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Program launcher overload

by Jason Clarke on November 30, 2006 at 11:00 AM

Start MenuRemember when Windows 95 came out, and we were all introduced to the Start Menu? It was Microsoft's new way of allowing users to launch programs, and it kicked all kinds of butt over the old Windows 3.1 shell. They had done a bunch of user testing, and found that the Start Menu interface allowed users to launch their programs measurably faster than with previous interfaces.

Unfortunately, it just didn't take long to reach the point where too many entries in the Start Menu make it so slow and cumbersome to navigate that it becomes relatively useless as a program launcher. Of course to combat this problem Microsoft introduced arguably one of its worst Windows feature from a usability perspective, Personalized Menus. These are the menus that hide items that haven't been recently chosen from view. The problem here is that people are inherently visual creatures, and we learn the locations of the options and software we want to choose. When their locations change based on what is or isn't hidden, it slows us down and makes things more complicated.

Until Windows Vista comes out, this (along with desktop shortcuts) is the current state of the art with respect to program launching technology from Microsoft. I'm not the only one who finds these options lacking, since there are a million and one application launchers available for Windows. I know, I've got at least 4 of them installed.

Let's see what's on here:




SlickRun - This little application is a program launcher as well as a command bar, which means it can do anything that can be done using the Run dialog. To use it as a program launcher, you must first manually set up a shortcut word linked to a path to the program you want to launch. Although it's high-maintenance to set up, once set up it works like a charm. The ability to type a folder path right in SlickRun and be taken to that folder is priceless, as is the ability to type a URL and be taken right to that page in your default browser. My other favorite feature in SlickRun is the Jot window that it contains - this is essentially an endless notepad that you can pop up with a single keyboard shortcut. I just dump all of the things I would otherwise write down on scraps of paper into Jot, and it automatically saves so I never have to worry about it. The file is saved on your hard drive as a plain text file, so you can search it with a desktop search application if you want to make sure you can find some nugget of information you've stored in there. Useful stuff.

Launchy - Launchy is a very fast application launcher that indexes the paths you specify. Its other trick is that as you type the name of the program you'd like to launch, it presents to you the first match, but after a moment it gives a list of other matching items so that you can scroll down and choose the correct one. The next time you type the same text, it will automatically choose the item you manually chose the last time. In practice this is a much faster way to train your launcher to quickly launch the programs you're looking to launch.

Colibri Type-Ahead - Okay, Colibri is very similar to Launchy. In fact, I should really choose one or the other. Although Launchy is more intuitive, I like Colibri because it feels extremely fast. Colibri indexes your shortcuts when you start the application, so it can be a bit slow to start, but once it's running it is blazingly fast. To be honest, I run them both because I've had stability issues with both of them, and I like to know that if one blows up on me, I can use the other one right away. If one of them were to become rock-solid on my system, I'd probably switch to it.

Google Desktop - A little-known feature in Google Desktop is that it can be used as a program launcher. To do so, you'll need to switch a setting in the Google Desktop preferences. It's under the Display tab, in the section titled Quick Find. The setting is "Launch programs/files by default". Once this setting is set, simply tap the CTRL key twice in succession, and the Quick Find dialog will pop up in the middle of the screen. Type the name of the application you're wanting to launch, and it will come up in the list of possibilities to launch. If you've already got Google Desktop installed, this is a nice addition. But it's nowhere near as fast as either Launchy or the ultra-speedy Colibri, so I just don't use it that much.

After writing up this list it's clear to me that I have too many of the same types of programs on my system. I need to pare it down. Are you the same way? Let us know your favorite way of launching apps in the comments.

Tags: Application Launchers, ApplicationLaunchers, Colibri, freeware, Google Desktop, GoogleDesktop, Launchy, Program Launchers, ProgramLaunchers, SlickRun

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