User Centered

Nice. Maybe a bit too much on the DEMO side
The blog is readable.

Yeah- I've linked the blog before. I follow that blog pretty closely and I've been watching Enso.

Agreed, it is a little too demo-ish to say for certain. But I'd love to get ahold of the beta (yeah- I applied)

Very interesting, Eddie - and it is kind of funny that we posted at short interval from each other (I was not aware about this posting) about the wish to get GUI and CLI into one UI.

I thought it was interesting too.

Of course, your post is much more command line than GUI (from what I gathered) and mine is a launcher for Windows with a handful of utilities.

It's funny though- I use Operas address bar for as much as I can. There are times when I'd love to hit ctrl-n (none of this new fangled ctrl-t nonesense) to get a "go to page" prompt and have that be flexible enough to enter a URL, nickname, or websearch (check, check and check) but also search my history, notes, or various other Opera managed data.

Have you tried a Mac with Quicksilver installed? Having just switched, after the initial culture shock, the much greater conceptual unification in the UI is great. OSX offers ample services the "unify" disparate applications. There is a built-in dictionary/thesaurus that is universal for example and available everywhere.

Quicksilver is a GUI/CLI, with an amazingly intuitive way of launching tasks contextually related to objects. You type to auto-complete your way down to performing wonderfully specific tasks (as in a command line but with graphical hints). Really neat.

that's what I've been hearing non-troppo. I haven't tried it, but I'm interested in Quicksilver. I've read a little bit on it in the wake of this Enso announcement. I'd like to see how they are similar/different. I should be getting a Mac soon, so that'll be the first place I look

Well, enso is currently a universal word lookup with unknown other functionality. That is built into OS X (no need for Quicksilver), via the concept of services. Any application can offer services to other applications, as well as the OS offering unified services. Built into the core of OS X is applescript (and the GUI version, Automator), which acts as a bridge and "glue" to lets several apps be rolled into single actions (AutoIt being the best windows analogue). This makes the walls between app in OS X much lower than in Windows.

Quicksilver is at first glance a keyboard launcher. But the flexibility and extensibility make it something altogether more incredible. As a single example, it can give you full auto-complete commandline hooks into the GUI menu of any application. You can then assign triggers to it so opera > tools > advanced > error console can be given a keboard trigger, irrespective of whether the app supports custom key mappings: http://www.lifeclever.com/2006/11/01/the-apple-blog-access-any-mac-menu-with-quicksilver/

An article on the CLI comeback: http://lifehacker.com/software/command-line/geek-to-live--the-command-line-comeback-226223.php

Everyone uses a kind of CLI/GUI hybrid. The human brain optimizes subconsciously on the fly to select which approach it believes will be most efficient, (and cognitive psychology doesn't fully understand how the brain optimizes, in case you're wondering).

How do I select this line? Do I press Shift-Home or Shift-Ctrl-Left arrow several times or drag with the mouse or press ESC,yy (that last one for you vi fanboyz).

What we do know about the brain is that, as Donald Norman puts it, "knowledge in the head is faster than knowledge in the world." CLI is faster, and always will be, because the brain doesn't have to enter the slow feedback loop before it executes the action. A GUI always needs to enter the feedback loop. It's graphical and visual and you have to continually monitor the position of the pointer while you move your hand in a Fitt of Fitt's Law. Sorry no automaticity available...ever. The post-action feedback loop applies to both, where we check that what we intended to happen actually happened.

The brain tries to automatize all it can, but is actually helped by the difficulty of learning a command line interface. The brain doesn't like when you have to stop and think, "what's that command again for searching in a file?" So it helps you by storing the knowledge for super-quick in-your-head retrieval.

Even CLI junkies resort to the feedback loop however, pressing TAB for command and filename completion in modern unix shells, using man pages. The brain isn't stupid, it doesn't bother learning everything.

Usability principle: Know what your users will be doing most and optimize those tasks for efficiency and learnability. Then structure your interface (CLI/GUI/FUI--future user interface to support finding all those half-learned and partly-remembered commands and tools.

Enso is public BTW - having installed it is cool in places, and frustrating elsewhere...

Yeah- I've been using it myself since just after I posted this.

I do like it, but in the wake of Enso (on 37signals.com and slashdot.org) I've heard of a ton of others. For launching, I've found I like launch better than Enso, I've found I don't like Enso's spell checker at all.. I've found that Enso is pretty resource hungry (for what it is)... not very good signs.

I do think Enso is a better launcer than launchy but the quasi-mode capslock key thing isn't for me. I understand the problem with modes, but a)its pretty hard to to tell what mode you're in- the big Enso text on the screen is a clear indicator and b)we're talking about a single command. How much time before my mind drifts or I get distracted etc and forget what mode I'm in?

I like quasi-mode in principle, but I think it's mis-applied here. I may be wrong.

Enso lets you have a little more flexibiliy (the learn command) with what you launch, and launchy is stereo typical OSS with the UI/configuration, but in the end launchy is much lighter and responsive, and lets me do full mode switches.

But the juries still out.

Conceptually, Enso is way ahead of Launchy. Like quicksilver, it steps beyond the "subject" (launchers find things {subjects} but not much more). The idea of being able to do lots of things on selections is cool and not immediately available in Quicksilver. Quicksilver is still way more powerful in what it can do: subject -> verb -> object - the subject is way more flexible (you can fine tune your catalog of subjects), and the verbs are numerous and hugely practical.

By the way, a much more accomplished launcher than Launchy on Windows is Find and Run Robot (FARR):

http://www.donationcoder.com/Software/Mouser/findrun/index.html

I think Launchy gets more publicity lately simply because it is prettier... FARR has much smarter heuristics and learns from you *much* better, it is faster to select matches that are not top of the list, and is customisable on a much deeper level.

Good tip- I saw that on Slashdot but haven't tried it yet.

I fell victim to the stuff I was arguing against on 37signals and slashdot about Enso being much more than just a launcher.

John Wesley writes:

I use a Mac at home and consider Quicksilver the biggest reason I never plan on switching back to PC. I feel crippled on my work PC without it. I've tried Launchy as a substitute, but have found it to be piss more. The search algorithm just doesn't work. In fact everything about it is a big downgrade from QS. Maybe I'll try Enso next. I tried to get Colibri but it messed up my computer.

John- as non-troppo suggests, try FARR (above).

I've moved from launchy to FARR- it's much better in letting you customize results.

Enso is nice as well, there are some new preferences that make the UI a bit more palatable.