Colibri Type Ahead - Today's Free File
Colibri was pointed out to us by reader Zach in the comments for the
recent post about SlickRun. Zack
points out that Colibri has some things in common with the highly acclaimed Mac launcher program extraordinaire,
Quicksliver. Colibri is a learning application launcher, which means that once you choose a given application, it
becomes the first choice for the initial sequence of letters you type. It's very quick and responsive, good things
for a launcher to be, and has a pleasing look to it.
There are a couple of quirks that should be
pointed out though, if you decide to give this launcher a try. Firstly, the documentation is all but nonexistent.
Clicking help from within the application simply sends you to the features page from the websites. Also, upon first
launching Colibri, it will do an index of your start menu and quick-launch folders, but gives no warning that it will
be doing so, other than an enigmatic white orb that floats in the center of your screen saying, simply, "Start
Menu" then "Quick Launch". No progress bar or anything like that. Finally, once it has installed and
indexed, pressing the hot-key combination to bring it up (or clicking on the system tray icon) brings up a completely
blank white rectangle in the middle of the screen. It took me three tries before I realized I need to start typing
something at this point for it to go to work. Once you wrap your head around it (and it takes no time at all) you
might find you've got an intuitive new way to launch all your favorite programs.
