If you select email, Alfred prompts you for a contact's name, and when you press Enter, Alfred opens a new compose window in your default mail program with the recipient specified, file attached, and subject inserted. If you want to open the file in a new Finder Window, press Enter, or if you want to email the file, press the Right Arrow key and you're presented with a few actions you can perform on the file, including email. Just type "find " then the file you're searching for. Well, let's say you want to find a file, buried deep in your folders and email it. When you launch Alfred, you get this simple search box. Both of these keys occupy prime real estate on the keyboard, so I disabled Apple's Spotlight search and mapped Alfred to CMD+Space. By default, OSX uses CMD+Space to invoke Spotlight. What does it do? How does it function?Īt any point in time, you can invoke Alfred by pressing a user-programmable keyboard shortcut. So let's start with the basics of Alfred. This is particularly ironic given that Google is the mother of all search companies.
DASHEXPANDER WINDOWS
Even Google's desktop search for Windows is lacking in comparison. Both Microsoft's and Apple's built in search functions pale in comparison to Alfred. It's everything that the built-in search function on modern OSes should be.
DASHEXPANDER SOFTWARE
Alfred: Command line > software UIĪlfred is Spotlight++. Each of these apps optimizes its UI mechanism to the point of perfection. This post will focus on Alfred, and my next post on BetterTouchTool. Alfred and BetterTouchTool are apps for OSX that extend the functionality of the keyboard and mouse tremendously. Thus, we're left with 2 forms of physical interaction. Sure, there are ancillary ways to interact like the webcam and microphone, but would you really say that your primary form of interaction with your computer is your webcam? Or microphone? Exactly. PCs have 2 physical forms of user interface - the keyboard and the mouse/trackpad.
DASHEXPANDER PC
You only interact with a PC in 2 fundamental ways
The third post will discuss the intermingling of these apps and possibilites for future UI improvements. The first 2 posts are an will lay out use cases that demonstrate why the Apple + Alfred + BetterTouchTool trifecta is the perfect UI in the desktop/laptop environment. The post will focus on the keyboard, the second on the mouse/trackpad, and the third on the future of UIs.
This blog post is the first in a 3-part post. But if I'm not restricted to a binary response, then I choose Apple + Alfred + BetterTouchTool. If the only choices to the question above are Microsoft and Apple, then I choose Apple in a heartbeat. Who creates the best UI in the desktop/laptop environment, Microsoft or Apple? Most people who know me would say that I would say Apple, given my self-proclaimed "Apple enthusiast" (not fanboy) status.
DASHEXPANDER MAC
I am still playing with DashExpander and think that it was a great purchase given the two features I mentioned.One of the center pieces of the age-old Mac vs PC debate has been about UI. The other really neat feature is the ability to add variables to the macros, this is really cool as it pops up a heads up display that lets you fill in the blanks before the macro is inserted. Giving the user the ability to do this saves a few keystrokes if you have macros that require you to paste some details into them. The first feature that I will mention is the ability auto insert information that is currently in your clipboard right into the macro. As you would expect it comes with what seem to be the standard set of features which I am not going to get into since if you are looking at this type of software you already have an idea of what it does and how it does it. Yesterday I came across DashExpander, within a matter of minutes I knew this was better and I instantly made the switch.ĭashExpander has quite a few perks, first off its a lot cheaper than TextExpander … at least right now it is (They are running a sale if you decide to purchase). Because of this I have been looking for ways to spend less time when doing so, since I type the same thing over and over, I initially tried TextExpander which worked great for testing but just seemed like it was missing something. Throughout the day I find myself typing the same things over and over when responding to people.
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