::thoughtstorm.org::

Stii recently posted a rather nifty trick for using the QuickSilver Dictionary plugin to search for a definition without having to open up Dictionary itself. I personally find it quite phenomenal how many new plugins and really useful ways of using QuickSilver keep on appearing.

That particular post reminded me about one really arcane QuickSilver setting that I had on my Mac Mini but never setup correctly on my Macbook Pro. This particular technique allows you to access the menu bar in the same way that you can access applications via QuickSilver. In other words, instead of moving your cursor (via a mouse or trackpad) all the way to the top of screen and selecting “File” and then “Save”, you could use a QuickSilver trigger and then just start typing out “Save”.

Here is a screenshot of what it would look like to select the “Preferences” pane within Firefox. (Note: I’m using the Cube interface)

Now, to get this working correctly requires just a little bit of work.

Step 1:
Open up “System Preferences” and then select “Universal Access” (or just invoke QuickSilver and start typing “universal”), and make sure that the “Enable access for assistive devices” checkbox is ticked.

Step 2:
Within the QuickSilver preferences (Ctrl+Space Apple+Comma), check the “Enable advanced features” checkbox in the “Preferences” tab under the “Application” settings.

Step 3:
Enable the “Proxy Objects” within the QuickSilver preferences in the “Catalog” tab under the “QuickSilver” settings.

Step 4:
Install the “User Interface Access (+)” plugin within QuickSilver.

Step 5:
Create a new QuickSilver Trigger hotkey. Select the “Triggers” tab within QuickSilver preferences, click on the “+” at the bottom and select “Hotkey”.

The three panes represent the three-tier depth that QuickSilver supports when chaining commands. In the first one, select “Current Application” and then “Show Menu Items” in the second box (the third box should be empty) and save it. Once saved, click on the “I” (info button) in the bottom right of the panel and edit the hot key to your liking. I’ve chosen Alt+Space for mine, but you’re allowed to put whatever you want in there.

Now, you can invoke this part of QuickSilver by hitting Alt+Space (or whatever you set the hotkey to), and you can then browse all the options available within the menu bar. Be forewarned however - in certain applications (TextMate in particular), there could be hundreds if not thousands of options available within the menu bar and this may make it unwieldy to work with. Beyond that, this is one of the more interesting QuickSilver techniques that I’m aware of. Once I wrapped my head around what QuickSilver is doing in this instance, I could no longer think of it as “just” an application launcher.

In Chaos and Fun.