Michael Gollmick's Blog

Off to DNUG

Michael Gollmick — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 00:14:00 +0200

This week is DNUG Conference Week in Frankfurt. The date appeared much faster than I expected it to come - and I am very excited to be there again! I am especially happy to listen to Daniel's and Bobs sessions as well as to hear the new things from Niklas. But I am also looking forward to meet friends, colleagues, geeks, customers and the many other interesting people I don't know yet. It's always nice meeting the people at DNUG, talking about so various topics and that's why I am there. So if you see me, don't hesitate to stop by and say hello. And if you're not yet booked - I'm sure there is an opportunity for the impromptu among you - I'm sure, its going to be another great conference organized by the great DNUG team from Jena.

XPages Extension Library from OpenNTF is huge

Michael Gollmick — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 12:21:00 +0200

During Powersphere in Paderborn yesterday, I had the opportunity to speak with Niklas Heidloff about the just released XPages Extension Library. What I have seen so far has just blown me away and I am constantly getting new ideas of what's going to be possible with that. This stuff is awesome and beams XPages development into another dimension.
While it is not that easy to install the Extension Library, it is well documented on how to do that - I am still at the beginning of the >70 pages documentation. After the install, using the Extensions works like a charm. Very interesting to me is the use of the XPages Extensibility API and the availability of the source code - that way it is a perfect tutorial on how to use the API for your own extensions. I spoke to several developers yesterday and all of them were excited to get their hands on it - just like me ;-) Sure, the things that are possible with the XPages Extensibility API used in the XPages Extension Library are tough if you are not a Java Geek - but its so totally worth looking into it! But even if you are not the crack that is easy with exploiting new opportunities of API based extensions, the library is so helpful by providing new elements to XPages that were previously comparably difficult to accomplish. You should definitely have a look at it. Great stuff!

AppIcon Plugin for Domino Designer 8.5.2

Michael Gollmick — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 15:12:00 +0200

One of the new features available in Notes 8.5.2 are the 24Bit icons for ~~Databases~~Applications. Having seen and played around with the new feature in the Beta stages of 8.5.2 I have to admit, I really like this feature. It makes me kind of more productive in a special way: it makes me feel better when seeing them and it allows me to realize some of the applications more easily on my Workspace an the Tabs than the old 16 color icons:

There were a few things I personally missed with the new feature but that I also see not as being necessarily implemented into core Domino Designer by default. So I thought I just extend Domino Designer with a small plugin that provides this functionality:

As the new 24 Bit Application Icon is really an Image Resource under the hood, one could easily export it to disk, if he was given the opportunity by Designer. As exporting such is not Designers purpose, this is a feature that can be added by the AppIcon Plugin
Did you know, your Application Icons are easily available from any web browser? Yes, they are: one could use the ?OpenIcon URL command to get a perfectly rendered version of the Classic Application Icon and /$DbIcon?open for the new 24 Bit Application Icon. Not everyone likes this to be exposed to anyone who has HTTP Access to a server. Well, the new Application Icon could be hidden from Web as it is actually a special kind of an Image Resource. But as it is a special Image Resyource that is not so easy: it is hidden from the NSFs Image Resources listing and so you don't have a chance to see it anywhere in the database design. Normally a very good idea but not for this particular use case. AppIcon thus allows you to hide and unhide the new 24 Bit Application Icon from Web access with an easy click. But of course there are more general methods like using SecureDomino (a short hand setting is available in the current release) to generally block all requests of such a kind to all databases on a sever - but sometimes you can't be sure SecureDomino is installed on the server you are deploying your database to and so this granular solution might be a good solution.
I thought it might be a good idea to be able to export the Classic Application icon (the traditional 16 Color one). Sure, one could do so by putting the database in question to a server and use the ?OpenIcon URL command - but honestly, if that are the things I would have to do for getting hands on a file version of the traditional database icon I would be too lazy most of the times. The AppIcon Plugin allows for storing the Classic Icon in PNG format easily and directly from Domino Designer.

Sounds interesting? Well, I have good news: The AppIcon plugin is freely available. Easiest way to install is to drag the widget descriptor to your Lotus Notes "My Widgets" sidebar.

SecureDomino on Domino 8.5.2

Michael Gollmick — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 16:46:00 +0200

It took only a couple of hours after the release of Notes/Domino 8.5.2 until I got the first question whether SecureDomino is supported on Domino 8.5.2. I am happy to have an easy answer to that: Yes.
We have done plenty of tests with SecureDomino on the Beta versions of Domino 8.5.2 and know the software is ready for this release. So from that side, there's no reason to not update a server to Domino 8.5.2 - especially if you think about the new features that came with 8.5.1 and 8.5.2 like SPNEGO Single Sign on. But there are organizations that just can't update all their servers straight to the latest release - reality often covers some pitfalls that force organizations to stay at least with one server on an elder release. In such situations the rollout of new features like SPNEGO can become less remarkable as end users rather see the event of being challenged for a password and do not understand the background (why should they even want to). Especially such situations can be solved with SecureDomino's current release: allowing for a more seamless activation of SPNEGO Single Sign On in organizations - by enabling Domino Servers prior to 8.5.1 and even non Windows Servers for an unchallenged login using SPNEGO and a Designated Authentication Server.

A long time of silence

Michael Gollmick — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 15:05:00 +0200

It has been quite silent on this blog for a longer time now - and the reason is not that this blog is dead - it is only because I had too much to do. I was working on so many things at the same time - I simply did not find the time to write. Sure, some things I was working on were under different NDAs and I was unable to write but that was not sufficient for an excuse and over time my bad conscience became louder and louder ;-)

Especially when we we released new Versions of SecureDomino or the FireNotes Mozilla Plugin I was involved in writing things down for the Web and could have easily posted some information here too - and I should have. But there were other things that I was working on or playing with : Eclipse Plugins for Notes and Domino Designer, writing articles, preparing conference sessions, working with new exiting stuff in XPages, at some point even participating in a podcast and last but certainly not least doing my normal job and having a private live ;-). Really exiting times and I promise to post stuff here more frequently in the future.

There is so much stuff that I could write about - I really have to pick some of all those interesting topics an post about it. Expect more to come ;-)

Kirschfestfieber

Michael Gollmick — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 21:34:26 +0200

Das alljährliche Hussitten-Kirschfest steht mal wieder bevor. Für alle Naumburger ein muss - und für alle, die schon einmal da waren, ein absolutes Highlight. Und für die die es noch nicht kennen, eine absolute Empfehlung!
Das Hussitten-Kirschfest in Naumburg geht auf ein Schulfest zurück und wird seit vielen, vielen Jahren jedes Jahr um das letzte Wochenende im Juni gefeiert. Los geht's bereits Morgen mit dem Einzug der Stadtwache und der Ratsherren auf der Vogelwiese (man beachte, dass Googles Aufnahmen auch gerade zum Kirschfest gemacht wurden). Samstag ist dann der historische Umzug und Sonntag Peter Pauls Messe. Von Donnerstag bis Montag Abend ist natürlich reges Treiben in den Festzelten auf der Vogelwiese.

Und wer schon einmal üben möchte, der kann gerne ein bisschen Kirschfest-Karaoke betreiben:

some more @Functions for XPages (@URLEncode(), @URLDecode())

Michael Gollmick — Mon, 11 May 2009 17:00:00 +0200

As mentioned earlier, a couple of @Functions are missing in XPages serverside JavaScript. When I was a bit confused by that before I am now in a state of simply doing it another way without even realizing an @Function is missing - probably a reason why some of them are not available. Another reason is how easy it sometimes is to achieve the same by incorporating native Java inside serverside JavaScript.

Since I just showed how to incorporate native Java inside JavaScript with XPages in my XPages session here at DNUG, I thought I should post the code for both sharing two other extensions to the already available @WebDbname() function and for showing how easy one can leverage native Java code inside his serverside JavaScript.

So this is the first example - @URLEncode() in JavaScript:

/** ****************************************************************************
* @URLEncode()
* provides closely the same functionality its @Formula pendant, that is it
* encodes an object to a URL encoded format
*
* @param encodeObject the Object to encode. The Objects toString() method is
*                 used to retrieve a String to encode!
* @param encSch optional encoding scheme to use
* @see java.net.URLEncoder
*         (http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/api/java/net/URLEncoder.html)
* @see http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/api/java/lang/package-summary.html
* @returns URL encoded version of encodeObject or null in case of any error
* @author Michael Gollmick
* @version 1.0
* @date 20090509
* @depends java.net.URLEncoder
**************************************************************************** **/
function @URLEncode(encodeObject, encSch:String) {
        try {
                var encScheme = ((encSch) && (encSch !== null))?encSch:"UTF-8";
                return java.net.URLEncoder.encode(encodeObject.toString(),
                        encScheme);
        } catch (e) {
                print("ERROR in @URLEncode:" + e);
        }
        return null;
}

To complete the encoding experience, we need the function to retranslate encodings - @URLDecode() in JavaScript:

/** ****************************************************************************
* @URLDecode()
* provides closely the same functionality its @Formula pendant, that is it
* Decodes a URL Encoded string to normal format
*
* @param strToDecode the String to decode
* @param encodeObject optional encoding scheme to use
* @see java.net.URLDecoder
*         (http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/api/java/net/URLDecoder.html)
* @see http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/api/java/lang/package-summary.html
* @returns decoded version of strToDecode or null in case of any error
* @author Michael Gollmick
* @version 1.0
* @date 20090509
* @depends java.net.URLDecoder
**************************************************************************** **/
function @URLDecode(strToDecode:String, encSch:String) {
        try {
                var encScheme = ((encSch) && (encSch !== null))?encSch:"UTF-8";
                return java.net.URLDecoder.decode(strToDecode, encScheme);
        } catch (e) {
                print("ERROR in @URLDecode:" + e);
        }
        return null;
}

As you easily see - the magic is done in both cases in only one line, invoking a native static final Java method. So that would make it easy to use only that lines. Of course the whole functions do have some more functionality, so it is probably not the worst idea to use them ;-)

Big Apple in Naumburg

Michael Gollmick — Wed, 6 May 2009 09:45:29 +0200

Just got an invitation to a exhibit opening on Friday. Unfortunately I cannot go. But I know it is going to be very good - and the exhibit will last some days. The city of Naumburg is showing some pictures of New York, my friend Andreas Klingebiel shot back in 2000, when he was there for an internship. That pictures were shown several times before, for instance in the City of Cologne and in Leipzigs main train station. Quite impressive!

If you visit Naumburg until September this year, you should probably have a look at these pictures in the city library:

Stadtbibliothek Naumburg, Jägerstr. 4, D-06618 Naumburg

The exhibit is free of charge.

Klasse Bilder

Michael Gollmick — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 08:49:58 +0200

Vor einigen Tagen erhielt ich eine Mail eines aufmerksamen Lesers meines allerersten Web-Projekts. Er hatte, als er 1990 Naumburg nach einigen Jahren zum ersten mal wieder besuchte Bilder gemacht. Soweit nix besonderes, Bilder machen jährlich hunderttausende Touristen in Naumburg. Das Außergewöhnliche liegt in seinem Sinn für Feinheiten: nach einigen Jahren hat er dieselben Fotos am, gleichen Standort noch einmal geschossen. Das Ergebnis spricht für sich selbst: Naumburg vor 20 Jahren. Als Naumburger tut es gut zu sehen, wie wunderbar sich die Stadt entwickelt hat, wie die massiven anfangs öffentlichen, schnell aber privaten Investitionen Wirkung gezeigt haben. Wie Hausbesitzer es endlich schaffen konnten, Ihre Fassaden und zunehmend auch die Baumasse an sich in instand zu halten...

Schonmal Termin vormerken...

Michael Gollmick — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 23:35:08 +0200

Wie ich neulich mitbekommen habe, lesen hier auch Leute, von denen ich nie geglaubt hätte, dass sie hier vorbei schauen - aber so ist das nun mal, wenn etwas im Internet steht - eigentlich also doch kein Wunder!
Naja, und da wir in den letzten Jahren immer wieder wunderbare Überraschungen (sprich überraschende Wiedersehen) erlebt haben, hier schonmal der Termin fürs schönste Heimatfest Mitteldeutschlands: Das Naumburger Hussitten-Kirschfest. Wer keine Ahnung hat, was das ist, aber ein wenig Spaß an einer Mischung aus historischem Treiben, einigen Spektakeln und einem urigen Festwiesentreiben im Juni hat, der sollte sich das auf jeden Fall einmal ansehen (oder auch hier bei Andreas)!

Das Kirschfest findet vom 25. bis zum 29. Juni 2009 statt (wie immer die Tage um das letzte Juni-Wochenende).
Der Umzug ist am 27.06.2009
Die Peter-Pauls-Messe ist am 28.06.
Und an den anderen Tagen ist natürlich immer was auf der Vogelwiese los!
Ich vermute mal, Kai wird dieses Jahr auch wieder eine Seite auf die Beine stellen - dort finden sich in der Regel höchstaktuelle Meldungen die natürlich auch während der dollen Tage aktualisiert werden.

new layout and some fixes / new features

Michael Gollmick — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 23:41:03 +0200

After having run this layout for more than three years now, I just did not like it that much anymore - so I started to build a new one more than a half a year ago. But I had much to do - really a lot, and really interesting stuff. In the end, the new layout needed to suffer the existence of a forgotten stepchild - I just never managed to make it fully usable...
Today I needed some break after a long day of reading, thinking planning and writing. As funny as it sounds - I relaxed over the last 30 minutes or so by having a look into that unfinished layout. Well - and I realized, I had left it very close to being usable. So I decided to finish it and launch it. There may still be flaws in it, there may be a way to go - but hey, this is a Blog and not a professional website ;-)
All in all the left panel has moved to the right now since I simply agree to the opinion, Content is more important the meta information (aka links). There is now also some fancy DHTML search, I hope everybody will understand. Another, very important thing is now also implemented - the comments can now be added and seen directly - I simply was not aware of this lack of an option but wondered about the rare comments.
I reused some code, Daniel has in use for quite a while now - and did not report any complaints to me. For him this code is fixing an issue with MIME HTML - for me it allows for typing with inline spell checking during edit - a feature I really appreciate, 'cause my feeling for correct spelling in English is not the very best ;-)
After all, this design looks IMO much more slick and cleaned up than the one before - I really like it - and it is in fact a bit less resource demanding while also being valid XHTML at the same time. But besides that the contents are better readable to mobile devices and look cleaner and smoother for CSS capable browsers. I remember having worked also on a print style - but I am not sure if that was finished then - I guess, there can still be issues with that. Hope you like it too ;-)

Certificate Errors on Firefox for Ubuntu

Michael Gollmick — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 07:29:01 +0200

There was only one thing that drove me mad on my Ubuntu installation. In a certain location I use, all WIFI access points are accessed by a https based login. The SSL certificate used for that, are self signed, which is fully ok, if you know the background and the care that is taken by the administrators of that environment. Unfortunately from the very first days of my Ubuntu installation, I was unable to connect to those sites, since my Firefox simply did not accept that certificates. While I got that "normal" exception message, that the certificate is self signed and the site probably harmful, I opted to add an exception, retrieved the certificate, even showed it and then pressed on "Add Exception". Nothing happened. The Window did not close nor was an exception added. I even tried to add an exception manually via Advanced Options - no way :-(
That happened even after several Updates of my Ubuntu installation. Lastly I found a tiny but easily overseen hint on the web: delete your profile once and rebuild it.
So I started
firefox -p
from a terminal and opted to delete the default profile. Well, I had to reinstall every single Add on, but on the bright side two things happened: I am now able to access those WIFI access points and I am also able to retrieve my bookmarks now via Syncplaces - that was a second thing, I never managed to get to work on Ubuntu - and it wasn't the fault of Syncplaces as I already had assumed.
So, if anybody is experiencing similar things, give that profile removing thing a chance - probably it is better to rename such a profile of firstly to try out a newly created one instead of deleting as I did...

don’t use underscores in hostnames...

Michael Gollmick — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 21:41:26 +0200

Yesterday and today a very strange behavior of Internet Explorer occupied me and my colleagues. There was a server migrated into a new Active Directory Domain and though its hostname appeared to be differently reachable. That new hostname was something like
subdomain._server.masterdomain._organization.mydomain.tld
and the server was reachable very easily. Unfortunately Internet Explodrer was unable to perform a session based login to that server and all attempts to store a cookie on a page opened from that server failed silently. Tracking this issue down with Firefox was impossible, since Firefox was not only able to store the cookie but also to login to the Domino Server. So we ended up on a trial and error seek to find out more. At the end, we tried to create a cookie via JavaScript, avoiding any further server traffic. That way we were able to exclude Domino from being the bad guy. And in fact - the cookie was simply not set and IE did show up the notification, Cookies were not allowed for that particular site - which was simply untrue, since IE was configured to act as insecure as possible and to trust absolutely anything for that moment. No way - the cookie was not accepted.
We then changed the machines host file to reach that server by the same name but without the underscores:
subdomain.server.masterdomain.organization.mydomain.tld
It worked out immediately!

It looks a bit like this naming is not compliant to several RFCs. IE's cookie subsystem seems to be quite picky about that. A quick look though RFC-921 (hey, very old but good in that case) says, a name (read, the part between two periods) must not start with anything else than a letter. That rule is hurt here for sure by the underscores. While RFC-1123 allows a more relaxed naming but still does not allow underscores at the beginning, it also refers to RFC-952, which mentions name parts of a host name have to start with a letter. So it looks like IE is not really the bad guy - the real problem is "just" the naming of the host. This is especially hard, since the browser itself resolves that name by using DNS, so contacting that host and retrieving data in general works - but the cookie subsystem works different, which is quite intransparent to the user as well as the admin as well as the developer.

Well long text and confusing links - this all has lead to one single conclusion to me:

Lesson learned:
Do not use underscores in hostnames - ever!

attending

Michael Gollmick — Mon, 9 Feb 2009 00:44:53 +0200

Today I made it clear, I will be able to attend the Lotusphere Comes to You - Rheinland in Düsseldorf. Since I did not attend LotuSphere this year this is my very special summary to it. I am really looking forward on the session of Thomas Gumz - one of the brains behind XPages. But also the other speakers are really valued and certainly worth listening to - so I hope I do not get in trouble with the packed session schedule. Even though I already know Daniels session, I know it is going to be a great one, Christian is presenting about Alloy, which is extremely interesting, Angela is presenting about DDE, Ed is telling about strategy and there are lots of more valued and credible speakers this time. Besides of all of that, I am also looking forward to meet with friends and customers over there. I know, my colleagues have been organizing this event very hard for quite some time, so this is going to be great event :-)

News on @WebDbName for XPages

Michael Gollmick — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 05:54:00 +0200

Last week I posted some reusable, hand crafted @Function for XPages. Well there was a small mistake in it, I did not realize earlier. @WebDbName is written differently :-) So here is pretty much the same function - with correct spelling of the name:

/**
* provides functionality of the function with same name from @Formula
*
* @return the name of the current database in a websave format
* @author Michael Gollmick
* @version 1.2
* @date 20090127
*/
function @WebDbName() {
        try {
                if (typeof this.name === 'undefined') {
                        var path = database.getFilePath();
                        var re = new RegExp("\\\\", "g");
                        path = path.replace(re, "/");
                        var arr = path.split("/");
                        for (var a = 0; a < arr.length; a++) {
                                arr[a] = escape(arr[a]);
                        }
                        this.name = arr.join("/");
                }
        } catch (e) {
        }
        return this.name;
}

Besides of that correction of the spelling, I am thinking about a potential problem: what if IBM is releasing a newer version of their @Formula library containing an implementation of @WebDbName? Well, applications relying on this solution should run, since the custom function declaration should overload the initial definition - but what if such a potential native implementation works somewhat differently? That would be horrible for anyone who attempts to maintain legacy code, relying on an implementation as I just showed up above. One possible solution would be to name such functions differently. Well, that would work but would not be that easy. How to make such functions better remarkable to those who are getting used to XPages and come from an @Formula background? Daniel mentioned, to add some suffix to the function name, so that would probably be @WebDbName_MGO(). Good Idea, but I think this will look odd in the code. My current thoughts tend to rename this function to $WebDbName() and name future other implementations of known @Formulas also with a $ symbol at the beginning. They would then become the $Functions ;-)

if your Domino Designer 8.5 is not starting anymore...

Michael Gollmick — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 00:10:00 +0200

... and you maybe also get "selfexplaining" error messages like this: "'Platform Command Processor' has encountered a problem."

the solution is not necessarily to delete the entire workspace directory in your Notes data directory (although this is a valid and working solution). Probably it is enough to delete only one file, if you know which one and where...

At first make sure Notes is not running anymore at all. The typical suspects like KillNotes and ZapNotes may not fit your needs, try some NSD -kill and check your task list if some nsd.exe is still running. if not, assure also the task soffice.exe is not running - that's the process name of the included Symphony (which is a forge of OpenOffice formerly known as StarOffice, hence the name by the way).

If all of these processes do not run anymore, go to your notes data directory and then click down to:
\workspace\.metadata\.plugins\com.ibm.rcp.personality.framework\personalityWindowState\
in that directory check for the following file:
com.ibm.designer.domino.personality.config.xml
if it exists - try renaming it or even less gentle, delete it (there should be an .bak version of it anyway) and restart Notes. DDE should now start. Well, one disadvantage: some of the settings you made to the client UI will be lost - in my case it was the window size (maximized) and the position of the panes. But I think that's way better than deleting the whole directory, loosing the vast majority of the Notes client settings, your Sametime settings, your custom plugins and all that stuff...

@WebDBName in XPages

Michael Gollmick — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 21:57:49 +0200

In the last days I have worked quite a bit with Domino XPages Technology. One thing that came up was the lack of an @WebDBName function that is missing in XPages. But the solution is more than easy and requires just a few lines of code. You may want to copy that because you just don't want to code it every time. For me this is a function I have put that function into some core Serverside JavaScript-Library I include into every page and Custom control anyway, so I can use it everywhere. I took the name I expected to have which is the only critical part - if that function is included at anytime in the future, that hand crafted function may cause problems or incompatibilities, so it might be a good idea to give it another name.

/** *****************************************************************
* provides functionality of the function with same name from @Formula
*
* @return the name of the current database in a websave format
* @author Michael Gollmick
* @version 1.2
* @date 20090119
****************************************************************** */
function @WebDBName() {
        try {
                if (typeof this.name === 'undefined') {
                        var path = database.getFilePath();
                        var re = new RegExp("\\\\", "g");
                        path = path.replace(re, "/");
                        var arr = path.split("/");
                        for (var a = 0; a < arr.length; a++) {
                                arr[a] = escape(arr[a]);
                        }
                        this.name = arr.join("/");
                }
        } catch (e) {
        }
        return this.name;
}
/* ******************************************************************
* END @WebDBName
****************************************************************** */

Feel free to use it!

Just solved the cube for the first time

Michael Gollmick — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 00:54:09 +0200

Well, quite funny, I never managed to correctly solve the magic cube ever before - don't know why (I always did the throw-and-puzzle solution). Maybe I never was patient enough ;-) Well, yesterday I happened to download Arcus, a free cube simulator, which runs as a Java applet but also natively on Windows (did not yet check it on Ubuntu). I then needed some time to get used to the usage of it but now it starts growing on me (can come game do that?). One may ask, how I managed to solve it - well, that was easy - I had some help. There are very good solutions on the web - even though you have to be very careful to not destroy your solution by just reading too quickly ;-) The one I liked the most was the solution made up by Jürgen Köller, who also has some very interesting references, links and also something about the cube's history.

HTML Validator Plugin for Firefox on Ubuntu

Michael Gollmick — Fri, 2 Jan 2009 22:48:24 +0200

As for many, I am also addicted to the HTML Validator Plugin for Firefox. Unfortunately this is not available for Linux:

Unfortunately this statement is wrong, very wrong! It is only Mozillas update site statingit wrongly - the XPI for so many other platforms is in fact available. You can to go to the Plugin homepage and find it there. While you even can chose between a 32 and 64 Bit version for Linux, you have to firstly install some more packages. This can easily achieved by issuing the following command in a terminal:

sudo apt-get install libstdc++5 libxul-dev

If you then install the Plugin (or restart Firefox if you already did so), the Plugin is available - wohoo!

Thanks to Gabriel Bretschner for collecting the necessary information in German.

Launchy also a Linux Tool

Michael Gollmick — Fri, 2 Jan 2009 02:14:47 +0200

I am a big fan of Launchy on Windows from the first day on I have seen it. It makes me start programs so much easier - especially because the start menu in Windows is completely crowded with useless subfolders and very important readme.txt files and sometimes even with the Uninstaller application to get rid of a very bad application directly. It pretty handy to just push the shortcut Alt+Space and the start typing the first letters of the application you want to run and let Launch find that program for you.

On Windows it is coded in .NET, so I did not even think it was available on Linux. To my surprise the search for an pendant coded in Linux pointed me actually to Launchy again for - and it is so easy to use here too! You can download Launchy for Linux at Sourceforge. Well it works somewhat different - the hotkey for activation has moved to Strg+Space, because the Windows one is already in use. But this makes not much of a difference, it is easy to use too.

The only thing one should do, is make it autorun on log on:

1. Go to the System\Preferences\Sessions Menu
2. under the Startup Programs tab click Add
3. No enter the following values:

at the next logon, Launchy will be started automatically and will help to find your programs more easily.