Messages

1

Find And Run Robot / Re: FARR feedback/first impressions

« on: August 14, 2016, 05:50 PM »

Thanks for the prompt reply! Happy to see my feedback was of some use.

1. This seems like a special case to me. I'm not sure it warrants a full 'candidate for searching' feature, unless aliases are commonly used as just lists of shortcuts. I just think that these specific system shortcuts are important enough to appear in the main search results by default, kind of like System Shutdown/Logoff commands already do. The cpanel alias functionality is still nice, I agree.

2. I did not know about ctrl+up/down and historys, thanks. And yes, I meant memorising/weighting by search phrase. I'll try and clarify. I usually launch stuff with very few letters, say 'f' for firefox. The feature would ensure that, for example, even if I launch 'f'-firefox less often than 'fr'-fraps, as long as I type 'f' I'd get firefox, and 'fr' would get me fraps. Current FARR history weighting would still help populate the initial results - firefox might not be immediately available in 'f' search results to start with. All in all it would make the app to 'pick up' on which search phrase is used to launch what without having to make adjustments by hand.

3. I can imagine the unicode move is no small undertaking. Not necessarily a showstopper for me, but definitely a tradeoff/consideration.

4. That works, thank you. I'd probably still make a macro to replace tab with ++ while FARR is active. Old habits die hard

Thank you for considering. I'm on the fence still, but I'll definitely bookmark the version history page, for #2. I suspect that's how Quick Search Words feature came to be

2

Find And Run Robot / FARR feedback/first impressions

« on: August 14, 2016, 01:00 PM »

Hi,

I'm a long time (ex?) user of Launchy. I like tinkering sometimes, but I dislike having to. When Launchy broke for the nth time I set out to find an alternative. FARR seemed to fit the bill - it's way more flexible, powerful, and customizable.

Setup was easy - added folders, executables for some, music from other locations. I like the option to exclude file types as well - filtered out the playlist files for example.

I ran into a few things that I can't do as easy - showstoppers for me. At first I thought I should ask for help here, but a few forum searches convinced me I should just leave some feedback instead. So:

1. there's no way that I found to run a control panel item without having to type some alias name first. I saw some talk about godmode folder, but that's about it. Which is strange - launchers are there to type less, not more. I'd like to type "feat", not "cpanel feat", to access the add/remove program list.

2. FARR doesn't memorize different searches, just the end result. The author of the program liked the idea of learning before:
https://www.donation....msg339351#msg339351
As is, I should use aliases for each and every typing shortcut I got used to - else an another program might overtake them in the list.

3. Can find, but not launch files with latin alphabet letters with diacritics.

4. I couldn't find an (easy) way to launch something with a parameter - say sending an URL to a non default browser.

A comparison:
in launchy - f <TAB> url opens what I want
in FARR - I have to set F as alias and possibly make an alias/delve into regexps for sending a parameter?

Overall it just feels I'd have to tinker much more to achieve what Launchy does out of the box. Which is a shame - I wouldn't mind using the fancier features later on.