LaunchBar

On or about 9/22/07 3:06 AM, thus spake "Google Kreme" <gkremegmail.com>:

> My Hero, Matt Neuburg, said:

Heeeere I come, to save the daaaaay! (Uh, sorry, I've always wanted to do
that.)

>> Well, now if I see a URL in some application where I can't merely
>> click it, I can select it, press and hold Control-Space to send it
>> to LaunchBar as text, and then press Return to open it in my browser.
>
> OK, as a long time user of Launchbar, I can't get this to work.

You've probably turned off your keyboard's automatic repeat key. In System
Preferences, go to Keyboard & Mouse > Keyboard. Turn the Key Repeat Rate up
to fairly Fast, and turn the Delay Until Repeat to fairly Short.

Now try it. In TextEdit, type "http://www.tidbits.com" and select just that
URL. Now hold down Command-Space for about two seconds. LB should appear,
with that URL in its little window, and the label "URL" to the right -
showing that if you now hit Return, you'll go to that URL.

I also had trouble with this feature, and didn't report in my article
everything that LB's online help and publicity were claiming it could do,
because I couldn't get all of it to work. After a long exchange with LB's
developer (and some additional testing from Joe Kissell), it turned out that
this entire feature depends upon keyboard repeats. You have to have keyboard
repeats turned on, and you have to hold down the key long enough that there
are some repeats.

Interestingly, the way I figured this out was with *another* utility I just
reviewed, Keyclick. It was Keyclick's sounds that told me when I was and
wasn't holding down the key long enough to get a repeat.

Needless to say, I'm disappointed that the feature is implemented this way.
I should not have to sacrifice my preferences just to make this feature
work. But I suppose it's better than LB "polling" the keyboard to see how
long I'm holding the key down... m.

--
matt neuburg, phd = matttidbits.com, http://www.tidbits.com/matt/

On Sep 22, 2007, at 06:06, Google Kreme wrote:

> My Hero, Matt Neuburg, said:
>> Well, now if I see a URL in some application where I can't merely
>> click it, I can select it, press and hold Control-Space to send it
>> to LaunchBar as text, and then press Return to open it in my browser.
>
> OK, as a long time user of Launchbar, I can't get this to work.

What a neat feature . . . I never knew it was there.

TTFN:

neil

On 23-Sep-2007, at 05:19, Matt Neuburg wrote:
> Now try it. In TextEdit, type "http://www.tidbits.com" and select
> just that
> URL. Now hold down Command-Space for about two seconds.

Ah, I see, this is related to their new 'instant launch' ability
(command space b b-hold will launch BBEdit without the return needing
to be pressed). At least I assume so, as the delay is similar, but
my question really was about getting selected text into a google
search, but I see it works basically the same way, select the text,
activate AND HOLD on LB, and then type the shortcut for the search
you want (goi goo mb im, etc).

This is very slick. Wonder if I can get used to actually USING it.