Messages

176

Find And Run Robot / Re: Feature Request V2 — Task Control

« on: January 27, 2006, 04:33 PM »

And here's mouser's reply to me in bugtrack:

=====

it seems to me this is a very nice idea and we should try to think how to maximize the usefullness of it.

i'm not sure the best way to offer this feature. maybe we should discuss in the forum.

essentially im thinking it would be nice to be able to have farr search from a list of running processes and then let you specify an operation to execute on one you select.

so you could type "running" "thebat" "kill" and it would find the bat and kill it. something like that.. but im still not sure the best interface..

177

Find And Run Robot / Re: Feature Request V2 — Task Control

« on: January 27, 2006, 04:31 PM »

I'm not sure if I'm posting in the right thread. I thought there was a more recent dialog between nontroppo and mouser on this subject, but I'm not finding it now. Anyway, here's a post of mine earlier today on the subject in bugtrak, followed by mouser's response, followed (soon) by my response.

====

I strongly support nontroppo's suggestion, in the forum, that FARR be able to switch to already running tasks.

One other point: please include tasks which are only in the system tray, as well as those which are in the taskbar. More and more programs are offering minimize to tray as an option for uncluttering the taskbar, which is visually helpful, but AFAIK there's no way at all to open them except with the mouse, which is a pain.

Mouser, I like your idea to switch to a program if it is already running, otherwise start it. You mention it in the context of aliases, which I can't comment on because I haven't used aliases enough yet.

But surely in basic (non-alias) use, this would happen automatically, if there were a new heuristic to give already-running tasks a high score. Then how about yet another new heuristic (presumably with a somewhat lower score), for any application on disk which already has an instance running in the task list?

So if the specified application is already running, the user would quickly see two relevant entries on the selection list. At the top of the list, instantly, would be the already running task, then as the disk search proceeded we would see the same application from disk. Of course they should be appropriately labelled or iconned to easily distinguish them.

178

Find And Run Robot / Re: Another similar app (disclaimer: I haven't tried it)

« on: January 27, 2006, 02:39 PM »

Just my two cents disagreeing with several suggestions above.

1. I have NO interest in delaying the display. With proper heuristics and preparation, the correct program is usually at the top of my list very quickly so 90% of the time I can just hit Enter once and I'm done. When my choice is not #1, I never just hit the number, have learned to always tab down first to freeze the display at that point, so there's no disruption by a changing choice list.

2. If anybody wants a cooler look, that's fine, but Mouser, please don't let this take time away from your work on the FUNCTIONAL interface. As far as I'm concerned, the "look" is already perfect. After all, FARR is usually only in front of my eyes for a fraction of a second at a time, because it's so good!

179

Find And Run Robot / Re: What happened to the "Improve icon" on the ToDo list?

« on: January 27, 2006, 02:24 PM »

I'm not opposed to a name change but I think it's handy to have the name suggest function. I'm not crazy about the Ruunba name (but maybe just because I've never heard of Roomba) but if you come up with a "catchy" name that people like, how about combining it, like "Ruunba - Find and Run Robot" - also that way you keep continuity with the great reviews so far.

180

Find And Run Robot / Re: Only matching .exe files within a folder (or its subfolders)

« on: January 27, 2006, 02:20 PM »

It's not as elegant, but in the meantime you can create a "Control Panel shortcuts" folder somewhere on your FARR path (maybe on desktop). Then (at least in Win2K) you open the Ctrl panel, select all, and right drag them all to the folder to create a folder of shortcuts to all the applets.

181

Find And Run Robot / Re: Apparent bugs - newbie

« on: September 04, 2005, 08:03 AM »

Another bug: F&R does not respect the "Start In" directory in shortcut files. In some cases, this can mean that the program simply won't run.

I might have seen some discussion about allowing F&R to configure whether a window should be maximized when started? Since that's already part of the shortcut file, why re-invent the wheel?

And a small suggestion: Direct links in Help menu to the website and especially to this forum (rather than through the About submenu.)

Thanks!

182

Find And Run Robot / Re: Apparent bugs - newbie

« on: September 03, 2005, 09:21 AM »

Good, that is how I thought alias groups were supposed to work.

But FYI this is not working at all for URLs in a group.

I do understand now that URLs are a new feature in F&R, and look forward to their more consistent support.

Thanks again.

183

Find And Run Robot / Re: Apparent bugs - newbie

« on: September 02, 2005, 10:21 PM »

Thanks, the key is working now.

The reason to show all matching aliases is that I might not remember all of them.

Is there and explanation somewhere of alias groups? What happens if I have multiple URLs associated with one group name?

Thanks!

184

Find And Run Robot / Apparent bugs - newbie

« on: September 02, 2005, 08:41 AM »

v 1.05.21

1. F&R apparently accepted my license key but Help-About still shows 179 days to renewal, even after exit / restart.

2. I don't understand alias groups. I have 2 aliases named:
  .abcx
  .abcy
but when I type .abc then only .abcy is shown though both are partial matches

3. When a group alias contains a URL, F&R is inconsistent about what it displays in the Name columns. It seems that this should always contain the URL. The following URL displays as expected (except see my note below about "http://")
  http://www.abc.com/site/index.html
But in this one, the final folder name is omitted altogether, making it very difficult to know what is being shown.
  http://www.abc.com/site/

4. Also, the URL parser for URLs in a group alias does not realize that URLs may contain colons after the http:, resulting in the difficult to read situation where this URL is parsed after the second colon instead of the first as expected:
http://www.abc.com:1...rontend/x/index.html

(Actually I'd rather that it put the entire URL including http:// in the name column and put the name of the group in the location column, but I realize that I have not yet grokked the essence of F&R so I'll just mention this as a weak preference.)

Thanks!

(I shouldn't be doing this right now, too overloaded... I should just use F&R to save lots of time and come back in a month when I can. But I did want to pass on these initial comments.)

185

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

« on: September 02, 2005, 07:39 AM »

Shortcut keys to add/edit/delete config entries - for a "keyboard demon" program, the apparent lack of such keys is ironic.

Beautiful program!