being a laptop notebook user, one must reconcile with the occasion when a mouse is not available for use and the trackpad or nipple (in the case of Lenovo/IBM Thinkpads) must be utilized. one might grow adept with it given sufficient usage, but by most accounts, the trackpad is ungainly and slow in comparison to an actual mouse.
one of the greatest gifts given to humankind is the ability to adapt. in this case, a notebook user either learns to use the trackpad adroitly or learns to unleash the awesome potential of the keyboard. how often have we found ourselves typing away at a report and needing to double-check a reference on a web page or pdf? alt + tab allows you to scan through your open taskbar items (or windows key + tab for prettier Vista, or F9 for Expose on Macs) without ever having to lift your hands off the keyboard to reach for your mouse/trackpad. by golly, notebook users want to avoid their trackpad as much as possible.
but what if that file or application isn't open yet? alas, now one must lift fingers of the keys, mouse over the start menu and dig through the programs list, or minimize the open window(s) and click an icon on the desktop. or if one is clever, one could simply hit the windows key to launch the start menu and arrow key through the hierarchy to the approriate program or file. the two methods are about the same speed-wise, and they are both woefully slug slow.
if you recall from an earlier post, i talked about two application launchers: ObjectDock and Launchy. i make it a point to find applications that allow me to operate equally efficiently with either just the mouse or just the keyboard. ObjectDock, a Windows clone of OS X's Dock, places all my frequently used applications or folders in a neat row that appears over any open window, so if i am using my mouse, i can still reach those applications or folders without having to minimize windows to see the desktop, or dig into the start menu. this can be done with the Windows Taskbar Quicklaunch toolbar as well, which places small shortcut icons next to the start menu. Quicklaunch icons are too small and is not nearly as customizable or visually appealing. if i'm on the keyboard, i use Launchy.
Launchy is a small, unobstrusive application/file launcher similar to Google Desktop Search, OS X's Spotlight and the highly touted Quicksilver. it is the closest Windows equivalent to Quicksilver in terms of usefulness and customizability. Launchy is activated by a quick keyboard shortcut (which you can determine yourself); the default is alt + spacebar. this brings up a small dialogue box. by typing in letters or characters, Launchy will search through its index of your files and folders to find the application or shortcut you are looking for, or draw up a list of approximates. it is an adaptive program as well, so frequently programs are moved to the top of the list. for me, typing 'o' into Launchy automatically gives me 'Opera' as it is my web browser of choice and very frequently used (Fig.1). I am using one of the built-in skins called 'Clean'.
Fig.1 -
Commonly launched programs show up firstunlike Spotlight or Windows search, the indexing is not system wide. you, the user, get to decide which folders and which filetypes will be indexed (Fig.2).
Fig.2 -
Some folders require lots of different extensionsby default, all the start menu shortcuts are indexed. adding directories is a breeze. right-click on Launchy for the context menu and go to directories (Fig.3). hit "Add", find the folder, and add the filetypes you wish to index. for example, when indexing your Music folder you'll probably want .mp3, .wma, .ogg etc. i recommend not indexing your music folder though, as no one really just plays individual songs, but would rather use a media player with playlists and whatnot.
Fig.3 -
Launchy's Context Menu for additional featuresif you don't want to mess around with the directories and filetypes so much, simply create a new folder, call it shortcuts, and dump shortcuts to any file, application, folder or what-have-you into it and have Launchy index this folder for .lnk files. what is not immediately intuitive is that you can launch ANY shortcut by this method.
i had a brainwave a yesterday. i was pretty annoyed that shutting down or restarting or hibernating the computer rquired me to either press the power button, or go to the start menu and then select the appropriate selection. then i remembered that i created a shortcut for Locking my computer (Lock Workstation) a few months back before i discovered the windows key + l keyboard shortcut. all of the Windows functions, such as shut down and locking are little programs squirreled away in your WINDOWS/system32 folder. so, with some Google-power i dug up the filepaths (inside the brackets) for
- Shut Down - [%windir%\System32\shutdown.exe -s -f -t 00]
- Restart - [%windir%\System32\shutdown.exe -r -f -t 00]
- Hibernate - [%windir%\system32\rundll32.exe powrprof.dll,SetSuspendState Hibernate],
whipped up some shortcuts (right-click > new > shortcut) in the shortcut folder and voila! keyboard launching of either sequence. Shut Down and Restart run off the same program and they require either the '-s' or '-r' command handles to differentiate. '-f' executes the program ignoring any open applications (shuts them down immediately without warning, meaning that you will lose data if you forget to save beforehand). '-t 00' is the countdown handle, where the delay time can be given in place of the zeroes. thus, '-f -t 00' executes the command immediately. hibernate is useless for desktop users, but an invaluable power-off method for notebooks running on battery. all data is saved to the hard disks and the computer is completely shut down and can be revived (power on) much quicker than a full boot up (using less power). it must be enabled in Control Panel > Power Options > Hibernate tab to allot a certain portion of the hard drive space to data saving. standby is similar, saving data to RAM, but this draws on battery power; if that ever runs out while on standby, all that data is gone.
that was fun.
