications! After some serious configuration I deleted those pesky icons. Then I tried using command+space on it. Goodness, why is nothing much showing up? I just updated the listings! Turns out that Butler's system of searching does not warn you that it needs to have the folders in the configuration folder. Well, that is easily rectified. So now command+space and a few keystrokes make the relevant files appear. Now the real drawback happens. Butler is slow. It is so slow that it is annoying. I tried disabling all the icons and all other visual eye candy but that did not make Butler any faster. Well, I thought to myself, what would you expect from an old Butler? The iBook has a 700Mhz G3 so that might be another plausible reason. However I definitely expected something more responsive than Butler. Another drawback of Butler is the fact that you cannot access things such as playing iTunes and the likes directly from its command+space pop-up. This annoys me. Really. You need to assign some shortcut keys to do that. Then a nice little iTunes pop-up will show you the current song, etc. Why do I need to learn some stupid keyboard shortcuts to do that? I would rather have the option to type "play" and iTunes will play or stop. I do not like shortcut keys that are superfluous. And I really hate hot corners. More often than ever, you accidentally hit those hot corners. Butler is not for me. And neither is it for my girl friend. It is not for those people who want to be able to use it from its initial setup without meddling around with too much configurations. Most people claim that Butler's advantage is that it is super customizable. I, on the other hand, prefer something that works nicely when I first use it and then I can fine tune it to my preferences later. Another thing that irks me is the different type of pop-ups! Seriously. I DO NOT NEED A DIFFERENT DESIGN FOR A WEB SEARCH, ITUNES OR LAUNCHING bezel!

LaunchBar
Since Butler is not suitable, I decided to give LaunchBar a try. LaunchBar requires a licence fee but the beta version is available for free evaluation. LaunchBar 4.0 impressed me the instance I started it up. It has a nice tutorial. And it has a clear design that lets me know what folders that it will be searching and how deep into the sub folders it will catalog. Its design is sleek and unobtrusive. And it is much faster than Butler. Maybe even as fast as QuickSilver. Command+space and a few keystrokes return the things I wanted. You can even use it as an application switcher. Jaguar does not have a nice interface for command+tab; instead it cycles through the open applications using the dock. My girl friend made the dock hide automatically so command+tab on Jaguar is not a nice option. LaunchBar solves this using command+space+space+.... hit space while holding command to cycle through the open applications. And this feature was presented clearly in its tutorials. So now my girl friend is happily using LaunchBar. And I think she will finally understand the pleasure of using the keyboard more than the mouse.

So now I think that Quicksilver is really slick. But LaunchBar is not too bad too. Butler is definitely not my type. F10 Launch Studio was a grief mistake. And until Tiger come out, Quicksilver is on my list of must have applications. Heck, it will probably be on that list even when Tiger comes out since no one really knows how useful spotlight technology is yet.