The developer of Quicksilver (who goes by the Nome de Plume “Alcor“) announced some time ago that the next beta would be a Tiger only release:

As the lure of Tiger APIs has been too great, the next version of Quicksilver will be the first Tiger-only release. 10.4 makes a stagerring amount of new technology available and it would be cruel to hold Quicksilver back.

Since that announcement, Alcor has clearly been hard at work on the new beta. Regular Quicksilver blogger Dan Dickinson has been poking about with a development build of the new beta, and has posted some nice information about the new features to whet the appetite of Quicksilver devotees like myself.

I am going to have to be really disciplined tomorrow and not start messing with Tiger until I’ve got my work done. Wish me luck.

If you use Quicksilver, you know how hard it is to adequately describe exactly what it does. To say it is an application and file launcher is to massively undersell it’s capabilities. And herein lies my dilemma; I only have about 30 minutes to introduce a feature set that has taken me months to explore (and which I still don’t have a complete grasp of). What should I demonstrate? What should I leave out?

Obviously, some things are a given, including the meaning of certain preferences, finding and manipulating files, installing and using plugins, accessing bookmarks, Address Book contacts, etc, but even within that small list, the number of actions that can be performed is enormous. I’ve started compiling the following list of things to consider (this is not definitive by any means). If you have any ideas or suggestions, please leave them in the comments.

• Setting the command keystroke
• Search results
  • Search mode
  • Sort by score
  • Sort by name
• Key commands
  • Tab to next field
  • Right arrow and forward slash
  • Navigating results window
  • Comma operator (thanks to Romain)
• Applications
  • Finding and opening
  • Setting as default
  • Getting info
  • Reveal
  • Add to login items
• Files
  • Finding and opening
  • Browsing directories
  • Moving or copying
  • Grabbing from the Finder selection
• Bookmarks
  • Installing browser bookmark plugins
  • Finding and launching bookmarks
  • Accessing links within a web page
• Address Book Actions
  • Installing the Address Book plugin
  • Finding contacts
  • Viewing contact details
  • Large print phone number
  • Sending an e-mail
  • Sending a file in an e-mail
  • Browsing contacts
• iTunes Actions
  • Installing iTunes plugin
  • Browsing tracks
  • Browse Artists
  • Browse Albums
  • Play next in Party Shuffle
  • Show playing track
  • Track notifications
• Catalogue
  • Navigating and understanding
  • Adding specific items
  • Changing Source Options
• Shelf
  • Adding single and multiple items to the Shelf
  • Retrieving items from the Shelf
  • Docking to screen edge
• Enabling advanced features

Again, if you have any suggestions for important or obvious features that I’ve overlooked, please leave them in the comments for this post.

BTW, in case you wondered about the title of this article (Getting closer to the sun); Quicksilver is (among other things) a Middle English word for the element Mercury (Hg). Within our Solar System, Mercury is the closet planet to the Sun. QED.