Pagehop, Spotlight/Flashlight and Alfred
A few times now, I hear from people something like this:
— It’s going to be tricky for them to get me to abandon Alfred/Spotlight…
That’s funny, because it’s not what we are trying to do, at all. So, I decided to write this post and shed some light what Pagehop really tries to (or doesn’t) solve.
If you’ve never heard of Pagehop, before — you can check the website and/or read how the idea was born.
Pagehop doesn’t replace Spotlight or Alfred
Spotlight and Alfred compete between each-other, because they both try to be universal launchers.
They open-up apps, search for files/messages/email etc. and they have some web capabilities.
Pagehop, is not a universal launcher. It’s a web launcher.
And we don’t encourage you to stop using your preferred universal one.
Use Spotlight/Alfred + Pagehop, we do!
Hell yeah, how else are we going to get that Trash empty, with no clicking? ☺
The joke aside, it’s true, I, personally, use Spotlight + Pagehop in my daily routine.
For the local tasks — ⌘ + Spacebar. (Spotlight)
For the web tasks — ⌥ + Spacebar. (Pagehop)
Even if you want to use all 3 of them — Pagehop comes with the gracefully preset default ⌃ + ⌥ + Spacebar, so you wouldn’t even need to change any shortcuts.
What about Flashlight?
Flashlight is a cool OSS project, which adds an unofficial extension API to Spotlight.
However, there are several major problems with using and/or contributing to Flashlight.
- “Flashlight is unofficial Spotlight API and a “horrendous hack” according to its developers.” (reference). At run time, they inject stuff into Spotlight’s process. While I do enjoy clever ways to fix real-world problems, this can be shut down by Apple in a single update.
- Extending Spotlight, Flashlight inherits all of its problems, in providing a tool for web search, navigation and quick info — it doesn’t know whether you mean web or local in your queries (one web result on the left, stacked on top of bunch of local results), the frame and WebView are too small, as with Alfred there is no query language — only 1 command can be executed and many other issues.
- Flashlight, like Alfred, will never get on other operating systems. Pagehop’s core is cross-platform and we are getting on Windows, next. All of the recipes and tools you write (using JavaScript, not Python, btw) will be usable on all supported OS’s.
So what does Pagehop has to offer?
Here is a quick list of features:
- Minimalistic Query Language — you can pipe up tools (like on the Terminal), for further processing and refining of results.
- Bigger frame and WebView allowing not only for search, but actual reading.
- Official and fully documented API for developing plugins (using JavaScript, which arguably more people are familiar with, than Python).
- Unlimited in time, fully functional, free evaluation.
- And soon… cross-platform availability (pending a version for Windows).
Use what you like!
Even if it means you will not be using our app.
With Pagehop, we are not trying to make you switch tools — we just try to add another powerful one on your belt. ☺
Regards,
Nikolay Tsenkov
The Pagehop Team
