DonationCoder.com Software > Find And Run Robot

new launcher just released

<< < (6/12) > >>

mouser:
Thanks allen :)

yksyks -- we should continue this discussion in another thread (maybe here or here -- do you have windows running in large font mode?)

Tekzel:

FARR's what first introduced me to DC and one of the most used apps on my PC.  Went to use my wife's computer the other day and spent several minutes sure her computer was broken--alt+space did nothing, the catalyst which every application on a computer system relies upon was not present, nothing worked!  She did have something on there called a "start menu", but I am not one for fumbling with ancient technology that may or may not be booby trapped.
-allen (July 19, 2007, 08:34 AM)
--- End quote ---

Haha, thats funny.  And often the funniest things are true.  I also spend an uncomfortable amount of time (whole seconds!) on a clients computer wondering why "pause/break" doesn't work, only to realize that they of course dont have FARR installed.

Josh:
I'd love to see the scrollable results window! That would rock!

mouser:
farr already has this, but perhaps i could add more options about maximum autosize settings to make it more obvious.

Amadawn:
mouser,

as an old member of donation coder, and someone who used to use FARR all the time and finally dropped it in favor of Launchy I think that I might give a different perspective on why "less featured" programs such as Launchy and Dash appeal to some (perhaps many!) users.

First of all, let me say that I _loved_ FARR. When I discovered it I was blown away and I inmediatly became a donationcoder member and I donated to FARR. I still like it and I think it is useful but I don't use it anymore.

There were 4 main reasons why I started using Launchy instead of FARR:
- "Better" search results (out of the box, without tweaking).
- Looks awesome compared to FARR (although not as good as Dash)
- Some really cool pluggins (e.g. the calculator and web search pluggins)
- Simpler setup and better "out of the box" experience.

Please, before you guys jump to dismiss these reasons, let me elaborate a bit more. But first, please note that the last time I tried FARR it was a few months back and perhaps some of these have been fixed since them. I'd be cool if you pointed me to those.

1. Why I think that the Launchy search is better?
- It is "index-based" which means almost instantaneous search results. There was a noticiable difference compared to FARR.
- "Adaptive" search results. Launchy tracks what I select after every search I do and boosts the ranking of those results the next time I repeate the same _OR A SIMILAR_ search.
- Non contiguous search (i.e. searching for ff will find FireFox)

I believe that some of these features were planned for FARR v2.0 but I don't know if they all made it. I would agree that the "index-based" search may be a drawback for some people, which want to be able to search a completelly up to date list of files, but in my usage I've found that using Launchy with a 20 minute update timer is good enough 99.9% of the time (and when it is not updating the index is 2 mouse clicks away). Perhaps this works well for me because for me Launchy is mainly a program launcher and an interface to google (and a calulator and folder navigator...) and not a file search tool. But I think that there are better "file search tools" around that both FARR and Launchy anyway.

2.- Better look. I think that this cannot be questioned. I don't even think that Launchy looks "that good" but it definitely looks way better FARR. I know that a lot of people don't really care about this but _A LOT_ of people do care (me included).

I think that saying that "power users" do not care about looks is untrue. Actually I find that many power users like to tweak the looks of their computers a lot, as they use them so much more than non power users.

I really don't think that you should under-estimate the importance of this. One of the previous posts made a very good point regarding commercial vs freeware software and I think that there is a reason why commercial software "tends" to look better and that is because most people like better looking software and sometimes are willing to trade some features for good looks and style (case in point ipod vs other mp3 players, etc).

3.- Better "out of the box" experience:
This is related to #1. There is an enourmous amount of options in FARR. I bet that the options pane is probably overwhelming for many users and maybe you should consider create two separate "simple" and "advanced" "configuration modes" to make FARR more approachable and feel less bloated (often bloat is just a feel, it does not need to be real to put some people off).

However that was not what I mean about a better "out of the box" experience and why I stopped using FARR. I know that I can configure FARR to behave exactly as I want with all the very useful and detailed options. I actually did that when I was using it. However, I often go to new computers and I like to have a keyboard launcher in them. With Launchy, I can just install it and it works very well without any configuration. With FARR I would need to waste some time (probably a while!) to configure it properly in each machine that I install it.

A previous poster mentioned that trying to use his wife's PC without FARR was a pain. I bet that trying to use FARR without any reconfiguration would be a (much smaller) pain too!

I really believe that this last reason is very important and probably something that with some careful thought could be easily improved in FARR. You could think about the most useful scenarios for FARR use and make sure that FARR works seamlessly in those cases. Making google searches, opening firefox/explorer bookmarks, finding start menu items, being able to navigate and find the most important system folders (my documents, etc) out of the box should be a priority.

Ah! There is also another (small) criticism to FARR. The name (at some point I almost convinced mouser to change it into something else! :-). Launchy, Dash, SilverLight, QuickSilver... quite frankly, they all sound better than FARR. OK, I know. That is a pretty stupid complaint, but it is true, nevertheless ;-)

I think that most of this can be easily improved and that _technology_ wise FARR is (under the hood) probably the most flexible and impressive launcher for windows. But these loose ends stop it from reaching its potential, IMHO.

Cheers,

Angel

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page