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Recent Posts

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23301
Find And Run Robot / Re: LifeHacker vote, stage 2, final voting
« Last post by mouser on May 23, 2008, 09:51 AM »
:)

You know, one of the things I am really proud of about DonationCoder software, whether written by me or skrommel, or others, is that work on the programs has always been driven by a desire to make the programs better for the existing users, instead of focusing on adding stuff that would bring in more users.  And it's always been a two-way street -- the users are always thinking up new cool ideas that make the programs better.  :up:
23302
Find And Run Robot / Re: LifeHacker vote, stage 2, final voting
« Last post by mouser on May 23, 2008, 09:15 AM »
This is a good point by Armando:
That 3% only shows that farr could reach more people than it does right now.


But you know the bottom line is that the goal is not to make FARR the most popular launcher, so i don't think any of this really matters.  The important thing is to make it great.
23303
Living Room / Re: Thread removed
« Last post by mouser on May 23, 2008, 08:25 AM »
If there is a SPAM bin and the threads are edited and clearly marked with "DO NOT DEAL WITH THIS SPAMMER" in the thread title and in the offending post right along side their SPAM link then indexing for search engines would have a really positive effect!

not a bad idea at all.
23304
General Software Discussion / Re: Desktop Teleporter on Techie Buzz/Lifehacker
« Last post by mouser on May 22, 2008, 10:41 PM »
Nice!!!  :up: :up: :up:

Here's the thread that started it in the coding snacks request section:
https://www.donation...dex.php?topic=6091.0
23305
Find And Run Robot / Re: Suppress history saving for one time
« Last post by mouser on May 22, 2008, 08:18 PM »
hmm thats an interesting question.. you can't do it directly.  you have two choices:
1) launch it from farr then open far again and right click on it and say remove from history
2) search for it from farr then right click on it, choose shell context menu, then open.  that will launch it outside of FARR's knowledge.
23306
Find And Run Robot / Re: LifeHacker vote, stage 2, final voting
« Last post by mouser on May 22, 2008, 08:11 PM »
FARR is at 3%, lowest of the bunch.  :tellme:
23307
FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: Post your FARR v2 Plugin Idea Requests Here - Plugin Writers Read In
« Last post by mouser on May 22, 2008, 04:00 PM »
nitrix you have come up with some of the coolest, most unusual uses for FARR, i can only admire it :)

and i see you invented yet a new trick -- you create some dummy files that FARR can find, and then you use the names of these files to figure out what to search for on the web.  very clever.

your last idea to have FARR search a text file and search web based on those results, is very close to the idea i was trying to suggest about a generic text file searcher -- and it's the ideal way to handle these cases in my opinion.  it would be incredibly useful for creating and searching any kind of reference information.
23308
FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: Post your FARR v2 Plugin Idea Requests Here - Plugin Writers Read In
« Last post by mouser on May 22, 2008, 02:59 PM »
i believe the right way to do this is with a generic plugin that has been talked about before -- a kind of structured file searching plugin.

Basically the plugin would let you configure search keywords, along with specifying the file they should search, and how they should look for text and tags and what info to show on match.

So this could be used to search almost any kind of text,xml, or help file in a structured way that would allow you to type keywords or tags and have FARR show ranked resuls -- then select one to show full text of the entry.

It would be incredibly useful for a wide variety of things.

---

Though note that in veign's request, it might also make sense to use a generic web scraper plugin to query the php.org site and grab matches from that.
23309
Find And Run Robot / Re: LifeHacker vote, stage 2, final voting
« Last post by mouser on May 22, 2008, 12:42 PM »
If anyone is interested this post i made recently about unique features of FARR may be useful:
https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=13421.0
23310
Find And Run Robot / Re: LifeHacker vote, stage 2, final voting
« Last post by mouser on May 22, 2008, 12:40 PM »
oh i see..
i confused myself by following a link on their page to an older article..
thank you for correcting me.  this is confusing.
23311
Find And Run Robot / Re: LifeHacker vote, stage 2, final voting
« Last post by mouser on May 22, 2008, 12:23 PM »
The final article is up so this is probably irrelevant at this point.. All the people who did vote for FARR had an an impact and brought FARR to light for a lot of people.  I'll make a separate post on the lifehacker article.
23312
Living Room / Re: More Abuses of Technology - Government Surveillance - Computer Confiscation
« Last post by mouser on May 22, 2008, 12:15 PM »
I'm locking this thread -- it went political and mean spirited and personal.  Not one of our finest moments.  (cpilot in particular i think you stepped over the line this time with the personal attack -- which would be more of a concern if f0dder wasn't so clearly one of the smartest people on the forum).  Less of this in the future please.
23313
Find And Run Robot / Re: LifeHacker launcher application voting and FARR Name
« Last post by mouser on May 22, 2008, 10:03 AM »
Version 2 of FARR made it very easy to make and share alias packs.
23314
Screenshot Captor / Re: Wirless Keyboard does not have PrctScr key...
« Last post by mouser on May 22, 2008, 08:47 AM »
As tomos says, the hotkeys used by screenshot captor are completely customizable.  You can also use the tray menu to trigger screenshots instead of a hotkey.
23315
FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: Post your FARR v2 Plugin Idea Requests Here - Plugin Writers Read In
« Last post by mouser on May 22, 2008, 08:16 AM »
yeah i could do that through updater system.
23316
Find And Run Robot / Find And Run Robot (FARR) - Features You Should Know About
« Last post by mouser on May 22, 2008, 08:14 AM »
I started writing up some notes on aspects of FARR that make it different that other launchers, I thought i would paste it here and try to keep it updated based on suggestions.  Maybe as was suggested on another thread a wiki would be more appropriate eventually:

Indexing vs. Non-indexing
  • One of the features of FARR that some people really like and others don't, is that FARR does not index directories.  This means that all searches are conducted on the actual directory structure.
  • Benefits of this are that FARR is never using background cpu scanning the disk for changes and is always up to date, and uses very little memory when minimized.
  • A disadvantage is that FARR can take a little longer to search large/deep directories. In practice the start menu can be searched very rapidly which is the main use of FARR, but if you want to use FARR to search a huge directory structure of documents, an indexed solution might be better (though in this case you might be better off with a proper file contents indexing program like the desktop search tools, as opposed to a launcher).
  • One important exception to the non-indexing is that FARR does cache the list of launched files, so that even if a desired program is not found instantaneously, once it is launched once, it will forever more be found instantly.
  • (there is also a plugin for FARR that uses the Locate32 free indexing search program to conduct indexed searches -- it's not as seamless as native indexing launchers but it is useful for occasional searching of certain directories).

Heuristic Scoring
  • FARR may have been the first launcher to use heuristic scoring to do a good job of ranking found files.  There are a wide range of heuristics employed, and advanced users can configure the differential weighting of various factors.
  • By customizing the weighting and adding new weighting patterns, users can easily exclude certain kinds of results or bring others to the top.
  • Special modifier keywords can be used to bring certain scoring heuristics into play only in certain cases (for example one could set up a +music modifier which weighted certain file extensions and added certain directories to the search).

Result List
  • While some launchers focus on showing and auto-completing a single best result -- FARR always shows the top ranked results.  Hitting Enter launches the top result -- but the user can also directly launch any of the top 10 by hitting alt+#.
  • Right clicking on a result brings up a menu of common operations (including excluding the result from future searches, changing the weight of the result, adding the result to a user-defined group menu.
  • The result list is also a standard windows file list -- so files can be dragged out of the results to other programs, and the normal right-click file context menu can be accessed.

Plugins
  • FARR is coded in C++ (C++ Builder by CodeGear/Borland), and a native C++ plugin interface is available.  But one of the unusual things about FARR is the extent to which users have contributed wrappers for writing plugins in other languages.
  • Plugin API wrappers exist for coding plugins using Delphi, C# and other dot net languages, as well as javascript (and python and other active scripting languages).  Javascript has turned out to be an extremely popular and easy way to write plugins.
  • Some plugins that have been written include a calculator with tape history and persistant user variables, clipboard plugin, default printer switcher, uninstaller, commandline shell and capture, language translation, delicious integration, todo list, alarm system, firefox/ie/opera bookmark searcher, google calendar plugin, and many more.
  • Plugins can display standard file result, or ask to display information in the FARR window as a richtext memo which is useful when displaying textual information.  An html output spreadsheet output mode is coming soon.

Aliases
  • One of the things that distinguishes FARR from some other launches is what FARR refers to as Aliases. The term is somewhat misleading -- Aliases can play several different roles, and are basically special keywords or search patterns that can trigger different behaviors.
  • With version 2 of FARR, special emphasis was made on making it easier for users to create and share standalone alias packs containing not only lists of aliases (in xml files) but associated helper programs and icons.
  • In the simplest case, an alias might be simply a keyword that maps to a specific program -- so a user might say that when they type "mw" FARR should know they mean "microsoft word".
  • Users can create alias packs designed to work with third party applications, like the alias pack of commands to work with Nirsoft's NirCommand, which can perform system operations.

But there are many more complicated uses for Aliases:

Aliases: Menus
  • A common thing to do with aliases is create a keyword that contains a list of multiple results.  Typing the keyword then shows the entire list of results for the alias, in the user-specified order.  Users can customize the actual label for each of the results, and easily add new programs to an alias result list in a variety of ways.
  • This makes it very easy to make your own groups of files like "games", "work", etc.  Of course you can type the keyword and then perform additional filtering by typing more words.
  • You can also use special results so that choosing one item in the result actually triggers a submenu or another search, so that a menu/group can really be a menu of additional searches not just files.
  • One of the things that sets FARR apart from other launchers is that when regular expressions are combined with menus, the result is that many aliases are designed to present a menu of operations to perform on a given typed word or phrase.  So for example the "define (.*)" alias presents a list of different dictionary website searches which can be launched as desired, rather than presenting only a single result.

Aliases: Regular expressions
  • One of the most common use of advanced aliases is to design regular expression patterns that when matched can trigger subsequent results that operate on extracted patterns.
  • FARR comes with several built in aliases that can be used to send email and do various internet searches; regular expression patterns are used in such cases to allow optional specification of subjects, recipients, text, etc.

Aliases: Special functions
  • There are several special functions available in alias results, for doing things like sending text to the last active window before FARR was triggered, and conducting new searches.
  • One feature that is noteworthy is the ability to match on some regular expression pattern and having FARR act as if something else was typed.  This allows complicated search expressions to be abbreviated with simple typing.
  • So if a user often finds themself searching for "C:\MyMusics\ +mp3 -.txt ARTIST" then they might create an alias that matches on "ms (.*)" and performs the search "C:\MyMusics\ +mp3 -.txt $$1"

Modifiers
  • Modifiers starting with + or - can be used to exclude results containing certain words (the - prefix) and to activate optional search directories or scoring patterns (the + prefix).

Directory Browsing
  • FARR has a complete folder browsing system with autocompletion and searching.  If you start typing C:\ you will trigger the folder browsing on the C drive.. You can then begin to type patterns to progress deeper into the tree, using the tab key to autocomplete or keywords to reduce the search matches.

Hotkey support
  • One major new feature in FARR is a hotkey configuration system that let's you define multiple hotkeys to launch FARR in different ways.
  • FARR by default uses the break key, but it also supports the common alt+space trigger by default.  Additional hotkey configurations can trigger FARR and start it with a specific search keyword or phrase -- which can be very useful if you define certain result groups or common searches to trigger on a hotkey.
  • A significant use of the hotkey system is to define certain hotkeys that can copy selected text from the active window before triggering FARR -- this is especially useful for using FARR as a dictionary lookup tool -- select some text, hit hotkey, FARR copies selected text to clipboard and then triggers a search phrase that makes use of this text.

Embedded Launchbar
  • FARR has a small visual toolbar on it's main window which can be customized by the user with arbitrary programs -- file results can be dragged and dropped on the tool buttons.

Update Support
  • In an effort to facilitate community sharing of FARR aliases and plugins, FARR uses an update system which is capable of checking for and automatically installing updates of the main FARR executable and of third party plugins, and of alias packs.

Latest Features
  • The most exciting new feature is the built in mini-html view / web browser.  It's main purpose is to provide plugin writers with a new powerful way to display information, but users are also finding useful web pages that can be displayed in the small window.
  • Lots of features for plugin writers, including the ability to display non-modal alert boxes (useful for alarms, etc.), the ability to trigger on idle time and arbitrary hotkeys.

Forum and Future Work


Any other unsual FARR stuff I should mention?
23317
Find And Run Robot / Re: LifeHacker launcher application voting and FARR Name
« Last post by mouser on May 22, 2008, 08:08 AM »
Lots of very good suggestions -- the next big FARR release will be at the end of this month, and will be mainly focused on adding features for plugin writers, fixing lingering minor bugs, and adding a few features.  After that cycle of new features I should probably try to see what we can do to make FARR a little easier to use and configure and understand.  I will also try to finally make some tutorials on how to do advanced stuff in FARR.
23318
FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: Post your FARR v2 Plugin Idea Requests Here - Plugin Writers Read In
« Last post by mouser on May 22, 2008, 08:06 AM »
To check the web for new plugins to install, my solution will require dcupdater.
But to install a new plugin for the first time that you have downloaded, i will add a function into FARR to let you browse for the zip and install it using just plain FARR.  Same with alias packs.
23319
FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: Post your FARR v2 Plugin Idea Requests Here - Plugin Writers Read In
« Last post by mouser on May 22, 2008, 07:48 AM »
This may be a rare occasion where i disagree with czb -- I think this is something i can do more cleanly by building it into FARR or the update system.. i dont think it's something that should be optional and done via a plugin.  And most of all I don't think we should waste our precious and valuable czb coding time on it.. there are more important plugins to write that we NEED him for(!)
23320
Living Room / Omega Tower Defense 2
« Last post by mouser on May 22, 2008, 06:07 AM »
I love these tower defense games.  This is a pretty nice one, with smooth flowing enemies that move in different ways, and a nice clean upgrade system.  Plenty of strategy here.


from http://flash.plasticthinking.org/
23321
Find And Run Robot / Re: LifeHacker launcher application voting and FARR Name
« Last post by mouser on May 22, 2008, 01:06 AM »
Thanks Ghostly -- you are right.

It's like most things in that it's less important which program is chosen as "winner" as it is to have new people find out about all the different programs.

Part of what sometimes inspires a coder to work on and improve a program is hearing how people like it, and I know I feel that way about many of my programs.  Seeing people comment that they like FARR makes me want to hurry up and release new versions with new goodies (I've been working with ecaradec and czechboy recently to try and get the new version of FARR with new features for plugin writers out the door this month).
23322
DesktopCoral / Re: Must close to play games
« Last post by mouser on May 22, 2008, 12:34 AM »
my favorite kind of bug reports.. the kind that fix themselves :)
23323
Find And Run Robot / Re: LifeHacker launcher application voting and FARR Name
« Last post by mouser on May 21, 2008, 11:06 PM »
xbeta i always appreciate when you translate one of our pages and i would be very happy to be able to link to a Chinese translated FARR page.
23324
FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: New FARR Plugin: FCalc
« Last post by mouser on May 21, 2008, 08:58 PM »
just go to the plugin options page, select fcalc and choose to override the regex expression for it.
23325
Screenshot Captor / Re: Auto refresh - thumbnail view
« Last post by mouser on May 21, 2008, 07:39 PM »
if it detects a file system change in the screenshot image directory it will refresh. (ie file deletion, rename, creation, etc.).
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