Scott Hanselman

A while back (I mentioned this to a few folks, so there's prior art) I started working on the "ZenBar."  The basic idea was that I spend a HELL of a lot of time on in the Run Dialog (Window-R) or at the command line using CD and Tab Auto-Completion.  It's just faster for me to use a hotkey or command line to move around for many things than use the mouse.  ZenBar was to be simple. A floating, partially transparent text box that would index my world and give me autocompletion for all things. It was a little like ActiveWords and a little like Dave's Search Bar (both are great, by the way, but I just wasn't willing to LIVE in them.

But, as projects go, I got about 40% done then stopped.  Too many other things. 

Yesterday I checked out Mike G's Daily Grind via Tim Marman and HOLY CRAP.  Someone wrote it. They wrote it better than I could have, and they did it in Delphi. 

It's SlickRun, and it rocks my world. Here's why, and what I did to fit it into my life.

• It's a resizable, floating text box. I changed the font to Lucida Console, Bold 14 point.  When you're running 1600x1200 you like a larger font.
• It does autocomplete for commands and for directories. You can type C:\doc and you're in documents and settings. Awesome.
• You can setup MagicWords like "Mail" for Outlook, or Google to search, etc.
• This is the BEST: You an have Multi-MagicWords like "morning' that will launch six web pages, your Mail, and Microsoft Money.  The "Morning" Macro.  Fabulous.
• It's an inline calculator.
• It can be bound to a Hotkey - I've got it bound to Window-Q, and it can Grab Window-R if you like.
• It includes Jot notes for quick notes, easier than notepad, less hassle than a yellow sticky.

What a wonderful thing.  Check out SlickRun. It's fast and small.  Faster than Dave's Search, and easier than ActiveWords. I shall delete my half-assed attempt at the ZenBar immediately and bow to Bayden Systems.

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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I'm glad I'm not the only one that notice this. It's such an incredibly obvious omission, That I immediately assumed it was my fault and I was missing something. Can someone let me know if I'm completely out of touch on this or is it true that XmlDataSource.XPath and XPathBinder don't accept namespace qualified documents for evaluation with XPath? I am in the middle of a chapter on System.Xml for .NET 2.0 and I am surprised to have hit upon this missing functionality.

Now playing: Angie Stone & Floetry - My Man

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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He's prolific.  You're likely using his tools today, and you may not know his name.  He's D.J. Jeff Freakin' Key baby, and he's done it again.

Check out his new Screen Ruler.  Ya, I know it's been done before by others, but his is in .NET, and it's transparent. 

Additionally, if you're not rockin' Snippet Compiler, you're a punk.  And I don't mean that in the nice Modern English way.  Check out his library of goodness here.

One of the things that I have to give Jeff props on (take a note here, non-UI developers) - his stuff is ALWAYS polished. It's consistant and it's pretty.  Not pretty in an overt way, but in a "fits into your life way." The only other developer that has impressed me with their consistant and clean UI is Nick Bradbury.

Note to Freeware/Shareware authors.  I will ALWAYS pick the cool transparent app over the opaque one.  Maybe that's just me.

(Additionally you have to respect a guy who uses PNG.  Also, you can pick Jeff up on ebay cheap.)

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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"This has to be one of the most brilliant, simple, and truthful documents ever conceived by man." overheard at Corillian today regarding the Laws of Prototypes.

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

About   Newsletter

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