Another Launcher - The ultimate power tool?
Dec 01, '03 11:12:00AM
Contributed by: robg
The macosxhints Rating:

[Score: 7 out of 10]
Another Launcher was mentioned on the site last week (see this hint), and at first, I ignored it (other than testing it for the hint) as I thought I had the only web search tools I needed (Huevos being my current favorite). However, I decided to download Another Launcher and take a look at it ... and I'm glad I did. It's hard to describe everything that Another Launcher (AL from here on out) does, as it's a very wide-reaching program, but for me, it's managed to combine my need for four or five little apps into one program. Due to its depth and some design decisions, the user interface is a bit daunting and confusing, but for me, it's been worth the learning curve to discover everything AL can do for me. Here's what I have it doing as of now:- I've created five or six often-used web search tools, all keyed to system-wide hot keys. I can now search hints, the hints forums, PHP and MySQL documentation, Google, and a few others with keystrokes from any application. Huevos did this before for me.
- I've create "hot menus" of favored applications and documents that pop-up under my cursor at the press of a hotkey combo. I used to use MaxMenus to do this.
- A few applications that I launch quite a bit (Excel, Safari) now have their own global activation hot keys.
- I now have a global iTunes controller for start, stop, previous track, next track, and track information -- just hit Control-Option-Up Arrow in any app, and I get this nice floating window with the song info, as seen in this screenshot, which appears then fades away after a couple seconds.
- All of my hard drives have fully navigable hierarchical menus available in one menubar icon.
This only scratches the surface of what Another Launcher can do; for those who like LaunchBar (I personally don't like that type of launcher), that functionality is also included - just hit Command-Space and type a few letters to launch any app. Suffice it to say there are tons of things you can do with Another Launcher, though you will probably find the interface quite confusing at first. If it had a better interface, I would've given it a much higher score; as it is, it scores well almost in spite of itself.
Read the rest of the hint for a few workarounds for things that got me as I was initially setting this up ...
Here are a few things that may make working with AL a bit easier for you:
- Although there's a macosxhints.com search included, you may wish to edit the default functionality -- it searches for "exact phrase" by default. The more useful option ("all words") is easy to add, though. Open AL's Preferences, click on Web Search, click on Computers, click on Mac OS X Hints, and then click the Gear icon and select Edit. In the box after "... Query ...", add (no quotes) "&keyType=all" before the existing "&date..." bit. Hit OK and you're done; you'll now search for hints that have all your search words in any order.
- If you create a hot menu for launching applications (by adding a Folder to the Customize panel), make sure you control-click on the folder, select Edit, and then click the Gear icon next to Hot Key and select Options. In the new window that opens, click the "Hot key opens a menu" checkbox. If you do NOT do this, then typing the hot key will launch every application in the folder you added!
- To make AL take up much less room in your menu, drag the (greyed out) "Volumes" item from its starting position into the "This Mac" section of the Customize window. This will make it appear as a drop-down under the AL icon in the menu bar. You can do the same thing with Web Search if you don't want it there either (or just delete it, which is what I did as I have hot keys for all my usual searches).
The interface is quite intimidating, but there's a lot of power to be had with a bit of work...
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Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20031201081228584