3 + 1 Fumo tips and tricks

1. Change the opacity

Note: As of 04 June 07, Fumo includes preferences to change the colors of the interface. Opacity can be set with the color, so this trick is now obsolete.

By default, Fumo has an alpha value (transparency) of 90%. If you’d like to see through the interface, or want it to be even darker, you can change the alpha value. This is done by running the following command in Terminal.app (or using Quicksilver + shell):

defaults write com.blacktree.quicksilver fumo.alpha 0.9

Replace the 0.9 with a value between 0.5 and 1, then relaunch QS to see the effect. An alpha value of 1 is completely opaque.

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2. The cube effect

Set a trigger for Command Window in Text Mode in the “Quicksilver” section of the Triggers preference pane. Then run it to see the brilliant cube. And there’s not need to worry about wasting time with the animation (if 0.2 seconds are that important to you) as any keystrokes you press will be immediately evaluated when the transition is complete. In simple terms, you can start typing straight away and the text will appear in Fumo once the effect is finished.

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3. Flippin’ Fumo

Fumo is able to ‘flip’… This phenomenon may be observed by enabling “modifier-only activation” and ticking “Hide if pressed when already visible” in the “Command” section of the Preferences. Then, as you may expect, activate Quicksilver using the modifier key you have just set and press the key again once it is active to witness firsthand the flipping of Fumo.

(Note: This effect may also be achieved by merely setting a trigger that sends an object to the command window, and running it when the interface is active.)

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+ 1 for the smokers

Having received a request to allow the smoking version of Fumo to smoke perpetually (a word which here means continually from when it is launched), this feature is present in the latest versions of the smoking interface, albeit slightly “hidden”. If you don’t care about CPU usage, and want the smoke to run constantly, run the following in the Terminal or shell:

defaults write com.blacktree.quicksilver fumo.alwaysSmoke -boolean yes

Note that Cmd-S will still work to turn the smoke on or off, but it will turn on by itself when Quicksilver first launches.

Note also that the smoke may initially appear to be coming out from nowhere. This is fixed by simply activating Quicksilver once.

Once you decide to quit, and want to stop Fumo smoking every time you launch Quicksilver, just run the following:

defaults write com.blacktree.quicksilver fumo.alwaysSmoke -boolean no

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As well as these nifty tricks, the latest version of Fumo also has features such as the ability to center the interface on screen, improved selector sizes and massive speed boosts. Get your copy from the official Fumo download page.

If you have any more requests or ideas for Fumo, please tell me about it. The more interest in this project, the more time that is devoted to it.