Find and Run Robot
There are several ways to increase your productivity when you work with computer systems. One of those ways is to use Find and Run Robot, a great program by Mouser of Donation Coder. It is a program launcher that you can use to start programs faster on your Windows operating system.
You activate the program launcher with a hotkey to select one of the programs by entering a couple of characters into the search on top. To select a program, either use the mouse or the up and down keys and enter to select.
You can find the installation file on the donation coders website, and a license code can also be obtained there. For the license code you can choose between registering at the forum, or get a anonymous serial.
After you have installed the program you can activate it with ctrl+spacebar. Then at the end of the searchbar you can click the gear for the option screen.
Here you can specify a lot of settings, for instance that Find and Run Robot starts with the Windows operating system.
Other options of interest:
- Select which folders you want the program to browse for programs. It searches the desktop, start menu, my documents and several others by default already.
- Change the default hotkeys (CTRLSpace or Pause-Break) to other hotkeys.
- Define priority scores for certain file types. If you want the program to prioritize .exe and .xls files you would improve the score of those file types so that they are displayed closer to the top.
- Change the fonts used by the application, for example to reduce their size or make them bigger.
I suggest you remove the scanning of the program files directory in the search folder tab as that made the program a lot slower (but then again, that depends on how much you have in there).
You can also create shortcuts to directories so that you can open them faster using the selected shortcuts. Just create directory shortcuts and place them in a directory that gets scanned by the application or create them in a new directory that you add to it via its preferences.
The latest version of Find and Run Robot introduces plugin support, the ability to create and share alias packs, caching, and lots of options to customize the program and its functionality.
Tips
- Add-ons / plugins improve the program a lot. You may want to browse the add-on listing and include any plugin that you may find interesting. You find plugins for Gmail and Yahoo Mail listed here for example.
- A portable version of the application is available as well. If you do not want to install the program, use it instead.
- Developers can use the plugin SDK to create their own custom add-ons.
Qualitative resource
I also have to say I use something similar called Launchy. you can find it at http://www.launchy.net/
Would someone do a comparison review of the three :
1. Find and Run Robot
2. Colibri
3. Launchy
I have to say I prefer Colibri, which does pretty much the same thing. You can find it over at http://colibri.leetspeak.org/