Messages

626

Find And Run Robot / Re: Do you want to see F&R with optional skins?

« on: September 09, 2005, 02:04 PM »

to be honest, when I first tried FARR, I was turned off by the "ugly" launch window. Compared to AppRocket, and especially QuickSilver, FARR's Win32 native window grated on the eyes (my Windows is heavily themed away from the IMO ugly murky grey faux-3D of Windows). But the functionality was better than anything else on windows so I accepted it (using transparency to 'mask' the window somewhat). I'd like a skinning option, as long it didn't adversely effect speed or resource usage, but it is far from high on my personal priority list of important stuff for FARR...

627

Find And Run Robot / Re: v1.07.02 beta - with regular expression commands

« on: September 08, 2005, 02:04 PM »

BTW, I think your suggestion of integrating NirCmd functionality as being excellent! In theory we can do that now no?

628

Find And Run Robot / Re: v1.07.02 beta - with regular expression commands

« on: September 07, 2005, 04:15 PM »

I'd be happy to give you the SQL dump, you'd need to parse it all though (you can then even parse the mozilla plugin format, I've just been lazy!). Saying that though, although I'm quite busy, maybe I can generate a "live" dump into whatever format FARR will end up importing. It would be easier as I know the SQL data structure and have code already there, I just need to loop through each value. I won't do that until we have a defined format for import / export.

How could you support POST - it seems impossible to do it in a browser neutral way...

The only problem with group definition within the plugin will be if users name their groups differently (due to i18n or whatever), you'd end up with lots of redundancy and fragmentation. Why not just bring up a group list when importing and let the user click. The only problem is the $$1 syntax - as I do I need it to be $$2 - maybe another setting in the import. Also, currently it seems unlikely you can set up group-item drag-n-drop or something to overcome it (need to rethink UI)...

629

Find And Run Robot / Re: Bug(?) in aliases

« on: September 07, 2005, 03:50 PM »

IIRC both The Regex Coach (do try it if you haven't) and RegexBuddy can reverse a regex into its constituant steps...

630

Find And Run Robot / Re: v1.07.02 beta - with regular expression commands

« on: September 07, 2005, 03:47 PM »

I maintain the Opera Wiki, where we have several hundred search plugins. As it was trivial to add, you can now spit out FARR format search strings from most of our plugins:

http://nontroppo.org...SearchPlugins?farr=1 (note the ?farr=1 enables the FARR link). Click on the "FARR" links after each plugin to see text to copy.

At the moment you are limited to SE7 (Opera native are the majority anyway) and not SRC (Mozilla) plugins, and you cannot for obvious reasons use POST type plugins. Just copy and paste the text into your FARR alias list.

BTW - this gives me an idea. Why not make a custom MIME type that calls up FARR with the URL chunk which then adds it to an alias list. This will allow click-and-run search plugins to be set up easily via the web (like we have for Opera). I'd be happy to host a custom FARR search plugin database; most of the code, and the search plugins are already there...

631

Find And Run Robot / Re: v1.07.01 beta - with regular expression commands

« on: September 07, 2005, 12:58 AM »

Also, a small feature request: how about some way to export and import these new fancy alias groups, that would make sharing our searches much easier...

632

Find And Run Robot / Re: v1.07.01 beta - with regular expression commands

« on: September 07, 2005, 12:53 AM »

I tested my quick / full regex and it works fine:

g(oogle|) (.+)

this means you can type either "g test words" or "google test words" if you are lazy or not! Great mouser!

Also <enter> for single item lists (which regex aliases can end up) works, though I'd still rather allow <enter> the option of triggering the first item in the list regardless of list number.

I can't get <ALT+#> to work, though <CTRL+#> works fine, and key triggered context menu's really are great!

I can confirm kfitting's focus behaviour, though to me it seems an offshoot of wanted behaviour. I want to be able to press <pause> then if I change my mind press <pause> again to close FARR quickly without moving over to <esc>. This means when FARR loses focus but not state it will first close, then open again thus requiring two presses. Maybe this behaviour can depend on whether it has focus or not?

A small point to mouser: when run as full mode in the tray, there is no task button in taskbar, though when you press <pause> a task button appears briefly only to disappear again; can you make this task button never appear to stop this flash?

633

Find And Run Robot / Re: Feature request v 2- favorite searching

« on: September 05, 2005, 11:25 AM »

I also have to say I imagine Favorites / Bookmarks searching will be really slow - maybe you will need to have some kind of pre-processing and cache to speed it up (though not so far as needing a database)!

634

Find And Run Robot / Re: Feature request v 2- favorite searching

« on: September 05, 2005, 11:23 AM »

mouser: I know you also said you would support Firefox/Mozilla bookmarks. If you do I was wondering if you may be better to code a more general regex driven text search. For the FF bookmarks you will have to parse a HTML file containing a definition list, with HTML attributes defining the bookmark properties. If we had definable regex's, it would be trivial to add support to Opera for example which uses simple line delimited INI like attributes:

[Select]

#URL
ID=14
NAME=Head Hunting  History of the Shuar  Shrunken Heads
URL=http://www.head-hunter.com/
CREATED=1029147558
DESCRIPTION=death
ICONFILE=Bookmark Unvisited
ORDER=-1

Or any other text file could be used in this more flexible approach. You have to code some kind of text-parser for Firefox bookmark support, so you may as well maximise the utility of your development!

635

Find And Run Robot / Re: Feature Request v2 - Speeding up searches?

« on: September 04, 2005, 07:06 AM »

My holy-grail of App / File Launchers, QuickSilver for OSX, uses a database and background in-file search to data mine. Plugins can extend the search capabilities, and then hook in many contextual actions specific to these file types. This is amazingly powerful, but also complex to program (though the excellent user interface of QuickSilver hides this complexity from the user). Certainly for V2.x it seems too big a jump, but it is worth envisaging for V3+

636

Find And Run Robot / Re: Feature Request V2 — Adaptive History...

« on: September 04, 2005, 06:24 AM »

Mouser, that is exactly what I was envisaging! You could make it  a part of heuristic scoring and allow the user to assign the score, but just adding a few points per run is perfectly functional.

637

Find And Run Robot / Feature Request V2 — Adaptive History...

« on: September 04, 2005, 05:15 AM »

The history does not count the number of times a particular item has been selected. So if I have two shortcuts to launch the same application but with different options, and run both they have more or less the same scores. Now if I start using one more than the other, the scores don't change as both are in the history. Only by manually editing the history can I increase the weighting of one.

I would like the history to adapt to how many times an item was opened, that way the history can auto-tune more accurately track the user's choices.

638

Find And Run Robot / Feature Request V2 — Task Control

« on: September 04, 2005, 05:09 AM »

It would be very neat if FARR could (optionally) include the running applications in the Search list. Sometimes ALT+TAB is quite slow as it is a linear task switcher (and task bar requires a mouse move). FARR could be used to easily switch to any running app by progressive find of its title...

639

Find And Run Robot / Re: Feature Request v2 - custom commands

« on: August 31, 2005, 07:12 PM »

Other excellent resources:

http://www.weitz.de/regex-coach/ - Regex coach is an excellent tool for learning regex's

http://www.regexbuddy.com/ - commercial, but probably the best regex test / learning tool

http://www.regular-expressions.info/ - from the creator of regex buddy, an excellent tutorial

640

Find And Run Robot / Re: Feature Request: Super Context...

« on: August 31, 2005, 02:10 PM »

I don't know anything about the Win32 API so my suggestions may not always be easily implementable. I had hoped that somewhere there was a get-at-able representation of the context menu (an object which gives a list of things doable), without having to show it (I think this is how OSX does it as it seems there are many such apps around). Maybe the registry has most of what is needed? Navigating a serial menu with arrow keys is slower, less elegant and less simple than the adaptive search that FARR is based on. But if it requires a manual recreation of contextual actions because of the Win32 API, it see may be quite a bit of work.

Nevertheless with mousers custom commands and file type matching, some basic contextual configuration sets would be trivial to set up. I am quite happy to noodle around with regex's, and I think we can easily come up with a library of commands to perform for those who don't need/want to regex.

641

Find And Run Robot / Re: Feature Request v2 - time to get started

« on: August 30, 2005, 01:33 PM »

ok, sounds great!

642

Find And Run Robot / Re: Feature Request: Super Context...

« on: August 30, 2005, 12:31 PM »

If I get a chance, I'll mock something up in photoshop; various UI ideas to play with...

643

Find And Run Robot / Re: Feature Request v2 - time to get started

« on: August 30, 2005, 12:25 PM »

Dear All,

Combining group aliases and RegEx commands is great. To be honest I would even rename "group aliases" to something more general as this will be a very powerful feature, which does not even need to be a group. For example amazon (.+) could have just one item within it to search only Amazon. If you make <enter> trigger immediately for only one item in a list then toying "amazon dreams <enter> means you don't need to even look at the list.

Can I ask that the RegEx works fully, so I can use something like:

g(oogle|) (.+)

So I can use EITHER "g" or "google" for my matching (realising I must use $2, unless your regex library is PCRE then I can use non-capturing terms.

re: modifiers - yep, this will be implemented soon. good name for it, i will use that name.

-mouser (August 29, 2005, 07:00 PM)

How do you intend for this to work? Where will it go in preferences? If you extend "group aliases" to serve a more general function I suspect there.

i am also going to try to add fiefox bookmark searching in the upcoming days.

-mouser (August 29, 2005, 07:00 PM)

Good, though I use Opera...  Still the more support for alternative browsers the better IMO.

autocomplete - as you say this is a bit different from the way f&r works, BUT here's what i've been planning to do for a while. if there is only 1 result in window, which can especialy happen if you use an alias to say this word means to launch this app/url, then hitting enter should be like what happens if you type '1'. i think this would solve 90% of what you wanted. what do you think?

-mouser (August 29, 2005, 07:00 PM)

That's a good start and I'd be happy to see it implemented. I would still push for a system whereby even with multiple results, the one with the highest mark gets the focus for <enter> functioning.

644

Find And Run Robot / Re: Feature Request: Super Context...

« on: August 30, 2005, 11:29 AM »

I actually envisaged that the great progressive find used to find the file/target is ALSO used for the actions. So when you <tab> you select the first element in the target list, you then start typing "edit" to edit and the edit action comes to the top of the list. This simply uses the same mechanism that the initial search FARR already does. I'd prefer that to key commands if possible as it is more intuitive.

I would prefer the items of the context menu - but not presented AS a menu, but as a list the same as your current target list. That's why I suggested a split-pane UI.

Can you perform different actions based on how long a key is pressed?

645

Find And Run Robot / Re: Feature Request: Super Context...

« on: August 29, 2005, 03:42 PM »

Well, one would probably need a default selection, so <tab> selects the entry with the highest points within current system FRR uses. I'd prefer to see some kind of autocomplete mechanism instead of the current seperate edit/results partitioned UI, and in that case this conundrum would disappear.

Of course one could simply use hotkeys - "2" launches the second result and "CTRL+2" accesses the context system for it. A setting in prefs could define what the default behaviour would be.

OK, how about this - can you measure how long a key is held down. This way a short press of "2" would launch and a long press of "2" would trigger the context actions!

646

Find And Run Robot / Re: Feature Request: Super Context...

« on: August 29, 2005, 02:42 PM »

Here are the various UI designs employed by QS — note all of them show the context action:

http://docs.blacktre...icksilver/appearance

In this case the Preview application has been found and the default action (Launch) is displayed. Pressing tab would allow the conxtextual actions to be searched/modified.

647

Mouser's Zone / Re: New setup/installer system

« on: August 29, 2005, 01:58 PM »

Great news! Thanks 

648

Find And Run Robot / Re: Feature Request v2 - time to get started

« on: August 29, 2005, 01:32 PM »

Concise it is :

• Configurable URL Launcher: typing "wik bohemia" would launch the system default browser to do a wikipedia search on bohemia. This is available in Opera/Firefox etc and AppRocket. All you need is to insert the right value in the URL, config string would be like: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%s

[li]Super Context![/li]
[li]Autocomplete: AppRocket and QuickSilver autoselect the item that currently matches. It means <enter> immediately starts the item. FRR because it has a text entry field separate from the search list needs <enter> to be pressed twice! Of course you can use the number buttons but I would also like to simply use <enter> (it is a larger and easier key to hit). More importantly - QuickSilver and AppRocket don't "split" attention because of this. In FRR we type in one place - and the results appear in another - forcing us to scan away from the typing position. Whatever kind of autocomplete is used allows attention to stay focused on one spot! You can see the various types of UI choice QS designs here; note the integrated method of typing and the results.[/li]
[li]Modifiers: if I type "i octopus", the search will only search for image files, "m bartok" searches only music files. EDIT: I just found this: an idea about an alternative to multiple configuration files, and it is more or less what I was looking for! +1 to whichever particular method gets chosen.[/li]
[li]Thumbnail view for images.[/li]
[li]+1 to rbeeger's suggestions for control panel etc. access[/li]
[/list]

FRR has many things going for it, and it is, overall, clearly the best of its kind on windows. I'd love to see it move up to the next level!

Thanks again for an excellent little utility!

649

Find And Run Robot / Feature Request: Super Context...

« on: August 29, 2005, 01:03 PM »

First off FRR is excellent. I've been looking for something ever since I was blown away by seeing QuickSilver on a friends Mac.

Now, what makes QuickSilver utterly revolutionary is the context system. FFR has added support for the context menu, but it seems it needs to be clicked, thus making the purpose of a super-fast keyboard launcher not so fast or so "keyboard"!

This screenshot shows QuickSilver (QS) at work. The user has found a file, presses <tab> and can now search for contextual tasks to perform on that file. In this case move the file to another folder:
http://quicksilver.b...reenshots/Bezel2.gif

Here, QS has found an Illustrator file, the user <tab>s to the actions field and chooses to email the file; on the Mac the address book entries then pop up!
http://quicksilver.b...reenshots/Bezel6.gif

Now I don't believe we could get something quite so elegant on Windows, but even a more basic context system would make FRR unique and powerful in the Windows world.

I see two options for development. First is to somehow allow the contents of the windows context menu to be accessible by FRR. This puts the burden of the contextual items at Windows doorstep, FRR just packages those items in a keyboard driven search system as it does already. Does windows make this info available?

Second is to make some hard-coded "actions" and just present that list letting the history and scoring mechanisms of FRR to do the work. This could of course be made more elegant and smart as needed.

Of course the UI to present the contextual items needs to be thought out. I suppose splitting the results window in two panes and letting <tab> select the result pane item then move to the context pane would be fairly trivial to set up using the Windows UI elements. Of course QS has a Zen like elegance all to itself, but as long as functionality is there, the wonderful Zen aesthetics of QS can wait!