DonationCoder.com Software > Find And Run Robot

Discussing major features to add to Find and Run Robot 2 continued..

(1/4) > >>

Jay Levitt:
i know that the mac world is gaga over quicksilver.  i think it's half just the normal mac fanaticism, but i know that quicksilver has some nice features - i'm very happy to implement them all in F+R in time, just let us know which features are wanted.-mouser (December 30, 2005, 02:26 PM)
--- End quote ---

As a dual-platform user, the things I miss most from Quicksilver are, roughly in order:

1. Pre-searching/caching.  Quicksilver is INSTANT, even on my slow PowerBook.  FARR is not, even on my 2GB Athlon X2 4600+, even just limited to Start Menu and a few app folders.

2. Adaptive sorting.  QS learns which items I select and moves them to the top.

3. Better selection UI.  The large print on QS, combined with the fact that it pre-selects the most likely option, means I can launch apps with few keystrokes and no real brainpower: "F F <enter>" always gets firefox.  With FARR, I have to look at the cluttered display, find the app, and move to the number keys - and if I've added a new app, the old numbers change.

That's really all I miss; I don't use any of the fancy QS plugins, deep-searching, alternate actions, etc.  Unfortunately, #1 and #2 require some pretty hefty infrastructure changes that I think you've said can't really be done before FARR 3, so I'm always keeping my eyes out for a temporary substitute.

mouser:
useful comments jay.
#1a is on the todo list, not sure if it will get done by the next version though.
#1b however, farr is designed to cache launched apps, so that the 2nd time you search for an app already launched it comes up instantly and right to the top.  in this way, you get the speed of cacheing for all apps that you have launched in the past.
#2 is implemented in farr, you can adjust the score bonus for previous launched apps in the scoring rules tab.
#3a i like the idea of being able to change font size, i'll put that on todo list.
#3b check out farr's group aliases; you could make an alias called "b" for browsers and add firefox and opera and internet explorer, and when you type b up comes your list instantly in predictable order to launch.  group aliases are meant to help you set up "menus" of reliably ordered items for instant selection.

i'm always up for learning from existing apps.
why does F F always get firefox? what does the second f do?  how do you reconcile #2 (adaptive sorting - which farr does a lot of) with the idea of things always coming up in same order.

mouser:
just adding another post:
from my perspective the top priority for F+R should be handling those most common cases most efficiently; issues like those just raised by jay.  i'm all for adding other stuff, but the most important thing is that farr should be designed for that core functionality.

Amadawn:
I think QuickSilver searches for non contiguous letters as well (which I am not sure I would like). Please, Jay, correct me if I am wrong. Colibri does this as well.

#3a i like the idea of being able to change font size, i'll put that on todo list.
--- End quote ---

But first, please make sure that the menus can handle different font sizes as well! ;)

jgpaiva:
I've never used Quicksilver, but I've used colibri, and yes, colibri searches for non-contiguous letters, which i think is an important feature missing in farr :(
The question for you, mouser is this: will this feature make farr search slower? (i hope not, but my small programming experience tells me it will do.. :( )
Another thing that mouser mentioned were the aliases. IMO, they are very powerfull, a bit hard to use, but most of all, not very practical... At least, not until mouser adds a hotkey to create and update them... (please... please... make aliases more practical... make me not need typeandrun.. ;) ;) )

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page