Author Topic: Latest FARR Release 2.250.0 beta - Mar 23, 2020 (Read 834779 times)

brianpals · « **Reply #375 on:** November 04, 2010, 04:50 PM »

Why I prefer Launchy to FARR

•   When I want to update Launchy (or even just to check for updates) I don’t get the DonationCoder Updater Utility Not Found message appearing.

Yes, I suppose it’s there to help me but I don’t want that help. I just want to know if there is a newer version of the program available and ready for download on the web.

•   When I typed bt.com into Launchy and hit Return it took me to bt.com on the net. When I typed bt.com into FARR and hit Return it took me to a website that was stored in my My Documents folder.

•   When I type x into Launchy it knows that I want to open Xmind and subsequently puts only that into the suggestion box. If that wasn’t what I wanted then I could hit my down arrow to access other suggestions.

In FARR I get too many suggestions. I only want to launch a program. When I’m in that program I can then decide which files I want to open.

•   Similarly, when I type mo it’ll be there ready with Microsoft Money, whereas if I add an n to make mon it’ll offer MediaMonkey. It seems to learn what I want to the point where it’s almost intuitive.

•   Launchy is a simple interface with simple Options… not a complicated mess of ‘tweak this’ and ‘tweak that’ to get… whatever!

Why don’t you make a ‘lite’ version that doesn’t have all of those complications? Then, and only then, if I want to complicate my searching life later on, I can use the full version and go online to the forum and get really confused!

Ok, so maybe some of the above are quite trivial, but you did ask me why I preferred Launchy, Mouser.

mouser · « **Reply #376 on:** November 04, 2010, 05:32 PM »

fair enough.. ill chew over your comments and think about if some of these things can't be done better in farr.

lanux128 · « **Reply #377 on:** November 04, 2010, 09:53 PM »

i think we went over this some time back and generally it was agreed that one of Farr's appeal is an array of features which users can tweak to their own liking. this was preferable than the program second-guessing users' every action and end up being more of a hindrance.

i suggest new users taking the time to go through mouser's handy screencast videos to make the most of Farr's robustness and flexibility.

brianpals · « **Reply #378 on:** November 05, 2010, 03:40 AM »

Yes, I suppose I can agree with lanux128, mouser. If/when I'm ready I'll try ascending to a higher level using FARR! :-)
Meanwhile, it'll be my 2nd choice. You can't please everyone!

mouser · « **Reply #379 on:** November 05, 2010, 05:53 AM »

Different strokes for different folks as they say! I think Lanux touched on my general feeling about trying to be too smart about learning what they user intends in a non-transparent way -- in general i'm wary of things like this because i feel like predictability is really important. But everyone has different styles.

nitrix-ud · « **Reply #380 on:** November 09, 2010, 01:58 PM »

i switched from launchy to FARR a few years ago, and i can say it was the single best thing i've done on a computer...
get to know FARR and i promiss you'll never go back
you can do so much (i'm not talking about plugins i'm talking about core features ... filecontent, regex, dosearch, copyclip, variables, ...)
with some autohotkey scripts, you don't even know what OS you're running

keep up the good work Mouser

one happy FARR user

mouser · « **Reply #381 on:** November 21, 2010, 04:51 PM »

new release:

Version 2.93.01 - Nov 21, 2010

[MinorFeature] New minimal built-in update checking (optional) even for users with the DcUpdater tool installed.
[BugFix] Properties dialog now shows on Windows 7.
[MinorFeature] Added "balloon" launch command for showing a balloon mesage
[BugFix] Better default icons for web urls (could be blank in previous version)
[MinorFeature] You can now (manually) add urls and "restartsearch ..." entries to the history list

mouser · « **Reply #382 on:** November 21, 2010, 05:03 PM »

the reason i released this as a beta is that it uses the new built-in mini update checking code im adding to all of my apps, which can check for new versions even if you dont want to install the DcUpdater utility (though downloading updates is not as fun if you don't use DcUpdater). And i'd like to get a few reports that this is working ok before i make it official.

Tuxman · « **Reply #383 on:** November 21, 2010, 05:07 PM »

How can we check if it works while there is no newer version which could be detected?

mouser · « **Reply #384 on:** November 21, 2010, 05:09 PM »

hehehe good point.. its actually worse than that since if you check for updates its going to say you have a more recent version installed than is available.
maybe i should just make it the new version and deal with any troubles if they emerge..

Tuxman · « **Reply #385 on:** November 21, 2010, 05:11 PM »

Probably.

So if any error occurs, people will come here anyway.

mouser · « **Reply #386 on:** November 21, 2010, 05:18 PM »

ok you convinced me.

ebennetthill · « **Reply #387 on:** November 21, 2010, 07:49 PM »

Thanks for the new release. I've wanted to use the "properties" several times.
But the properties window appears behind the FARR window.
Does this happen with everyone? It should be in front, don't you think?

jaden · « **Reply #388 on:** November 22, 2010, 04:37 PM »

Thanks for the Win7 properties fix!

@ebennetthill the properties window shows up in front for me

ebennetthill · « **Reply #389 on:** November 22, 2010, 05:20 PM »

@jaden Thanks. Your reply made me look through the options and I found "Force FARR window on top" in Window Options. When I unchecked that, the properties window does show up in front.

mouser · « **Reply #390 on:** January 16, 2011, 11:02 PM »

previous release was popping up the options dialog every 12 hours when it checked for updates. new version fixes this -- sorry!

Version 2.95.01 - Jan 16, 2011

[BugFix] New updater code was popping up options dialog on checking, could result in random display of options dialog every 12 hours for no reason.
[BugFix] The ++arguments method of passing commandline arguements now does not lowercase options
[MinorFeature] Added some commandline options.
[MinorFeature] Added some plugins to list of installable plugins (farrwindowssearch,farrwebmetasearch,farrmilk)

mouser · « **Reply #391 on:** February 06, 2011, 02:11 AM »

Minor update but important for those who have been annoyed by the "no disk in drive" errors that can occur with shortcuts to missing files:

Version 2.96.01 - Feb 5, 2011

[BugFix] No more "No Disk in Drive" errors on shortcuts that link to unmounted drives (yay! thanks to all testers)
[MinorFeature] New options on Search Behavior tab to disable shortcut resolving (can speed up search of start menu but prevents search matching real linked filenames)

hanzo · « **Reply #392 on:** March 10, 2011, 09:52 AM »

i heard Faar was way better than launchy and here i'm. Strangely, I couldn't get Faar to remember my last entered text despite having the option "don't clear search text" ticked. The input box keeps going blank.

May I say a few fair words for launchy, if the author don't mind. The "second-guessing" nature of Launchy is very very misunderstood. In Faar, the use of keywords to launch something is very explicit, done through alias. U must first instruct Faar. However, in Launchy, the use of keywords to launch something is both implicit and explicit. We tell launchy the folders where they can guess, we type in something, and it gives us the nearest match it can find. After the guessing, launchy remembers the keywords in it's ini file, which users can edit (but is never taught to users unless one pokes around). This part works the same as Faar.

I like Faar. It seems to work very fast. Now, if only I can get it to remember my last inputed text.

Oh, I would really appreciate it too if Faar doesn't add the small registry entries to remember the registration dates. I'm a sucker for self contained portable designed softwares that doesn't leave registry entries and files in other folders.

Thanks for this great software!

mouser · « **Reply #393 on:** March 10, 2011, 11:43 AM »

Welcome hanzo -- and thank you for the well expressed thoughts. Launchy is an excellent program, no disagreement from me!

I'll check into the issue with chooding to NOT clear the search text -- this is one of those features that i don't use (and find hard to imagine why one would!) and so it may have gotten messed up recently with some other change.

One feature you may not know about which i find much more useful, is ctrl+Up and Ctrl+Down with cycle you through your paste searches. You could also type: historys to see a history of your past searches (or historyl for history of past launches).

If you edit the file configdir.ini and put as the first line: PORTABLE=TRUE
That should turn off any storage of anything outside the directory of FARR.

hanzo · « **Reply #394 on:** March 10, 2011, 08:30 PM »

Thank you so much for the response, Mouser. with your advise, Faar now works the way I need it to, and perhaps even faster once I get used to it - the use of search folders with modifier keywords + history (ctrl+up). Plus, the keywords typed automatically appear in the search box, saving me time typing all over again for the next search/launch. Thanks a million.

I also tried out the portable mode. It works beautifully.

This is a very fine application/folder launcher indeed.

mouser · « **Reply #395 on:** March 10, 2011, 09:58 PM »

At the risk of overwhelming you, there are about 36 video screencasts showing how to use different functions in FARR:
https://www.donationcoder.com/3ds/

hanzo · « **Reply #396 on:** March 10, 2011, 10:30 PM »

oh, i sure have. thanks a lot for the help.

hanzo · « **Reply #397 on:** March 12, 2011, 02:42 AM »

ok. just wana thank you again Mouser. after some poking around, Faar works exactly like launchy now and more. The "second-guessing" nature is just as good, memory usuage is a little smaller, and things seem to work little faster with history and search string history tracking and less to type.

Still, if the text input box could remember our last inputed text, it will be even faster. I wonder what I did wrong there. It still keeps going blank.

Thanks!

mouser · « **Reply #398 on:** March 12, 2011, 11:08 AM »

I wonder what I did wrong there. It still keeps going blank.

i very much suspect a recent change killed this option.. i'll put it back.

dnknitro · « **Reply #399 on:** March 13, 2011, 07:56 AM »

ok. just wana thank you again Mouser. after some poking around, Faar works exactly like launchy now and more. The "second-guessing" Still, if the text input box could remember our last inputed text, it will be even faster. I wonder what I did wrong there. It still keeps going blank.
-hanzo (March 12, 2011, 02:42 AM)

But would you want last entered text to be present and selected when the window is shown? If you wanna be able to execute last thing you did previously - just hit Enter and farr will run first item in the history.