Launchy is a nice little utility that makes life easier, especially for all those users who prefer the keyboard to the mouse, say laptop users to whom typing a few keys is more convenient that navigating using the mouse.
It runs in the background and when invoked to the foreground allows you to launch various programs that you wish. There are a few similar apps like Colibri and yLaunch, but Launchy stands out for the wide range of features that can be customized.
To start with, the hotkey used to invoke Launchy can be set. I choose “Win + Space” instead of the default “Alt + Space” because the latter is already a keyboard shortcut to invoke the Restore menu. GUI options like opacity and fade times, length of suggestion lists; system options like time between catalog updates; skins are also customizable.
Coming to the catalog, the user can set the file types to be catalogued, directories to catalogue them from, and the maximum depth in each directory up to which cataloguing is to be done. Once the catalog is indexed for the first time, you are good to go. Suggestions as to which file you want to open are at your fingertips.
I only catalog my Start->Programs list for various reasons. I keep my PC quiet organized, especially the Program files, and I use a different indexer for indexing all files on the system (which I’ll write about on next Friday).
Another great feature of Launchy is the plugins.
Apart from opening websites directly from the browser through Launchy, all your bookmarks and other commonly-used websites can be added for quick direct searches; it can directly use the calculator and the Google calculator,…
Let me not go on and on and rob you the pleasure of discovering this little app. You can download it from http://launchy.net and when you install it, you also get a well-written README, so there you go.
If you really like it, buy a cup of coffee to Josh Karlin, the one behind Launchy. Show your support to open source.
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Launchy,
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译文:
用Launchy启动你的程序
Launchy是一个小巧而优雅的工具，它让生活变得更简单，尤其是对于喜欢使用键盘而不是鼠标的人，比如笔记本用户——键盘输入对于他们来说比用鼠标浏览要方便得多。
这个程序平时运行在后台，当它被呼出到前台时，Launchy允许你启动你所期望运行的程序。Colibri 和 yLaunch和它的功能类似，但是Launchy提供了更为广泛的可定制的特性。
首先，它的呼出热键是可设置的。我用 “Win + Space” 键取代了默认的呼出键 “Alt + Space”，因为后者已经被设置为恢复菜单的快捷键了。此外，透明度、淡出时间、备选列表长度等界面选项，搜索目录的更新间隔等系统选项，以及它的皮肤也都是可以由用户设置的。
至于搜索目录，搜索的文件类型、搜索路径，以及每条路径的搜索深度都是可以由用户进行配置的。搜索目录只需被索引过一次，以后就可以很方便的使用了。你想打开的文件的备选项就在你的指尖（只需你轻轻一点）。
出于多种考虑，我仅仅把我的“开始->程序”列表加入了搜索目录。 我的PC采用了一种朴素的管理方式, ，尤其是程序，我使用了另一种索引工具来为系统中所有的文件进行排序和索引（下周五我会说到这个工具）。
Launchy另一个伟大的特性在于它的插件。
除了你可以用Launchy直接打开浏览器浏览网页，你的书签和经常浏览的网页也可以加入快速搜索名单，此外它甚至还可以直接使用计算器和Google calculator，……
就此打住，免得剥夺了你探索这个小软件的乐趣。你可以从http://launchy.net/ 下载这个软件，你会发现它还提供了一份很棒的README文件，去试试吧。
如果你喜欢这个小东东，送杯咖啡 给Josh Karlin吧，他是这个小玩意的作者，也顺便支持一下开源软件。