Free tools for translators and project managers. Part 2: Launchy

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Free tools for translators and project managers. Part 2: Launchy

(1 vote, average 5.00 out of 5)

Written by Marco Cevoli

Sunday, 19 October 2008 19:00

Tired of wasting time looking for programs in the Windows Start menu? Then Launchy is just for you. This fast open source software rapidly searches and launches programs just by typing a couple of characters.

n this second article dedicated to free tools for translators, editors and project managers we focus on another productivity-enhancing software. Sharing useful tools with fellow language professionals is in line with Qabiria's mission of contributing to the advancement of the translation industry.

Launchy (www.launchy.net) is a software to launch applications that can substitute the Windows Start menu. Once you have used it for a while, you will wonder how you ever managed without it. Let's see why. Let's consider for a moment how the Start menu works. When you need to open a program, you typically click on a desktop icon or on the fast access bar. If it is a program you rarely use - you will look for it in the Windows Start menu. This search can be quite time consuming, as you may have dozens of programs installed on your computer and you don't always remember their name. So you are obliged to scroll the Menu, sort it by alphabetical order, enter and search sub-menus until you find your program. This operation may take several seconds.

why does the Start menu take so long? First of all, because of the large amounts of elements it contains and because they are not organized by any particular criteria. Even is they are organized (usually in alphabetical order), the menu's tree structure obliges users to interrupt what they were doing, scroll the menu and select the desired program by reviewing and excluding all the others. "Application launchers", as this type of software is called, are a complete different story. All you need to open a program is typing a few characters of its name. Instead of opening a list of programs to choose from, application launchers immediately launch the program you need, even if it is one you hardly ever use.

This is exactly what Launchy does. It opens a program in a fraction of a second after you have typed a couple of characters of its name. Once installed, Launchy will automatically open whith Windows. In order to launch it, you type ALT+SPACE (or any other key combination you choose). A window opens where you can type one ore more characters of the name of the program you are looking for. Launchy will view a short list of programs you can scroll with the arrows. When you identify the program you want, you just need press ENTER to launch it. It is incredibly fast and easy!

One of the software's asset is that it remembers your preferences. Every time you open it, Launchy views the last program you used and it is ready to launch it. Moreover, it is capable of organizing search results based on frequency of use. For example, if you select Word a couple of times by typing the four characters w-o-r-d, the third time Launchy will view Word immediately after you have typed the first character w. Mac users will probably notice the similarities with Quicksilver, a program that has certainly served as inspiration for Launchy.

technically speaking, what Launchy does is indexing the content of the Start menu. Indexing is fully transparent and minimizes the use of the system resources. You can also add to Launchy any folder or file you wish to rapidly access. Here is how:

Click on the Launchy window with the right button of the mouse and select Options;
In the Catalog tab, in the Directories section, click on the «+» button;
Choose the directory you wish to include;
In the File Types section, insert the extension of the files you want to add to the index (usually *.exe or *.lnk);
Click on the «+» button to confirm;
Click on Rescan Catalog to update the index.

At Qabiria we always add the full Program Files directory to have all the programs indexed and immediately available. You can also add all files with *.tmw extension to rapidly access your translation memories. Moreover, Launchy is installed with a number of plug-ins that allow you to search not only programs, but also the web and your favorites. It also includes a calculator. Figures and mathematical symbols can be typed in the same window without having to open another one. Since you have the possibility to choose what files to index, Launchy could also be used as an offline desktop search engine. However, we do not recommend this use because the program interface is very basic and best suited to work as program launcher. We invite you to read our article: «How do you find a needle in a haystack? Part 2: desktop search tools» for additional details on desktop search systems.

Created by the American Josh Karlin, Launchy is an open source software. For this reason, the developers can extend its functions by adding specific plug-ins or modifying graphics and appearance. All additional material can be downloaded for free on sourceforge.net. For those who wish to learn more about application launchers, there exists an alternative freeware to Launchy: Enso Launcher. This software is more refined in appearance and offers more functionalities. However, is not as time efficient as Launchy. The time needed to launch a program with this software is calculated to take up to 5 days per year. It is distributed by Humanized (http://humanized.com/), a small Chicago agency specializing in usability, that will certainly be the topic of one of our future articles.

Finally, let's take a look at some meaningful figures. We calculated that the time necessary to launch a program from the Start menu is about 10 seconds. Let's suppose that in an average working day we open 60 programs (or 6 programs 10 times a day). This makes 10 minutes. If we multiply this time by 220 annual working days, we obtain almost 5 full days. If we reduce to 2 the initial 10 seconds (but Launchy is even faster than that!), the time spent to open programs in a year becomes 7.4 hours. Just think about all that you can do in the 4 days you have saved!

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Hmmm... Launchy sembra la brutta copia di Krunner o sarà Krunner la copia di Launchy?

razvan , October 31, 2009

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Krunner è al momento solo disponibile per KDE, un ambiente desktop che gira per lo più sui sistemi operativi Linux/Unix e, per questo motivo, non è stato citato. Quale sia nato prima è irrilevante ai fini dell'articolo, che non ha affatto la pretesa di essere una panoramica sui "power launcher". Per chi vuole ulteriori informazioni sulle alternative presenti, raccomandiamo la voce "Comparison of application launchers" sulla Wikipedia.

Marco Cevoli , November 01, 2009

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