Help with Launchbar (vs Quicksilver)

[GoneBabyGone]

I've heard a lot of praise of Launchbar so I decided to give it a try.

Is Launchbar not as intuitive or fully featured as Quicksilver or something?

For example, I open Quicksilver with my shortcut, type in "Finances" and my Finances folder pops up. Or I open Quicksilver with my shortcut, type in "Budget" and my Budget.xls spreadsheet pops up.

When I do the exact same things in Launchbar (shortcut, Finances), I get hundreds of hits from internet history, bookmarks, itunes - but not one instance of the Finances folder. Same thing happens with budget - lots of internet history and bookmark results, but not a single instance of the File.

Now, I can navigate to the folder (and the file) in Launchbar by typing Documents, right arrow, highlight Finances, right arrow, highlight budget.xls - but why would I want to go through all those steps when there is another program that does it much faster?

Please tell me I've triggered some option that is screwing up my results or that I can edit some preferences to get it to behave more like I want it to.

Thanks guys

 

[chatoyer]

Interestingly enough, I was just refining my Launchbar index yesterday to prevent the same kind of thing that you are seeing.

Launchbar constructs a fairly detailed index, but it is entirely customisable. That means you can tell it to completely ignore bookmarks, history, etc. and just concentrate on your documents, for example. This is what I do. Now, if I start to type "Tea", my "Teaching" folder comes up immediately, which is exactly where I want to be.

I've grown to love this app over time, and I used to be a fanatical QS user.

Advice: spend a lot of time going through the help/support within the app and browsing the forums. I actually learned a lot that way. As well, have a look at this series of screencasts: http://www.zettt.de/2009/04/mac-launchbar-tutorial-1/

Good luck!

 

[turkay]

Is Launchbar not as intuitive or fully featured as Quicksilver or something?

Oh man you don't know what you are talking about. Watch this;

http://www.macworld.com/article/59796/2007/08/launchbar.html

 

[Achiever]

Interestingly enough, I was just refining my Launchbar index yesterday to prevent the same kind of thing that you are seeing.

Launchbar constructs a fairly detailed index, but it is entirely customisable. That means you can tell it to completely ignore bookmarks, history, etc. and just concentrate on your documents, for example. This is what I do. Now, if I start to type "Tea", my "Teaching" folder comes up immediately, which is exactly where I want to be.

I've grown to love this app over time, and I used to be a fanatical QS user.

Advice: spend a lot of time going through the help/support within the app and browsing the forums. I actually learned a lot that way. As well, have a look at this series of screencasts: http://www.zettt.de/2009/04/mac-launchbar-tutorial-1/

Good luck!

Agree completely with everything said here. The only thing I really miss from QS now is the comma trick (which can actually be replicated with LB, but in more steps). Frankly, as great as QS was (and still is to some; usually people still on Tiger) when the developer abandoned its development it began falling behind LB and it never really made the jump to leopard. There are some folks still working on it in its open source environment, but the alphas they put out every few months are incredibly buggy on 10.5 and constantly crash. I gave up with it and have gone full time with LB 5 which is fantastic and is must have software for me.

 

[GoneBabyGone]

Thanks guys!