FastFingers was conceived after I tried many different virtual desktop managers for Windows. They were all lacking the simplicity and speed that I demanded or they were just too intrusive in the way they hooked into the OS. To this day I've yet to see anything for Windows that I liked enough to use for more than a few months at a time. I was always on a quest for the better virtual desktop manager and never satisfied.

Once I got going I realized that I had an ideal place to implement other hot-key related features, like a launcher or an abbreviated paster. I quickly rolled up my sleeves and created a simple launcher, stealing ideas from QuickSilver but not even coming close to the sophistication or power that QuickSilver offers. Again my goal was to keep things as simple as possible. The abbreviated paster idea still exists solely in my head and has not yet been implemented in FastFingers.

Quite honestly, all of the features I currently want or use are there. The virtual desktop system, while not perfect, is decent enough and quite fast. The launcher works well though I really need to improve the indexer so it picks up desktop shortcuts and everything from the start menu and I'd like to give it a preference memory and/or a simple rating system based on usage.

At any rate, after all this time I find that I've not touched the code in several months. Everything works pretty much how I want it to, my primary working platform is Linux except when I'm working through remote desktop or Windows XP in VMWare; FastFingers works great in a VMWare instance. So here it is. Fully exposed, source code and all, hosted at Google.

Have a look: Fast Fingers @ Google Projects