SlickRun

Since Rob sent us a list of useful freeware, I couldn't resist posting about one of the utilities on the list that I cannot live without; SlickRun

I can't live without it mostly because I despise that evil little monstrosity next to my keyboard most people refer to as the "mouse". But that doesn't mean you have to hate the hand manipulation device of doom to benefit from SlickRun. It makes launching common tasks way more efficient.

Here's what it is:

• A place to centralize and manage all of the apps you commonly run.
• A scratchpad for temporary pasting text.
• A quick calculator.

The command launcher is something you use to create and launch shortcuts. So to open VSS I hit -> Window Key + A, "s", enter. As soon as I type "s" it completes my keyword for VSS ("sourcesafe") and hitting enter launches the app. Any time I open something more than twice, I add it to SlickRun and make opening it the next time faster (while laughing at my mouse). Any command you can enter at the run prompt works as well.

But there's more. You can add dynamic parameters to your commands. So one of my commands is "compare". When I run that command it prompts me for 2 file paths. I browse to and right click (using the right click key of course) on 2 files I want to compare and put their paths on the clipboard (using FileTargets, another handy utility), paste them into the prompt and it launches a file compare utility passing the paths to it which immediately shows me whether the files match.

The "jot" scratchpad comes up with a keystroke and always auto saves. So I invoke it, paste in some text and hit escape; it'll be there the next time I invoke it.

The same little window that you type your commands into serves as a calculator. I like to use it in favor of the windows calculator most of the time because I can easily enter several numbers with lots of parentheses. You can see each step of the calc all at once.