elastic threads

Anonymous asked: I have read over some of your Threshold project.

I may sound dumb saying this, but have you heard of Google Quick Search Box? (http://www.google.com/quicksearchbox/) Wouldn't it be easier (and you'd reach a larger audience by) writing a plugin for it?

A fair question. There’s a handful of answers, some of which are more pertinent than others.

The main ones, and in no particular order:

1. I started Threshold, and continue to work on it, to teach myself cocoa, objective-c, and programming. Not on a series of abstract assignments or demonstration projects, but on a (admittedly basic) application I hope to develop to a polished shine. Since I’ve been posting builds of Threshold since the early days, and since developing it is a side hobby, I’ve been sharing an unfinished work. I only post builds that test relatively bug free, but Threshold is raw and unfinished. The UI/UX in particular has (obviously) not been all that developed yet, as a result I can see that its easy to take a look at the project from afar and wonder “why not just use Quicksilver?” (or QSB or Alfred or x). That might be reasonable question, but I’m motivated to work on it for other reasons, and also

2. Threshold is much more focused on command-line like, text powered, actions. Not that typing isn’t what drives QSB, but it does often get obfuscated by the UI of the launcher. Threshold is just text. And, depending on the context, that text gets routed into different applications and uses. I like Quicksilver’s eye-candy, but Threshold started as a system wide alernative to the Finder’s “Go To Folder…”. I just wanted to type a path to a folder. Now its developed and you can web search and sms and write to dos and even typing paths has many shortcuts and improvements over the Finder’s version, but I still just want to type and see a path. 

3. QSB’s text field is too small (and can’t be resized) to write longer texts like emails, notes, texts. I want Threshold to be an always immediately available space where you can write any text that you need to write, while its still fresh in your mind, and THEN decide where it needs to go and what it should look like. Sometimes your writing an email, and, mid-sentence, think of a completely random, but important blog post you want to write. Rather than change applications (possibly waiting for one to launch), and get situated in that application, and by the time you’re there, the idea has slipped a bit. And by the time you’re back to writing the email you were working on you’ve lost the momentum and voice that was driving it. Personally, I use Threshold in these moments all the time, mid-email I’ll have a to do for iCal; a few keys tapped to activate Threshold and create a to do, and its done. It’s true QSB or QS  (I don’t know about Alfred) does some of this, but their text fields are too small and unresizeable. 

4. I find Quicksilver much more useful than QSB, but its development is too unstable and unfocused. I actually have written some actions for Quicksilver, one of which enables Google Voice texting and calling comparable to Threshold. The best way to develop plugins for QS is particularly unclear as a future version may have a different architecture. And QSB seems not quite there yet. I’d have to write not one but 9 plugins.

5. Threshold began as a project for myself. I am always excited to hear of or from other users of Threshold. But it started without any expectation that someone else would use it. I certainly don’t expect to make Threshold shareware. There’s not a huge market for these types of apps. Quicksilver, QSB, and the basic version of Alfred are all free. Threshold was, originally, just about smoothing out as many wrinkles in my (day-job) workflow as possible. As its developed I have gotten into developing Threshold into an application others might use, but that was not the original driver. 

I hope this doesn’t come across as defensive. I consider the same question from time to time, and I’m not 100% on the answer, except that I have taken months off developing Threshold, and during that time experimented with not using it… and I always come back to it. Using the application satisfies a certain keyboard-junkiness in me, along with improving many workflows and efficiencies in my day to day computering. And in using it I continue to find imperfections, think up new uses, and wish for better efficiences, and also I (finally) really enjoy coding; its just a hobby for now, but a challenging and satisfying one… and so I go back to xcode and push on.