Suggestion: List by Alphabet Letters

[howardb]

Strong suggestion: List results by letter of the alphabet (e.g., A, B, C, D etc.) rather than the  numbers 1 through 9 (e.g., 1., 2., 3. etc.). Then users have up to 25 chances to select an item with a single keystroke, rather than just 9 chances. For an  example of  this type of listing, see the older dos freeware, acd (advanced change directory).

[Lashiec]

There's a problem with that approach in that it would conflict with the typing box, if you want to select the result labeled as 'P', you'd simply add 'P' to the search string. A workaround would be to switch the focus to the result list as soon as the search through the directories is finished, and select the item from there.

[howardb]

> There's a problem with that approach in that it would conflict
> with the typing box, if you want to select the result labeled as
> 'P', you'd simply add 'P' to th e search string.  A workaround
> would be to switch the focus to the result list as soon as the
> search through the directories is finished, and select the item fr
> om there.

As you mention, though, the numbers conflict with the typing box, if you must type a number for the searched for program. Your solution - using <alt> 1 instead of just 1, would work for alphabet letters as well. And an alta-key is So, so much easier (for me) then selecting an entry in the results box with the mouse, as you suggest.

I do not understand your suggestion of adding P to a search string, for instance, that ordinary would read: notepad. I dont understand how FARR would find a bunch of programs with the letters, Pnote  or Pnotepad and I could select one from others by
typing P. Could you explain? I suspect, I would still need to select with the mouse.

[Lashiec]

I think you misunderstood me.

What I said is that when you type, for example, 'Notepad' in the typing box to launch a desired program, and you get, say, 35 results, using your suggestion could mean something like this: just as you stop typing, you see the program you want to launch is binded to the 'P' key, so you press it, but instead of launching the desired program, FARR adds the letter to the present string in the typing box, resulting that FARR is now searching for 'Notepadp'. This is because the focus is in the typing box, not on the results list.

Solutions? The one I said before it's an option, another one would be using what you said, pressing 'Alt+<Alphabet Key>' to launch the app without typing the <Alphabet Key> in the typing box, and finally, pressing <Tab> (this is how it works now) to focus the results list and then press 'P' to launch the desired app.

I hope it's clear now

[mouser]

I've thought about this before since it's a pretty easy thing to add.
As you say, you would launch with alt+letter.

Let me tell you why i decided against it:

• First, i think that from a usability standpoint, any result not in the top 10 is not likely to be the one you want to launch, and the better solution is to narrow things down.  In other words i think that cognitively it's going to be hard to launch items > 10 regardless of whether there is a hotkey or not, since we just aren't looking that far down.
• Second, i think that it will be more useful to us to keep the alt+LETTER hotkeys available for other things, like alt+P for preferences, and other hotkeys for showing context menu, etc.