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by Scott Hanselman.
Original Post: I'm in love, and her name is "SlickRun" - The CommandLine in a Windows World
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Feed Description: Scott Hanselman's ComputerZen.com is a .NET/WebServices/XML Weblog. I offer details of obscurities (internals of ASP.NET, WebServices, XML, etc) and best practices from real world scenarios.
A while back (I mentioned this to a few folks, so there's prior art) I started working
on the "ZenBar." The basic idea was that I spend a HELL of a lot of time on
in the Run Dialog (Window-R) or at the command line using CD and Tab Auto-Completion.
It's just faster for me to use a hotkey or command line to move around for many things
than use the mouse. ZenBar was to be simple. A floating, partially
transparent text box that would index my world and give me autocompletion for
all things. It was a little like ActiveWords and
a little like Dave's Search Bar (both
are great, by the way, but I just wasn't willing to LIVE in them.
But, as projects go, I got about 40% done then stopped. Too many other things.
Yesterday I checked out Mike
G's Daily Grind via Tim
Marman and HOLY CRAP. Someone wrote it. They wrote it better than I
could have, and they did it in Delphi.
It's SlickRun, and it rocks my world. Here's why, and what I did to fit it into
my life.
It's a resizable, floating text box. I changed the font to Lucida Console, Bold 14
point. When you're running 1600x1200 you like a larger font.
It does autocomplete for commands and for directories. You can type C:\doc and you're
in documents and settings. Awesome.
You can setup MagicWords like "Mail" for Outlook, or Google to search, etc.
This is the BEST: You an have Multi-MagicWords like "morning' that will launch six
web pages, your Mail, and Microsoft Money. The "Morning" Macro. Fabulous.
It's an inline calculator.
It can be bound to a Hotkey - I've got it bound to Window-Q, and it can Grab Window-R
if you like.
It includes Jot notes for quick notes, easier than notepad, less hassle than
a yellow sticky.
What a wonderful thing. Check out SlickRun.
It's fast and small. Faster than Dave's Search, and easier than ActiveWords.
I shall delete my half-assed attempt at the ZenBar immediately and bow to Bayden Systems.
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