QuickLaunch is a small launcher tool that helps you to quickly start any installed application.
Simply start to enter the name of an application and QuickLaunch will find all programs matching these initial letters and show them in a list. You choose an app from that list with the CursorUp/Down keys and launch it by hitting Return. Escape quits QuickLaunch.
Here's the main window after searching for all applications starting with "dis" and the settings window when clicking the Setup button:
The setup window shows four options:
- Show the version of an application — only really useful when having older and newer versions of an app installed.
- Show the path to an application — interesting when you have several copies of an application.
- Wait for a second letter before starting the search — probably only useful for slow systems.
- Ignore the folders (and their subfolders) that you can add and remove from the list with the buttons at the bottom.
- Assign a keycombo to QuickLaunch in Haiku's Shortcuts preferences, like Opt+Spacebar, for even quicker QuickLaunching apps.
- Use '*' as wildcards, e.g. "*play" for all apps with "play" in their name.
- Shift+Return will keep the QuickLaunch window open after launching the app.
- Ctrl+Return will open an app's location in Tracker instead of launching it.
- These folders are ignored by default:
B_SYSTEM_BIN_DIRECTORY, B_SYSTEM_ADDONS_DIRECTORY, B_TRASH_DIRECTORY
In other words, applications in Trash are ignored, as well as add-ons, and command line apps.
QuickLaunch is directly available through HaikuDepot from the HaikuPorts repository.
You can also download the QuickLaunch package (quicklaunch.hpkg) directly from Sourceforge where you also find the source code including a Paladin project file and also a Makefile to easily build it yourself.
Please use sourceforge's bugreport form if you experience unusual difficulties or email your general feedback to me.
I have to thank DarkWyrm for some helpful hints and for some of the code I re-used from his RunProgram app and his EscapeCancelFilter.
Equally useful was Robert Polic's EZLauncher of BeNewsletter 3-46 and the help I got on the #haiku IRC channel.
0.9.0 - 01-02-2010:
0.9.1 - 04-02-2010:
- Show version info to distinguish different versions of the same app.
- Home/End key jump to first/last item.
- Shift+Return will keep the QL window open.
- Added script to add QL to the Deskbar tray. Remove via context menu (Removal will only work with Haiku > r35402, for lower revisions, open Terminal and enter "desklink --remove=DeskButton".)
0.9.2 - 04-03-2010:
- Add setup window to toggle version and path information.
- Ignore user definable folders.
- Make main window horizontally resizable.
- Remember window position and size.
0.9.3 - 05-03-2010:
- Ignore path information wasn't loaded correctly.
0.9.4 - 11-03-2010:
- Added Control+Return to open an app's location in Tracker.
- Added live-truncating of strings on window resize.
- The query now returns only app names beginning with the search string and now starts right after entering the first letter.
- Better handling of different system font size settings.
- Less restrictive window size limits.
0.9.5 - 17-05-2010:
- Ignore Trash on all volumes, not just on /boot.
- Be stricter on the apps' signature. They have to conform to the standard and start with "application/x-vnd". This avoids listing e.g, libraries.
- PageUp and PageDown keys now work in the result list.
- Case-insentive sorting.
0.9.6 - 14-10-2013:
- Small changes to work under Haiku with package management.
0.9.7 - 17-05-2014:
- Added a setting to only start searching after entering a second letter of the application name.
- Respecting custom colours set in Appearance preferences.
- Better handling of bigger/smaller font sizes.
- Renamed "jokers" to "wildcards".
Tips & Tricks