Hi everyone
I used to be a launchy 2.0 user now I am switching to FARR. FARR is one of the best & most customizable launch programs :-) I recommend it to lots of my friends
Here's some of my suggestions. I quite n00b to FARR so if any of these were actually implemented by plug-ins, reply me. Thanks!
1.
Simplify settings & options UI like launchy. In fact users do not care what a path's score is. Just keep it simple and stupid. It'll be never better if you could get hands on FARR without even reading the manual
2. Index registry "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths" so Launchy acts exactly as Win+R
3. Support indexing Google Bookmarks, Live bookmarks, Del.icio.us bookmarks
4. Support Opensearch like firefox do.(Something like Google Suggest) The AJAX drop down list is really cool.
5. I
strongly recommand "launchy"-like two-column UI design. On the left you type command, the right display program name, the middle display an icon. The advantage of this is, you can type 1+1 on the left while display 2 on the right. Another example: Left for word input right for spell check or dictionay? LOL.
6.
Now the most intersting part, if user's input matches a file, and a icon appears, display Explorer menu when right click the icon. :-)7. When a exact file/folder matches, support drag & drop operations compatible with Explorer. e.g. I type C:\Tools\Notepad.exe and then drag 1.txt from desktop to FARR so FARR launch 1.txt with C:\Tools\Notepad.exe :-)
8. Index IE, Firefox, Opera history URL's & Webpage title
9. Options for store settings in Registry, .ini in %APPDATA%
and in FARR directory to make FARR "portable"10. An "Apply" & "Cancel" button in Options window so if a user tweak something wrong, he could just click Cancel.
11. i18n UI please :-)
12. Another i18n consideration. Suppose I am a Chinese user, I wanna match "你好.txt" typing "ni hao" or "ni h" or "n hao". You can launchy an i18n file/app without actually switching IME!
13. I strongly disagree using Ctrl+Space as the default FARR toggle hotkey cauz many CJK Windows use Ctrl+Space as default hotkey for IME switching
14. Something like weby in launchy, But provide more variables, %s for ANSI escaped keyword, %us for UTF-8 escaped keyword
15. Tab, Tab and Tab. Use the tab key more. e.g. "wikipedia TAB Donationcoder" opens
http://en.wikipedia....g/wiki/Donationcoder. I think Tab is much better than space. Using space to separate parameters u have to worry the existing space in a parameter and use double quotes wrap a parameter, and Tab could avoid this
update:
16. How about store indexed file/folders in a SQLite database? So 3rd party tools could easily add entries to the list?
17. FARR UI will froze when doing network query. Hmm. May be display a "loading" and start a new background thread query will be nicer?
18. Support environment variables internally. Though a plugin could do this but envrionment is far too important.
That's as far as I could think of. FARR the coolest! Thank you Mouser & DonationCoder community!
Show Posts