Quicksilver now Lion-friendly, automatically updates plug-ins

The Quicksilver developers have released a major update, ß61 (Build 3900), to their open source application launcher tool for Mac OS X. Quicksilver (QS) is a utility that uses keyboard commands to quickly perform tasks such as launching applications, running scripts or even sending emails; it is intended to run as a persistent background task.

Quicksilver is now officially compatible with Mac OS X 10.7 Lion and includes major changes to how QS plug-ins are updated. Previously users had to visit the Plugins Repository and install a new version of a plug-in each time an update was available. Plug-ins are now automatically updated when QS is running and faulty plug-ins that have been known to cause the app to crash will no longer be available for installation.

The module for Apple's AirPort app has been rewritten to address a number of crashing bugs and the Calculator plug-in now displays results in real-time. Other changes include a new app icon, interface tweaks for Lion, date format localisations, Xcode 4 compatibility updates and fixes for a number of bugs found in previous builds. The developers note that they are aware of a bug with version 1.3 of the Growl open source notification system.

Further information about the update, including several short videos of Quicksilver in action, can be found in a post on the Quicksilver blog and in the change log. Quicksilver ß61 (Build 3900) is available to download for Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard or later; the developers advise those running 10.5 Leopard to use ß60. Hosted on GitHub, Quicksilver source code is licensed under version 2.0 of the Apache Licence.

(crve)