"God Mode" for Vista/Windows7?

Thorin · March 05, 2012, 10:16:39 PM

I will admit search in the start menu works easier than trying to find the right icon, but only because I'm good at remembering what things are called. However, it's not so much the start menu I want text shortcuts for, it's web browsing. I open a browser and go to the same website over and over in a day, and I'm on a laptop with a touchpad, and I hate using touchpads. I've added custom search engines to Chrome to point to specific urls; for instance, to check these forums for new messages I start Chrome and then type "rw" in the address bar. That shortcut (sorry, "search engine") is linked directly to the url for new posts on forums.righteouswrath.com. Now if only I could get my custom search engines would follow me from computer to computer.

Back to the original topic, yeah, it's weird that they've added code to Windows to respond to this exact folder name - seems pretty unnecessary. Who knows, maybe it was used during QA. Might be easier to use automated tests in an Explorer window.

Tom · March 05, 2012, 10:35:21 PM

I really like KDE's krunner. It ties virtually any kind of data or resource into KDE's search/run box.

It has a bunch of plugins:

Applications - Find applications and control panels
Bookmarks - obvious
Calculator - built in calculator!
Calendar events - also obvious?
Contacts
Control Audio Player
Desktop Sessions - fast user switching
Devices - Manage removable devices
"Sessions" - support for various kde application's sessions (kate, konqueror, konsole)
Locations - file and url opener
Nepomuk Search - search through everything that the desktop indexer has scanned (files, tags, email, whatever)
Power Management
Recent Documents
Special Characters - create special characters from hex codes
Spell Checker
Terminate Applications
Unit Converter
Wikipedia
Windows - list windows and desktops and switch between them
Activities - list and switch between Activities (extension of virtual desktops that apps can be aware of)

So yeah. Bit of a KDE fan here.

Should note, that KDE 4 was branched off of KDE 3 on July 25 2005. And the idea for krunner predates that. The "Windows 7 like"ness of KDE4 that people seem to comment about predates the first Windows 7 previews too.

Lots of borrowing going on between Windows/OSX/KDE/Gnome I tell you what.

append: the stock "start menu" also has a search feature, and it looks like it shares a bunch of the functionality of krunner. I'd be surprised if it didn't just use krunner's library directly (or dbus commands?)

Thorin · March 05, 2012, 10:51:32 PM

Why is there a K in every name?

Tom · March 05, 2012, 11:24:26 PM

Quote from: Thorin on March 05, 2012, 10:51:32 PM
Why is there a K in every name?

It's only in the classic names. In fact they have a bit of an "anti k" thing since the start on kde 4. Now everything has a funky name, like Plasma, Ion, Strigi, Nepomuk, Akonadi, Air, Oxygen, Solid, PowerDevil, BlueDevil, Dolphin, Phonon, Decibel, Calligra, Sonnet, "GHNS/DHX", Gluon, ThreadWeaver, OwnCloud... You get the picture

The K stuff was because well, it's KDE. Aka: The K Desktop Environment.

Mr. Analog · March 06, 2012, 06:54:50 AM

"KDE" is a pun on the older Unix "Common Desktop Environment", the K stands for nothing in particular

Tom · March 06, 2012, 08:34:28 AM

Quote from: Mr. Analog on March 06, 2012, 06:54:50 AM
"KDE" is a pun on the older Unix "Common Desktop Environment", the K stands for nothing in particular

It started out as Kool. Then they dropped that. But yes, it was a play on CDE.

Mr. Analog · March 06, 2012, 08:39:50 AM

Quote from: Tom on March 06, 2012, 08:34:28 AM
Quote from: Mr. Analog on March 06, 2012, 06:54:50 AM
"KDE" is a pun on the older Unix "Common Desktop Environment", the K stands for nothing in particular
It started out as Kool. Then they dropped that. But yes, it was a play on CDE.

Haha, that's awesome