DOMercury Help & Documentation

DOMercury was designed with the idea in mind to let you do anything without reaching for the mouse, except make your dinner. I had productivity in mind when I designed it, when I noticed that while working I would spend a lot of my time using the mouse, clicking here or there, just trying to find the program or file that I needed to do something with. The count of clicks I had to click increased  (say that five times fast) when I didn't remember or know what it was I needed to access, and therefore had to search for it.  Then once I found the program or file, it would generally take some more mouse moves and clicks until I could perform the desired action to it, whether opening the program, renaming the file or groups of files, or opening the folder in a command prompt, my brain could move faster than my mouse, and this was hindering productivity. Something needed to be created to allow someone to access and perform an action on anything they want in their file system without spending the precious seconds or even minutes it takes to find the item they need to access.

The idea to create DOMercury came to me when a friend was showing me some pictures on their Macintosh computer, zipping along barely touching his mouse. He was grabbing and moving files all over the place just using his keyboard, using a program called Quicksilver. I will openly admit that many of the inspirations for functionality included in DOMercury came from Quicksilver, even the play on the name. The idea is not to beat or compete with Quicksilver, it is instead to bring to the Windows PC universe the convenience and productivity of Quicksilver’s functionality. This is why DOMercury is, and always will be free. I also want to stress that I have never used Quicksilver, only seen it and some of the things it can do, I do not own a Mac. I built a plugin framework into DOMercury to allow users to expand on its functionality, simply because I personally am unable to incorporate all the bells and whistles of an application that I have never even used before. Also, the extra level of indirection will hopefully allow DOMercury to mature into its own animal, and not just a port of a different platform’s application.

What Can I Do With DOMercury?

At its most basic level, and how most people will use it, DOMercury is an application launcher.It allows you to type just a few characters and quickly access any program or file on your file system. It goes beyond that however by allowing file management, window access and hiding, and customization features to allow you keyboard shortcuts to even the most complicated tasks.

Here is a list of just a few things you can do with DOMercury:

·         Launch Start Menu Applications

·         Create your own keywords to files or folders

·         Open, rename, move, copy, delete    files and folders

·         Switch between open windows

·         Start your ScreenSaver

·         Search the internet

·         Open your favorite web pages

·         Search specific websites such as Wikipedia or E-bay

·         Maximize, minimize, restore and close open windows

·         Launch automated tasks by keywording to batch files

·         Create your own functionality with the Plugin Framework

ALL WITHOUT USING THE MOUSE!

Installation for DOMercury is fairly straightforward.Start the DOMercuryInstaller and choose where you want DOMercury installed.

Once the installer is complete, you can start DOMercury by choosing the Start Menu->Programs->DomSoft->DOMercury.

DOMercury also installs itself to the StartUp folder, so it will automatically start the next time you start your computer.

ThumbDrive Installation

DOMercury was built to be small enough to be able to run from a thumb drive. All settings are saved locally, so DOMercury can be run on any computer without physically being installed there. Simply download and copy the DOMercury Portable folder to your thumbdrive

Using DOMercury

Windows + Z: default hotkey to invoke DOMercury

Delete: Clears any text in the Search Text Area

Enter Button: executes the selected action on the selected item.

RightArrow: Jumps to the sub index of the selected item.

LeftArrow: Returns to the previous index

TAB: Move to the next pane.

SHIFT + TAB: Move to the previous pane

Ctrl + T: Force what you are typing to a text item.

DOMercury is invoked to the foreground (shows up on your screen : Notes for the technically non-savvy) by a default global hotkey : Windows button + Z.  If you already have this hotkey mapped to another program, or wish to use a different hot key, this can be changed in the Options, discussed further below.

DOMercury is separated into three distinct panes: Item, Action, and Parameters.

The Item pane is where the item being performed is called. The item can be a shortcut in the start menu, a folder, file or group of files, an open window, a running program, an alias, or anything else. When DOMercury is called using the hotkey, it will determine if there are any selected files or folders in an Explorer window and display the selected items. Pressing TAB to move to the Action pane will give you a list of possible actions to perform on those items.

NOTE: The address bar in Windows Explorer must display the full path to the folder in order for Actions to work on the sensed files.

Typing while in the Item pane will bring up a list box of matched items to choose from. Information about the currently selected item is displayed above the list box. After you have selected the desired item, moving to the Action Pane will show you all the possible actions you can do to that item.

I just created a new word document or installed a new program, why doesn't it show up in my index?
In order to keep the results suggestions returning as fast as they are, DOMercury keeps a cache of all of its indexed items, which is refreshed every 5 minutes.  So, your new program or file should appear in the index within the next 5 minutes, providing that your program has a shortcut in your Start Menu or your file exists in a folder that is indexed by DOMercury.

You can always force a refresh of the index by typing "Refresh Index" in the search text box and choosing the "Refresh Index" item

If you start typing in a file path, DOMercury will recognize that you are perusing the file system and give you an auto complete drop-down box of the file system directories.

Start Menu Item: The Start Menu Item represents a program in your Start Menu, selecting one of these items and pressing enter will allow you to open that program without physically going into the Start Menu to find it. This means that from anywhere, you can open any program in the Start menu just by typing in a couple letters in the program.

Path Item: A path item represents any file or folder on your computer. With DOMercury you can Move, Open, Copy, Delete, or Rename files, folders, or groups of files and folders. DOMercury will recognize if you are typing a path, and begin autofilling directories for you to help you type the path quicker. Also, some key words, like My Documents, Desktop, My Pictures, etc, DOMercury will recognize as a path and allow you to open to there.

System Window or Current Window: System Window Items represent an open System Window on your computer, such as an instance of a program or Windows Explorer. You can minimize, maximize, show or close System Windows. The Current Window is a special keyword to represent the window that was active right before DOMercury was invoked.

Text Item: A text item is basically just a block of text that you typed. This can be executed like as in the Run menu or a command prompt, or opened in a web browser like in Internet Explorer, as well as other actions.

Alias: Aliases are special shortcuts that you can customize yourself. They can be linked to programs that are not in the start menu, or any file or folder. You can also create aliases that accept parameters, good if you want a keyword to search a specific website, or if you want to open a program with special command line parameters. There are a lot of things you can do with Aliases, and Aliases are explained in further detail later on in the help.

My Computer Item: Allows you to open a Windows Explorer window to My Computer or Manage My Computer.

Desktop Item: Allows you to show the Desktop or the Desktop Directory

ScreenSaver Item: Start or change your screensaver.

Pressing Right Arrow in the Item Pane will cause the currently selected item to become a Parent Item and a sub index will appear in the suggestions box based on the Parent Item and the action.  Some items, such as text, files, and Aliases will not have a sub index, and therefore cannot become parent items, but others such as folders have sub indexes, and more items will sport sub indexes in the future, especially as more plugins are developed.  An Item which has a sub index will be denoted by a small right arrow image between the icon and the name of the item. Pressing Left Arrow will allow you to move to the previous sub index and depending on how many levels deep you got, back to the original index.  Try using this to peruse your file system.  You will notice that every folder has an * right by its name, select a folder, then press Right Arrow. You will see its subfolders and files populated in the suggestions box.

Sub indexes are a way of "nesting" items inside of other items, thereby thinning out the standard index from getting too cluttered and by allowing people to narrow their searches in steps.

The Action pane provides you with a list of possible actions to perform on the item. Common actions are open , launch, show, maximize, minimize close etc. A description of the action is shown above the list of actions and a description of the parameters the action can take are shown in the Parameters pane. The list of actions automatically update with every change in item selection in the item pane. Pressing the first letter of the desired action will allow you to jump to that action. Pressing enter will execute the action.

If an action is able to take parameters, a description of what parameters you should pass in is shown above the parameters entry box. Some actions, such as OpenWith, will provide a list of possible parameters to choose from, while some just accept text input. Pressing enter will execute the selected action on the selected item with any parameters you have input.

In the Item Pane, pressing up or down at any time while typing in an item search will allow you to move the selected item in the items list up and down, TAB will move you to the next pane while pressing SHIFT+TAB will move you to the previous pane. In the Action and Parameters Panes, pressing TAB, Shift+TAB or the right and left arrows will allow you to move between the panes. In the action Pane, pressing the first letter of the desired action will jump to that action. If two actions have the same first letter, pressing that letter again will jump you to the next action.

If you are unhappy with the present position of DOMercury, clicking on the very topmost part of the form ( but not on a pane label) or between panes(not in a description area) and dragging will allow you to move DOMercury to a part of the screen that you would prefer to have it sit.

Aliases are customizable shortcuts that allow you to access items that DOMercury may not be able to do natively. You can create an alias to any file, folder, program, batch file, website, whatever. This allows you to call special files, such as todo lists and timesheets through DOMercury. You can also add aliases to programs that are not in the start menu, or even to ones that are, just to give you more keyword options to them.

There are presently three ways to create an alias: through the Alias Manager tab in the options form, by typing in a text item and selecting the “Add Alias” action, or by selecting a path item and choosing the “Create Alias” action. Any of these actions will bring you to the Alias Form

The Alias Form has four entry boxes:

Alias -  the actual name of the alias

 Path -  the path to the program,  file or folder the alias will open

 Description -  your personal description of what the alias does

Parameters - the parameters passed into the path upon opening

Filling these out and pressing ok will add the alias and update it to the DOMercury index. 

Path wildcards:

^D^: Putting ^D^ in the Path box will replace ^D^ with the drive on which DOMercury is running.  This is useful when running DOMercury on a thumb drive and need to create an alias to a program or file on the drive.  Example:  ^D^Programs\Notepad++.exe instead of G:\Programs\Notepad++.exe. 

Parameters wildcards:

Typing Options into the Item pane or right clicking on the tray icon or DOMercury form and choosing Options will bring you to the Options Form.

The options form allows you to further customize your experience with DOMercury.  The main tab on the options form allows you to change your hotkey.  Here you can turn the option to show suggestion icons on an off.  Icons give you a visual clue as to what the suggestion is, whether a file, image, music, etc, however some systems may experience performance issues with them.  Turning them off may make DOMercury run a bit quicker depending on your system.  Some systems show no performance difference, so then it is a matter of personal preference whether you like the icons or not.  If you have show icons on, (as most of you will), you will then have the option of showing descriptions of each item in the suggestions box.  This gives you bigger icons and descriptions about what each item does, but you see less items at once.  You also get to choose whether or not DOMercury alerts you about failed File I/O operations it attempts to do.  So if you tell it to delete something, and it cannot because it is in use, it will let you know about it.  Those who find this annoying and would rather not know if the file is still there until they stumble accross it later can turn this option off. 

You can limit the number of maximum results returned (from 1 to 100) so having less results returned can also speed up the search.  NOTE: Any Alias, System Window or File path matches are returned in addition to the maximum results.

Search Delay: The number of milliseconds from the time you stop typing to the time your results come in.  If hitting the index every keystroke is slowing your computer way down while you are searching for something, set the delay up.  If you don't want a delay and want instant results every key you type, set the result to a minimum.

This form allows you to manually edit the priorities of the items in your index.  Just like on the DOMercury main form, type in a search text at the top of the page and then press search.  Results from your index and their corresponding Priorities will be displayed.  Remember that a higher number means a higher priority.  The priorities of the items will be automatically updated when you change them.

The Alias Manager tab in the setup form shows you a list of all current aliases loaded into DOMercury.  Clicking edit or double clicking on an alias will load that alias into the alias form.

At the moment there is only one interface, the skinnable form, so this tab does not do much... yet.

Choosing a skin

If you have the Skinnable Form selected (which you probably do, it is the only choice available at the moment) then you can click on the Display Options button in the General tab.  Here you will be able to choose which skin you want to use, as well as a few other display options specific to the Skinnable Form.

To install skins just drop them somewhere inside the Skins folder.

This tab shows you all of the plugins that DOMercury currently recognizes from its Plugins folder.  Double clicking on a plugin will give you detailed information about that particular plugin.  If you have added more plugin files into the folder since starting DOMercury, pressing the Reload Plugins button will cause DOMercury to seek those plugins and add them.  To remove a plugin DOMercury is currently using.  You must close DOMercury, remove the plugin from the folder, and restart DOMercury.

Some plugins come with customizable options.  Double click a plugin to view its Details Form.  If the plugin supports customizable options, the "Show Options" button will be enabled.  Clicking that will bring you to the options screen. To the right is an example of an Options screen for a plugin.  This happens to be the options screen for the FolderIndexorPlugin.  It allows you to add extra folders for the index to search.  You can also filter what types of files get entered into the index.  For example, the second item shows a searchpattern of *.sln.  This means that only files with a file extension of .sln will be indexed from this folder (and subfolders, since the index subfolders option is also checked).  If you choose to include the folder itself in the index, the folder will appear as an item in the main DOMercury index. You will notice in the last item I put a searchpattern of *.none. That was simply done because I only wanted the folder to appear in the index and not any of the files inside of it.

Opening a StartMenu Program

• Press your hotkey to open DOMercury
• Start typing in some characters of the desired program
• When the program name appears in the suggestions box, press the down arrow to select it and press enter.

Switching Windows

• Press your hotkey to open DOMercury
• Start typing the first few characters of the title of the desired window.
• Press the down arrow to select the System Window Item you want and press the right arrow or tab to display all possible actions. 
• Choose Show or Maximize to bring the window to the front. 

Moving files

• With the files selected in Windows Explorer or the Destop, invoke DOMercury with the hotkey.  The selected files or folders will be visible in the Item pane.
• Tab to the Action Pane. Choose Move
• Tab to the Parameters Pane.  Type the desired folder to move the files to and press enter.

Finding all Excel Files in My Documents

• Invoke DOMercury and type .xls into the Item Pane.  All Excel documents in your “My Documents” folder will be displayed in the suggestion box.

Searching Google

• Invoke DOMercury and start typing Google. The word Google will show up as the first suggestion in the suggestions box
• Tab to the Parameters Pane
• Type your google search parameters and press Enter

The DOMercury Plugin framework allows DOMercury to expand its functionality to limitless bounds.If you think DOMercury does some pretty cool stuff, but not quite enough… write a plugin for it! Plugins are added to DOMercury simply by dropping the plugin into the Plugins folder where DOMercury is installed (or sitting in the case of thumbdrives) and restarting DOMercury.