I have missed the “assistive devices” part, now it works. Thanks!

Thanks for this detailed tutorial.

I have spent much time to find out that i have to enable User Interface Access too.

But on my Quicksilver the Proxy entry under Catalog is called QSPresetProxies and QSPresetInternalMessages.

Thank you for this info I am no longer frustrated.

thx for the hints, I almost gave up on Merlin’s tip

“Internal Commands” and “Internal Objects” don’t actually need to be enabled in Catalog>Quicksilver for Merlin’s tip to work. In fact, “Proxy Objects” is only necessary if you want to dynamically address whatever application is frontmost. If you want, you can access menus directly in an application individually by placing it in the Noun portion of the QS interface and then choosing “Show Menu Items” as the Verb.

Though I suppose the first pane in Quicksilver should probably be called the Subject, as the dynamically-appearing third field is a “noun” as well but could more accurately be described as an Object.

Thank you, I wondered if I was going mad after watching how easy it was on the screencast. You have restored my sanity!

Pity I did not have this post yesterday. Would have saved me many a google search to figure out what I needed to configure in Quicksilver, to make this cool feature work.

I was struggling a bit to understand how Merlin found the markdown bold command so easily. With all the TextMate bundles I have installed, I have several Bold commands, but no indication of which bundle they belong to. By going to the bundle editor of TextMate, the commands can be given more descriptive names, for instance Markdown Bold instead of just Bold, thus making it easier to identify which menu item to choose.

Thanks for the QS set up tips but my problem is that having worked that out myself, quicksilver’s menu items all appear in a long list that doesn’t seem to match what Merlin had.
e.g. when I follow his example to bold something in a markdown document there are at least 3 bolds (seem to be in A-Z order) but there’s no way to get to the markdown one as they are all called bold.

any ideas ?

I truly appreciate everything Merlin offers, but the first question I always want to ask him is “okay, but first how did you get where you began? What’s the set-up involved and what are your preference settings?” Seems counter-intuitive not to ask him directly, but the question occurs to me so frequently that such emails would soon become annoying, bothersome, dare I even suggest, ghoulishly harrasing. So I wait a day and someone out there goes “hey, this doesn’t work, how’d you… .” and problem solved. Thanks to you and to Merlin. You all are offering a great service educating the masses.

Thank you thank you thank you.
I was getting frustrated for having a “show menu” but no “show menu items”

So, in Merlin’s show, he executes thusly: (1) invoke QS, (2) “Current Application”, (3) “Show Menu Items” and then….what keystroke does he use next? It’s as if the stroke “proxifies” the previous two in the bezel to allow him to play in menu-land.

Maybe there was a massive traffic of people downloading and installing the new plugins needed, but I can’t reach quicksilver.blacktree.com at all now… ;)

I wanted to do it like Merlin — but missed the “User Interface Access (+)” plugin.

It works perfectly now — thanks!

Just wanted to say “me too” per everyone above. Merlin completely lost me.

Thanks for the detailed write-up. Now I’m like Merlin too ;-)

Another question: what tool did you use to build your “Bookmark/Search this post” chiclette bar

Jim

I’ve got a “show menu” but still no “show menu items”, and this is after I’ve enabled advanced features, installed the Interface Access plugin, turned, enabled assistive device acesss in the UA control panel and enabled proxy objects/internal commands/internal objects in the catalog.

Suggestions?

I’ve set up the proxies, and have set triggers for a couple of commands I commonly use in Photoshop which require a lot of mousing. ‘Variations’, for example—

Invoke QS, Photoshop; Menu Bar; tab and arrow through Image, Adjustments to Variations. Set trigger.

The trigger works well in the current session, but in a new session with a restarted Photoshop and QS, the trigger is gone from QS.

At first I thought this was because of a conflict with a native PS key combination, but even with a custom key set the trigger only lasts for the open session.

Anyone have some thoughts on how to hold these triggers?

I think this may because Photoshop doesn’t show image menus unless there’s a picture open, so there are times when there’s no context—but I’m not sure why a trigger would go away altogether.

Also: is there a way to trigger directly to a mid-menu submenu? My attempts to assign these resulted in no action at all.

Thanks much,

Mark S.

Thanks dude, I didn’t know about the Assistive Devices bit! Many thanks again.

I have gotten all of Merlin’s Fu to work except when I type markdown I do not get any of the menu items under markdown. I am noticing that there are several menu item primarily under bundles that are not available to quicksilver. The fu seems to work in other apps but I am having trouble specifically with TextMate. Any ideas why ALL of the menu items may not be appearing?

I can get to the Show Menu Items box in Firefox, but it’s blank. Is there a keystroke or something I need to use on my MacBook since I don’t have an Enter key?

i’d like to join the long list of appreciative folks here… i could get this great trick working for ages until i finally got to this page.

all the best!

This trick is great. Something I have wondered about is if Quicksilver can access the contextual menus as well (i.e. the stuff you get on a right-click). Is this possible?

Unfortunately no. I wish that were the case. I remember a time when any possible action was in the menus, but those days are gone. Now that this QS trick is known, I wish it were that way. I use DEVONthink as a database and Accordance Bible software, and both of these have massive contextual menus and over half of the actions aren’t in the menus. And the contextual menus are often different based on whether the file is chosen in the groups pane, whether you are in the file, or if you have a portion of text chosen. I love all of the options, just wish I didn’t need my mouse to get to them :-)

One other great side effect of this tip is that it provides the first really easy way I’ve found to search your history on Safari. Since all of the entires in your search history show up as safari menu items, invoking this action from safari is basically a history search. Awesome! This was one Firefox feature that had been strongly luring me away from Safari and now I’ve got it!

Has anyone run into any proxy problems in Leopard?

QS is working just as well as ever under Leopard for me EXCEPT that proxy objects won’t come up ONLY in certain programs.

In the Finder, I can hit my keystroke (alt+space) to bring up my proxy objects. Works for Mail, iCal, and a bunch of others as well.

But I can’t get to proxy objects in Keynote, Safari, or DEVONthink. Really sucks, as I have come to use it constantly.

Any help is appreciated.

Danny

Good detailed tutorial ;) Thank you