Menu Search

[vitor]

Suggestion : If it could also display the default keyboard shortcuts along with the menu item.

See two comments above yours.

 

The shortcut keys can't be reliably extracted, hence the lack of display. The applications that display shortcut keys for applications exhibit similar problems, which is why at least one of them let you download custom shortcut lists. I believe the shortcut extraction can be improved slightly based on the results from the proprietary apps but I'm not sure how they're doing it.

[nitingoyal]

See two comments above yours.

 

 

Got it 

[c95008]

Is there any reason why this workflow wouldn't work in Photoshop CC?

 

It works on all other apps, including the previous version of Photoshop (CS6).

 

On CC, it correctly displays the menu items and searches through them. But when I select an item from the list, it doesn't actually trigger the menu.

 

Any help would be appreciated. And thanks for creating the workflow - I use it all the time.

[ctwise]

Adobe does weird crap with their menus. They appear to use non-standard mechanisms to display their menus so the displayed menu items don't necessarily match the extracted menu items and they don't trigger correctly with AppleScript.

[c95008]

Strange. Thanks for the explanation.

[forgetfulfellow]

I just want to say, thanks for the workflow; it's so awesome! It works beautifully with Sublime, Microsoft Word, and Chrome

[senornestor]

I think this is the most useful for workflow for Alfred yet! 

 

BUT, it no longer searches menus for me after installing Alfred 2.1. I can confirm that it has access i System Preferences > Privacy > Accessibility. Any ideas??

[senornestor]

I am just now getting the error message "Error: The menu structure wasn't readable" but Alfred 2 is checked in the System Preferences > Privacy > Accessibility settings. I think that if I can somehow remove Alfred from this list and enable it through the permissions prompt again, it will start working again but there's no way to do this using the UI.

 

@ctwise, any ideas?

[yoose]

I am just now getting the error message "Error: The menu structure wasn't readable" but Alfred 2 is checked in the System Preferences > Privacy > Accessibility settings. I think that if I can somehow remove Alfred from this list and enable it through the permissions prompt again, it will start working again but there's no way to do this using the UI.

 

@ctwise, any ideas?

 

I had a similar problem with aText. I unchecked and rechecked it in Accessibility (did not have to remove it from the list) and it started working properly again, perhaps try that.

[altryne]

First of all GREAT WORKFLOW!

Feature request (don't know if at all possible), is there a chance to show the blue arrows on the fly? (like apple does when I search via the help->search mechanism)

[vitor]

I hope Ted implements the patch (works great), along with a new option to pick the symbol (as I’m not a big fan on the link icon). Thank you for making this addition, aitte.

[vitor]

Thank you for in-depth explanation, aitte, you’ve surely done your research here. However (I’ll be very brief), as a graphic designer myself, I certainly understand your reasoning, but to me personally, as a user, I find the link icon ugly and distracting, to the point that I my eyes focus only on it — I’m not exaggerating, here, my eyes are drawn to it constantly (similar reason to why I cannot stand Yummy FTP, I find its looks so atrocious that I simply cannot be comfortable using it). As a result, I’ve changed your patch to use another icon, which is why an option to change the default icon would be valuable to me.

[fruityth1ng]

You, are a hero. thank you for this workflow!

One feature request: I'd like to use this without using a keyword. I want the results to this to appear by default.

Any way I could make that happen?

Also, I'm an interface designer, www.nimbling.com, if you choose to implement the shortcut icons, I'll happily create you a proper one

[hsuri]

Hey guys,

 

I am kind of new to this whole Powerpack thing so pardon me if I do not understand.

 

As far as I understood, this script allows us to search for and activate the menubar items for the current active application. While most of it works, in safari I cannot bring up the "Show History" menu item or the "Show bookmarks" menu items. In fact, typing in "bookmarks" into the script does not activate the Bookmarks section of the menubar. It just shows me options from the View and File menus (picture attached)

. 

 

Is this an inherent limitation of the script when it comes to Safari? Or I am missing something blatantly obvious.

 

Thanks a lot for your help.

[rice.shawn]

Is this an inherent limitation of the script when it comes to Safari? Or I am missing something blatantly obvious.

 

I think that it might be a feature actually. Menus are notoriously slow to render, and adding history items / bookmarks would make the utility go through thousands of more items, making it run terribly slow.

[Tyler Eich]

Is this an inherent limitation of the script when it comes to Safari? Or I am missing something blatantly obvious.

 

To complement Shawn's response, I've quoted the release notes found in the original post:

 

v1.2 - Skip the Safari History and Bookmarks menus. They take too long.

 

Hope this helps!

Edited March 17, 2014 by Tyler Eich

[hsuri]

I think that it might be a feature actually. Menus are notoriously slow to render, and adding history items / bookmarks would make the utility go through thousands of more items, making it run terribly slow.

 

To complement Shawn's response, I've quoted the release notes found in the original post:

 

 

Hope this helps!

 

Thanks a lot guys. I knew I would have missed something. Should've read the release notes prior to bothering you guys.

 

Thanks anyways for pointing me to the right direction. Much appreciated!

[vitor]

One feature request: I'd like to use this without using a keyword. I want the results to this to appear by default.

You can use it with a keyboard shortcut. I’ve changed my copy to look like this. The hotkey node is then setup to call the keyword.

[fredcallaway]

I'm not able to get this workflow to work for me. After entering the keyword, as soon as I start entering an argument, the command disappears and I go back to default searching. Any idea what could be going on? I already checked the accessibility setting, at least in the place Ted screen shotted. Thanks for any help anyone can give me.

[ctwise]

I'm not able to get this workflow to work for me. After entering the keyword, as soon as I start entering an argument, the command disappears and I go back to default searching. Any idea what could be going on? I already checked the accessibility setting, at least in the place Ted screen shotted. Thanks for any help anyone can give me.

 

Open up the workflow and click on the debug button:

 

 

Then invoke Alfred and try a menu command, e.g., 'm file'. There should be some debug output in the bottom of the Alfred preferences window showing some kind of problem. Copy and paste the output in this discussion.

[fredcallaway]

Thanks for the quick response Ted!

Heres my error message:

 

Starting debug for 'Menu Bar Search'

 

[ERROR: alfred.workflow.input.scriptfilter] Code 1: main.rb:4: undefined method `encode' for "m":String (NoMethodError)

[ERROR: alfred.workflow.input.scriptfilter] Code 1: main.rb:4: undefined method `encode' for "minimize":String (NoMethodError)

[ctwise]

Thanks for the quick response Ted!

Heres my error message:

 

Starting debug for 'Menu Bar Search'

 

[ERROR: alfred.workflow.input.scriptfilter] Code 1: main.rb:4: undefined method `encode' for "m":String (NoMethodError)

[ERROR: alfred.workflow.input.scriptfilter] Code 1: main.rb:4: undefined method `encode' for "minimize":String (NoMethodError)

 

Ok, you can download an updated workflow from Packal or use this direct link - https://github.com/packal/repository/raw/master/com.tedwise.menubarsearch/menu_bar_search.alfredworkflow

[fredcallaway]

Ok, you can download an updated workflow from Packal or use this direct link - https://github.com/packal/repository/raw/master/com.tedwise.menubarsearch/menu_bar_search.alfredworkflow

 

Wow thanks! It works perfectly, and fast too!

[politicus]

What a great improvement compared to older versions 

 

I know this is not the goal of this workflow, but is there a way to display the associated keyboard shortcut to the menu entry?

 

For example in Alfred Preferences: "Select All" -> "Cmd-A".

Edited August 18, 2014 by politicus

[tsvoronos]

Big kudos, thank you for this!