RapidoStart

RapidoStart is an application launcher like QuickSilver covered in this post, only QS is more then shortcuts available faster and that is exactly what RapidoStart is.



you can donwload it from app4Mac, its free, eye candy, makes accessing applications, documents, folders, its tiger and leopard ready, after installation and execution a small icon hides in the corner of your screen.

you click on it in order to open RapidoStart, like dashboard it lands on your screen and gives you a square translucent box. (like in grid stack)







this box can be filled with alias (shortcut) to your favorites applications, documents, etc. by drag and drop icons to it.



there is also a search bar that can narrow your search and find the exact icon you want to launch, and of course a click on the icon will lunch the application/document/folder,



if there are many icons to fit one screen there is the same hidden icon at the edge of the screen allowing you to paginate/scroll the icons (this feature is really absent at stacks, beside plain old list stack),



you can control the pagination animation (3D Cube, Flip 3D etc.), you can decide if the screen contains 8,16,32 icons at a time, the animation it uses to appear and disappear, and you can categories your icons and browse them accordingly, all from a menu available at the lower part of the screen.









all in all RapidoStart is fast, neat, useful, sexy, do exactly what it was designed for, nothing more and nothing less,



there are some features needed and their absents is felt, like history, or recently opened, smart addition (if i add the application folder don't add it as a folder but add all the icons and later if another application has been installed add it automatically).



when i click outside of the application/grid/box it does vanish, much like dashboard (unless you choose enable always on top of other applications), or when you click on th X button,



on the down side you switch between categories using scroll rather then a drop down so if you have a lot of categories its disappointing, however it remembers the last category you browsed and it will display it when you call it to appear again,



when you click a letter it will not immediately narrow your selection or jump focus to the first icon starting with that letter, you need to click the search bar for that,



you cannot drag an icon out of the window in order to delete it like in the dock, but there is an X appearing if you hover on an icon and if you drag it, a trash will appear (but the trash cannot restore)



the most annoying part was that when you configure it to display 8 icons on a page, you can drag and move the screen as to where it will appear, but if you configure it to display 16, 32 and above it will freeze in the center position.



and for the last down side, there is a risky feature, that allows you to open/execute all the icons appearing in a category (not a page, category!), for some reason that feature appears as the first item of the menu, so you can imagine how angry i was to click it when i browsed applications (more then 100 apps) to discover there is no "Are you sure" dialog.



beside these few points its a great application its free,

its the addition you needed to leopard (unless you use QuickSilver),

I give it a 4 out of 5.