Little Big Tomatoes » Shuriken

GoogleCalculator R2

gyurisc — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 20:06:00 +0000

It is a long long time since I released anything for Shuriken. This release is fixing a small bug in the Google Calculator plugin (due to layout change in the result page).

In order to install and use the new plugin please, do the following:

Shutdown Shuriken
Extract the content of GoogleCalculator to the plugin directory of Shuriken
Hint: use Shuriken >> Reveal to display the Shuriken folder when Shuriken is running.
Start Shuriken
Hit . in order to enter text mode and type something that you would like to calculate
e.g "25 USD in Eur" or "23 inch in meter"
Tab to the action pane and type calc to get "Calculate with Google" action.
Hit enter.

[download]

Extending Shuriken

gyurisc — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 17:26:00 +0000

This is the first of a series of articles, I am planning to write explaining how to create your own modules for extending Shuriken. In this article, the hello world is implemented for Shuriken.

Shuriken is an application launcher that is trying to bring you the power and flexibility of the famous Quicksilver on OSX. It is developed in .NET and C#, but you can use any .NET language to develop your own module. All you will need is Visual Studio 2008 any Express Edition or better.

Setting up your project

The first thing is download the latest release of Shuriken from Shuriken project site on Codeplex.com and unzip it. Run it and notice that a plugin folder is created in your installation directory.

Next is to fire up Visual Studio.NET 2008 and create Class Library project.

The next is to add the Shuriken.Base.dll as a reference to your project. This dll can be found next to your Shuriken.exe and contains all the interfaces and classes that you will need to use to write your own modules.

After adding the reference your project structure should look like this.

Subjects and Actions

There are two main concepts in Shuriken, the Subject and the Action. A Subject is normally on the first pane and this is the Notepad on the picture. The Action is the second pane on the UI and in this case the Reveal action. After pressing enter the Reveal action will show the location of the Notepad subject.

When you write modules then you most of the time creating subjects and actions. Let’s start with the action. All we need to create a new class and implement the ISubject interface from the Shuriken.Base namespace.

   1: using System;   2: using Shuriken.Base;    3:     4: namespace HelloWorldSubject   5: {   6:     public class HelloWorldSubject : Shuriken.Base.ISubject   7:     {   8:         #region ISubject Members   9:    10:         public System.Collections.Generic.List GetListOfActions()  11:         {  12:             return new System.Collections.Generic.List();  13:         }  14:    15:         #endregion  16:    17:         #region IObject Members  18:    19:         public string Description  20:         {  21:             get { return "First Shuriken plugin ever"; }  22:         }  23:    24:         public string Icon  25:         {  26:             get  27:             {  28:                 return string.Empty;  29:             }  30:             set  31:             {  32:                   33:             }  34:         }  35:    36:         public string Name  37:         {  38:             get { return "Hello World!"; }  39:         }  40:    41:         #endregion  42:     }  43: }

There are couple of methods you will need to implement in your class. The first is called GetListOfActions which needs to be only returning an empty list for now.

The Description property is returning a string that is going to be the description for our subject. The Name property is going to be the name of this subject and the Icon will be the icon displayed. In the code I gave Hello World as the name and left the Icon property to be and empty.

To have something meaningful happening to our subject an action is needed as well.

   1: [DefaultAction]   2: [ActionName("Say It")]   3: public class HelloWorldAction : Shuriken.Base.BaseAction   4: {   5:     public override bool CanExecuteOn(ISubject subject)   6:     {   7:         if (subject.Name.Equals("Hello World!"))   8:         {   9:             return true;   10:         }  11:    12:         return false;   13:     }  14:    15:     public override void Execute(ISubject subject)  16:     {  17:         System.Windows.Forms.MessageBox.Show("Hello World!");  18:     }  19: }

The HelloWorldAction is created by either implementing the IAction interface or extending the BaseAction class. I did the later for simplicity sake. Extending the BaseAction class is simpler and can be done with attributes as well. There are two attributes used DefaultAction and ActionName.

DefaultAction will tell Shuriken that this is the default action for the a subject, meaning that this will be the first action always. ActionName will be the name of the action.

There are also two methods that we need to implement. The first method is called CanExecuteOn and it tells us, if the subject is supported by this action. The second method is called Execute and it is called when the user hits enter and the action is called.

After finishing the two class, you will need to compile the project and drop the HelloWorldSubject.dll to the plugin folder and restart Shuriken. Then invoke the UI and start typing Hello World…. after hitting enter you should end up with the Hello World! dialog box displaying.

Shuriken is an application launcher utility, that is developed by me in my free time. It is open source and free. If you would like to download Shuriken or help to develop it, please visit Shuriken on codeplex.

http://www.codeplex.com/shuriken

Shuriken tips #1: Locating Notepad on your computer

gyurisc — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 18:36:00 +0000

This is the first article of many showing the functionality of the application launcher I am working on.

Sometimes you need to know the location of an application on the file system. Shuriken makes this easy for you to achieve really quickly. Let’s locate Notepad on your computer. All you need to do is to bring up shuriken using Ctrl-Space or the hotkey to bring up Shuriken and type Notepad, then tab to the action pane and type Reveal. Hit Enter and the location of Notepad is revealed.

and it is going to show the result the location of notepad on your computer

Shuriken is an application launcher utility, that is developed in my free time. It is open source and free. If you would like to download Shuriken or help to develop it, please visit Shuriken on codeplex.

http://www.codeplex.com/shuriken

Some ideas for modules for Shuriken

gyurisc — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 20:37:00 +0000

I am putting out a list of modules, that I am planning to implement for Shuriken, the launcher. If you have a good idea that would make a good module, please either leave a comment or write me an email and I will put it on my list:

iTunes module.
This module would let the user to issue commands that would allow them to control the player, the following actions would be implemented:

Play/Pause
Next Song
Previous Song
Volume Down
Volume Up

Windows Media Player and/or Zune module.
This module could do exactly the same as the iTunes one would be. It would allow the user to control the player with the same commands. Stopping and starting songs and moving back and forward between them.

Date and Time module.
This module would let the user to bring up the current date and time on the computer as its default action and it would also act as a world clock making really easy to get the time and date in any city in the world.

Google Calc module.
This module would allow the user to enter queries against the Google Calculator from Shuriken. The results would be displayed by the app somehow, so no need to open up a browser window.

What other kind of modules would make sense?

Shuriken R6 released

gyurisc — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 07:10:00 +0000

Shuriken R6 is out. The changes are:

Added Action as an extension point. Still need some polish though.
Added new Actions for Shuriken, namely: Settings, About, Exit
Settings is for displaying the setting dialog, and About is for displaying the about window.
Exit quits the application.

All comments and feedback are welcome. Enjoy!

Shuriken R5 released

gyurisc — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 11:38:48 +0000

This morning I made a new release of Shuriken. This release is called Shuriken R5.

In this release, the following has been changed:

An xml file is used to store preferences for Shuriken, with these changes the app should load and save the settings without any problems, so if you pick a new hotkey to launch Shuriken, it will use the hotkey you picked after restart.
Shuriken now remembers and stores the search terms used for launching an item. As you are using the search term more frequently to launch an item, the search term will be promoted for that subject and the subject will be on top of the search list.
For example, If you are using the search term Reader to launch Google Reader, but you have Adobe Reader installed then normally Adobe would be the first on the search list and the default. All you need to do is to select Google Reader, so Shuriken can register the hit and the next time the default will be Google Reader.

If you are interested only using this release, just go to the Shuriken R5 release and download Shuriken.zip, extract it and click on Shuriken.exe to start using it. If you are interested in looking into the code then download Shuriken Sources.zip. To compile you will need Visual Studio.NET 2008 or Visual C# 2008 Express.

All comments and feedback are welcome. Enjoy!

Shuriken R4

gyurisc — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 08:11:47 +0000

This morning I made a new release of Shuriken. This release is called Shuriken R4.

In this release changes are made in order to add commands as an extension. As an example a new plugin has been added to this release called System Commands. The System Commands plugin has the following commands implemented

Lock – locks your computer
Sleep – sends your computer to sleep mode.
Shutdown – shuts down your computer.
Restart – restarts your computer.
Logoff – Logs you off from the computer.
ForceRestart – Forces restart.
ForceShutdown – Forces shutdown

If you are interested only using this release, just go to the Shuriken R4 release and download Shuriken.zip, extract it and click on Shuriken.exe to start using it. If you are interested in looking into the code then download Shuriken Sources.zip. To compile you will need Visual Studio.NET 2008 or Visual C# 2008 Express.

All comments and feedback are welcome. Enjoy!