Author Topic: FARR version 2 - discuss the best way to handle 'actions' (Read 57819 times)

mouser · « **on:** February 02, 2006, 10:41 AM »

the single most unresolved issue at the moment for me regarding farr (aka "Mercury Runner") is the best way to be more flexible about letting the user choose "actions", which is a request that has been made several times before.

let's look at the different things people want to be able to do:

1) find an application program on the start menu and launch it - the main intended function of farr, and still the dominent use and most important thing to do efficiently.

here we want speed and ease of launching, so we have incremental search based on program name, followed by a simple hitting of digit key, or alt+digit key corresponding to its number, or hitting enter once or twice if its at the top of the results. or double clicking the result of our choice.

2) using alias groups
here we have a preset group of applications or documents that we want to treat like a named menu.
we type the name of the menu (or partial), and then again simply hitting of digit key, or alt+digit key corresponding to its number, or hitting enter once or twice if its at the top of the results. or double clicking the result of our choice.

3) use a regular expression to specify a command with an argument
here the user types some string like "define subjunctive verb"
and the keyword "define" matches a regular expression which knows how to grab the "subjunctive verb" string and knows to present one or more actions associated with the keyword which the user can launch just as above cases #1 and #2, simply hitting of digit key, or alt+digit key corresponding to its number, or hitting enter once or twice if its at the top of the results. or double clicking the result of our choice.

4) suppose instead of launching a program you want to open a document.
this is also easy, you can search for a document by typing the name of the document; it is incrementally searched for just like any other file.
now you have a list of candidate matches in your result list.
if you want to do the default opening of the file, like a double click would do, you can, as in cases 1-3 above simply hitting of digit key, or alt+digit key corresponding to its number, or hitting enter once or twice if its at the top of the results. or double clicking the result of our choice.

cases 5+ are next..

mouser · « **Reply #1 on:** February 02, 2006, 10:51 AM »

ok now the trouble starts.

5) but suppose instead of opening the document you want to perform some other ACTION on a DOCUMENT.

this is where farr does not seem as easy to use.

now you basically search for the document, and then you have to select the result you care about and then trigger the right click context menu, which presents you with some common options, or select a submenu items to view the default system shell menu, where you can perform other operations.

it's not very efficicent or keyboard centric.

it is this case #5 that i think we are trying to find a useful solution to, in terms of presenting a gui interface.

it would be nice if we could figure out a solution that let you choose ACTIONS to perform on files in the same kind of keyboard centric incremental search system used to select files.

sort of like, first you select the file, then you could hit some special key and be shown a menu of actions like "open, delete, zip, etc." which you could then select using number keys, or search and refine by typing letters, etc.

it seems quicksilver supports something like this, and our mission is to find the perfect solution, which does not interfere with cases 1-4 above.

6) an alternate but similar approach might be when you know the ACTION first and then want to search with stuff that matches that operation.
for example nontroppo has talked about process management,
so maybe you want to be able to type:
"kill "
and then see a list of running processes which you could choose from and hit enter to kill.

in this case, the first word you type someone is detected as an ACTION which then presents a context sensitive list of results (here processes, but other times maybe the normal full file searching).

the problem is it's not always easy to resolve the inherent conflicts in these cases.

jgpaiva · « **Reply #2 on:** February 02, 2006, 11:29 AM »

That description is just perfect, nice way to organize things

My 2 cents for the problematic questions:

5)
How far are you on ContextMenu Commander? Maybe it would be the solution to this problem.
Something like this: The user selects the actions he wants preformed for each type of file (maybe in the Pattern Scoring dialog) based on it's explorer context menu and Farr actions (add to aliases, add explicit rule, etc..).
And then, when executing Farr, the user presses tab and the actions menu appears on the right half of the results menu (this would make the results menu have to be quite large). The next thing the user writes, is the name of the option from the options menu. Enter, would launch the first result on both windows (ie, the first action on the first result). Alt + # would trigger #result with first action, and ctrl + # would trigger first result with #action. ctrl + alt + # selects the #result, and waits for another keypress with the number of the option to launch.
Another aspect is: after the search, the results window appears, the user presses tab, the actions menu appear, and if the user presses down, it allows to select one result, press enter to select it, then the focus changes to actions menu, and the user selects the action to be performed.
One note on this interface: for this to really make sense, the right keys to be used, should be ctrl + # to launch # result, and alt + # to launch # action, since ctrl is on the left, and alt on the right.
I think this method is quite consistent and doesn't interfere with the first results.

6)
I haven't thought much about this, but maybe you could have aliases defined for actions, and when you write the aliases, the action menu appears, and you press tab to search for the file to do the action on?
(This is not very consistent..)

nontroppo · « **Reply #3 on:** February 02, 2006, 12:10 PM »

Good to see this discussion. i had raised this some time ago, trying to see how we could get the context menu amenable to keyboarders in an intuitive way.

The context is really what quicksilver excels at. I don't know much about your contextmenu utility, but maybe this can help? Can you give us a bit more info?

For the GUI it seems easier. For FARR, we start writing and FARR does its magic. At the moment we have focus in the text box. I see two things we may want to do next:

1) Select from the list: <up> and <down> arrow changes our list selection (which defaults to the first item normally). It would be neat that the focus is not taken off the text field (as it is currently). <TAB> does the same thing.

2) Do an action with our selection: just as with our list we had a "default" item, with actions there should be a default action. To activate actions, I'd recommend using the <right arrow> (activates the action pane even if we have focus in the text field), or <TAB> if somehow our focus is already in the list.

In these cases, <enter> executes the selected list item with the selected action. If the focus is in the text field, then it uses the defaults.

Thus we can keep typing, select the list with up/down and toggle whether we select items or actions with tab or left/right.

Here is a mockup for how actions can be presented. The panel slides out when a key that triggers an action selection occurs. This is normally hidden:
[attachimg=#1][/attachimg]

mouser · « **Reply #4 on:** February 02, 2006, 01:08 PM »

have a menu that pops up (or slides out AFTER you select the item and hit a key) is not technically hard,
but i keep thinking of wanting to choose actions through a similar key-based menu (like with alias groups) or incremental search..

for example:

what if you when you hit alt+1 (or hit enter once or twice) it would launch result 1.
but if you hit ctrl+1 it displayed in the status bar like "With Ethereal.lnk do.." and then in the results list appeared all the actions appropriate for that file (launch, delete, zip, etc.). which you could then search within, etc.

i don't know, feels like of messy and confusing, but you see what i'm trying to get at, to bring the actions into the same search based system rather than a menu.

an action menu may still end up being the best way to go but it just seems not quite to fit with the method.

i cant help but think there is a wonderful user interface puzzle here that we might be able to solve somehow..

like here is a CONSISTENT solution that would work, but it would require some adjustment to thought process.

one solution might be like a special character saying you are specifying an action, like you would type

dylan *edit

that would basically search filenames for "dylan" and searching ACTIONS for "edit"
we'd still have to find a way to show the list of actions..

the thing is that 95% of the time people arent going to be using actions, so altering the display for this case seems troublesome.

mouser · « **Reply #5 on:** February 02, 2006, 01:13 PM »

here's another theoretical, consistent solution that would have the benefit of clarity and ease of use.

what if you ALWAYS got a second prompt.

so you type "et." and up come the results as nontroppo shows.
you hit enter or alt+1 or whatever you currently use in FARR to "launch" the app, but
in this new approach,
that doesnt trigger immedate launching.
instead it progresses you to stage 2, action selection mode,
where the textbox is cleared and you see the prompt
"With Ethereal.link do:"
and then your results list is now filled with actions, the first of which would always be "Launch"
so you could hit enter again to launch it, or do an incremental search on the actions list,
or use a number to choose a specific action..

we could also offer the ability to bypass this 2 stage mode depending on alt+ctrl key states..

yes it requires an extra keypress, and having a searchable action list is not trivial, but its at least comprehensible.

mouser · « **Reply #6 on:** February 02, 2006, 01:16 PM »

yet another possibility:
use the menu solution BUT allow some special action keywords which if typed exactly could be used by experts.

like if you typed
*edit dylan

then it would really search for dylan (and not the *edit) string and when triggered it would use a special action edit instead of the default launch.

and user coul

actually this has some real strong appeal for one main reason,
it was basically the same approach we have suggested for handling the idea of search "modifiers", where you say that a certain keyword alters the search directories or scoring.

yes, this to me sounds like it may be the most satisfactory approach..

does everyone follow what i'm saying?

mouser · « **Reply #7 on:** February 02, 2006, 01:34 PM »

an attempt to clarify what i mean.

right now we have what we call group aliases, which when they match what you type present a menu of choices (and the ability to use regex to grab some part of what you write to use in a command).

ok now

what if we generalized the group concept as follows:

lets do away with "group aliases" and just have the general concept of "keywords"

when you define a keyword you specify:
1) the keyword/name
2) optional overrides for search directories, file patterns, and scoring
3) the action to perform ('launch","delete", run some abitrary command, etc)
4) or instead of #2 you can specify a special some SPECIAL lists to be displayed in results window:
a) control panel applets
b) recent app list
c) a fixed list of items specified manually (this is would amount to current group alias funciton)
d) list of running processes
e) list of toplevel windows
f) a regular expression to match from editbox, combined with a fixed list of items
g) ... other possibilities

ok so

i might add a keyword called "*mp3"
which restricted the search directory to e:\My docs\Music
and gave high bonus score to *.mp3

or the keyword "email" which
used option f) to specify a regular expression to match "email (.*)" and then launch email client

or use keyword "*kill" which
with a 3) command the kills a running process.
used option d) to show a list of runing processes,
so when you type *kill scree.." it would be narrowing down the list of running processes to those that match "scree" and then when you select it it would KILL it.

or use keyword "cpanel" to work with option a) to show control panel applet list and launch on select.

opinions?

jgpaiva · « **Reply #8 on:** February 02, 2006, 01:50 PM »

Mouser, i think you have found the perfect way! (i speccially like the *mp3 example you mentioned

)
I only have one small proposition:
How about if when you type the beggining of one of the "aliases", it would appear below, and you could press enter or tab, for it to complete, and then write your search?
eg:
*k {enter/tab}
and the rest of the work *kill would appear, and you'd enter:
screen {enter/tab}
and it would kill screenshot captor (if it was the first result, of course

)
Other than this, i think this might be the way to go!

ps: the aliases that act on a result, could have farr's icon instead of the folder icon, i think it'd be less confusing

Rover · « **Reply #9 on:** February 02, 2006, 04:34 PM »

@mouser
Regarding the 2nd stage of action...

Would it be easier/good to have the default action attached to [Enter] and 2nd or optional actions tied to ... [tab], [ctrl-enter]?

Maybe you're beyond this line of thought now...

Amadawn · « **Reply #10 on:** February 02, 2006, 04:44 PM »

here's another theoretical, consistent solution that would have the benefit of clarity and ease of use.

what if you ALWAYS got a second prompt.

so you type "et." and up come the results as nontroppo shows.
you hit enter or alt+1 or whatever you currently use in FARR to "launch" the app, but
in this new approach,
that doesnt trigger immedate launching.
instead it progresses you to stage 2, action selection mode,
where the textbox is cleared and you see the prompt
"With Ethereal.link do:"
-mouser (February 02, 2006, 01:13 PM)

If I am not mistaken this is almost what QuickSilver does. Once you select a document and hit Tab, it shows the list of actions below the document name. If that action requires a second document you can hit tab and the process continues until the whole command is reado to be executed (when ENTER is pressed).

I think Colibry does a similar think. Mouser, have you tried it? If you do, type "Col" -> this will show "Colibry", hit Tab then type "Set" -> this shows the Setup options, etc.

I think this could work really well.

I also liked the mockup by nontroppo, but I still prefer to "clear" the non selected elements on the list and just show the actions or options that you can perform.

nontroppo · « **Reply #11 on:** February 02, 2006, 05:06 PM »

Mouser, I see two seperate issues here:

1) A flexible typed command structure to allow one to flexibly type what one wants. This doesn't depend on the UI much. Your Reply #7 clearly extends this (as you say from the current alias groups) into something much more flexible and powerful.

2) How to allow the UI to guide the user. In this case, we need to allow a user to type their first term in as we currently do. Then we need to activate an action mechanism, and select either physically or through dynamic search. Quicksilver does allow dynamic search of actions and it is useful. In this case, making the edit box then receptive to dynamic search of actions is equivalent. I liked you "With Ethereal.link do:" suggestion to guide the user (using the same text entry field). But I think an additional panel of actions (as in my mockup, and as Quicksilver does) is less confusing than replacing the item list with actions list in the results window.

In theory, users can use either method. I believe (2) is better for novices and general users, and (1) is better for power users (we know how most people are a bit scared of aliases already!). I think both are compatible.

nontroppo · « **Reply #12 on:** February 02, 2006, 05:10 PM »

If I am not mistaken this is almost what QuickSilver does. Once you select a document and hit Tab, it shows the list of actions below the document name. If that action requires a second document you can hit tab and the process continues until the whole command is reado to be executed (when ENTER is pressed).
-Amadawn (February 02, 2006, 04:44 PM)

Yes it does IIRC too.

I also liked the mockup by nontroppo, but I still prefer to "clear" the non selected elements on the list and just show the actions or options that you can perform.
-Amadawn (February 02, 2006, 04:44 PM)

Yes, I agree that this is visually much cleaner, presenting the user with less visual "noise"

mouser · « **Reply #13 on:** February 02, 2006, 09:31 PM »

But I think an additional panel of actions (as in my mockup, and as Quicksilver does) is less confusing than replacing the item list with actions list in the results window. In theory, users can use either method. I believe (2) is better for novices and general users, and (1) is better for power users (we know how most people are a bit scared of aliases already!). I think both are compatible.

yes i think i tend to agree.. still trying to figure out the cleanest way to handle this case, without going crazy and implementing 10 different modes for doing each thing..

Amadawn · « **Reply #14 on:** February 03, 2006, 02:32 AM »

One cool thing that QuickSilver does (as you can see in http://docs.blacktree.com/quicksilver/what_is_quicksilver) is that it "stacks" every selection that the user does, from left to right, which shows very clearly what the user is doing and what the outcome of the action will be.

For instance, if you look at this:

you can see how the user selected a zip file, then selected the action "Move To..." and then it selected the folder called "Archive". After pressing ENTER the zip file will be moved to the "Archive" folder. All of this without using the mouse at all. I don't think that it can get more intuitive than that!

This interface is extremely cool because it shows VERY clearly the current selections and actions (as they are shown with bigger icons). The results of the search will be shown below, smaller, and only when the user selects something it gets added to the action "stack". This is shown in this other picture:

Mouser, you may want to have a look at http://docs.blacktree.com/quicksilver/quickstart_guide which explains the general principle of actions in QuickSilver and also at http://www.theappleblog.com/2005/02/18/quicksilver-changes-everything/ which has several pictures and a good explanation as well.

I already said that I don't think that Mercury Runner (

) should become QuickSilver for windows, but there are many good ideas to take from how QuickSilver does things (and it looks very good too!

).

As Mouser said, this is a difficult but interesting interface puzzle. But I think that QuickSilver found a pretty good solution for the puzzle. What Mercury Runner can do is add its own things, like aliases, super-configurable search procedure and expand that basic interface concept.

Cheers!

Amadawn

mouser · « **Reply #15 on:** February 03, 2006, 03:14 AM »

thank you for the links.. quite helpful..
i kind of like the idea of stacking actions and stuff.
im just resistent to all the need for the tabbing and stuff...

life would be easier if we insisted that the first word was always a verb.

so that you start farr, and the window shows a list of verbs like:

Run
Open
Email
Browse
Google
Define
etc.....

then you type a verb (or part of it until you get a match) and then hit space key.

once a verb is selected, the rest of what you type will select from the search directories, searching as always,
OR act like a regular expression pattern match so you can type "email [email protected]" or "define subjunctive" as currently.

the key difference those is that it would INSIST that the first thing you do is select an ACTION, before file searching would begin, though we could make this as simple as typing r or l or . for default action of "launch/run"

so to launch photoshop you would bring up farr,
and see a list of actions:

r - run/launch - run or launch a program or document
d - delete - delete a file
g - google - do a google search
define - define a word using dictionary
email - send an email

then you would type r which would restrict action list to the only matching r command, which would be narrowed down in the results, then you hit space,
and some queue text would say "Run.." and then the results box would clear and youd' start typing "photo" just like you do now in farr, and then hit enter when you find it, so your total typing would be:
"r photoshop"

or you could have done "run photoshop"

or "run photo shop"

the point to this method is requiring that the first word, and ONLY the first word be used to select an action, from some list (predefined and editable by user);
and only after an action is selected does the program shift into multi word search files mode.

-

the drawback is you need to know what you plan to do with the file before you start, and you can show just the context relevant actions for the object.
the advantage is if you know what you're doing you type very little with no crazy tabbing and right arrowing, it's all one smooth sentence.

mouser · « **Reply #16 on:** February 03, 2006, 03:28 AM »

a way around the need to know the action ahead of time might be to let user type like:
find photoshop, launch

or
find photoshop, delete

the point being that the first "action" is a generic "find" and then the , says uses the file and perform context sensitive action "launch"
(ie after the , the results list would turn into a list of actions you can perform on the file, whereupon user types launch to select launch from that list).

jgpaiva · « **Reply #17 on:** February 03, 2006, 03:38 AM »

Mouser, i like your last proposition. Specially this:

then you type a verb (or part of it until you get a match) and then hit space key.
-mouser (February 03, 2006, 03:14 AM)

But when it comes to running something, the user could define "run" alias to have a huge bonus, so as it would be always the first option, and so, he could just do :
{space}screen{enter}
to launch screenshot captor, right?
I only have one doubt. In your model, i think there will be the need to define if after that alias comes another alias or not. I say this because ther could be some alias that should have other alias after them.
I don't know if you're thinking about implementing this, but for the mp3 example up in this post, the user would do:
mp3{space}play{space}somemusic.mp3{enter}
to play it, or
mp3{space}enqueue{space}somemusic.mp3{enter}
to enqueue it.
(of course, this is only possible if the user defined play en enqueue, or Farr could somehow know what was the context menu for the file)

mouser · « **Reply #18 on:** February 03, 2006, 03:42 AM »

yes, we could make space bar always default to meaning the default launch/run command.

so if you wanted to do what farr does now, youd start by hitting spacebar to choose the action "find/run/launch" and then you could start typing the filename patterns as normal.

and the list of actions shown at startup would never change order, they would be a fixed list that user could control.
they would also include "plugin" commands.

mouser · « **Reply #19 on:** February 03, 2006, 03:44 AM »

interesting idea about nesting aliases.. this is getting a little interesting now, like the idea of treating actions like a decision tree..

mouser · « **Reply #20 on:** February 03, 2006, 04:06 AM »

ok i have an idea.. i feel like we might be getting warm...

what about this:
what if the dialog popped up with 2 editboxes, either side by side or one on top of the other, like this:

FIND: _________________
THEN: _________________

followed by the normal results list.

important: the THEN: box will start out saying "Launch"

ok now,
you can at this point type the name of the file to find, and get incremental results, just like it current FARR.

if your result is at the top of the list, hit enter to run it. or use a digit key to select the one you want.

BUT you can also hit TAB to proceed from the FIND: box to the THEN: box,
whereupon the results list will display a set of context sensitive ACTIONS you can perform.

we can even used commas here to do as jpaiva suggeted to have nested actions.

and now here is the kicker:
we could say additionally that when a recognized action word is detected as first word, and then you hit space it would automatically move this word to the THEN: box (removing it from main edit box) and then let you continue searching for the file to perform the operation on.

SO:

you could type
"photoshop" ENTER to launch photoshop.

or

"photoshop" TAB "properties" (selecting properties froma list of context-sensitive actions that can be performed on exe files
to see the exe properties

OR

"kill" + SPACE (which would recognize the term KILL as an action, and move it to the THEN action editbox,
followed by "firefox" which would then be searching for firefox in results listbox of running processes.

OR

"define" + SPACE (moves define into THEN: box) + "subjunctive"
results list would should the different websites that can be used to search.

mouser · « **Reply #21 on:** February 03, 2006, 04:10 AM »

alternatively we could have 3 editboxes:

DO: ___________ (defaults to FIND)
WITH: _____________ (defaults to searching in the file list like normal FARR)
THEN: ______________ (default to LAUNCH)

this matches the idea i was saying before about how the first thing you always specify is a VERB (DO)

so now the operation would be:

bring up FARR.

you start on DO editbox, just hit tab if you want default action of FIND
then type the file to find, hit enter to launch,
or hit tab to choose from context sensitive actions while typing in the THEN editbox.

or for emailing:
bring up FARR
type email which narrows from the available commands.
then hit tab and the editbox label maybe changes to say " EMAIL TO:" , and third line changes to "SUBJECT:"
and you type the email address, hit tab to go to next field, type the subject, hit enter.

you get the idea.

jgpaiva · « **Reply #22 on:** February 03, 2006, 04:10 AM »

interesting idea about nesting aliases.. this is getting a little interesting now, like the idea of treating actions like a decision tree..
-mouser (February 03, 2006, 03:44 AM)

I think you and i are in the same page

and the list of actions shown at startup would never change order, they would be a fixed list that user could control.
they would also include "plugin" commands.
-mouser (February 03, 2006, 03:42 AM)

I don't think that the list of actions would never change order... Why not have it working like the other aliases will work? you can define a start point, and then they get more bonus the more they are used..
So you could define "run" to have like 100000 points, to be sure it will be at the top, but you let farr decide if "edit" sould or shouldn't be before "extract".
I just think this would make the creation of new action aliases much easier.
What do you mean by "plugin" commands?

nontroppo · « **Reply #23 on:** February 03, 2006, 04:12 AM »

I haven't had much time to read through the latest incarnation (I am at work), but I am a bit worried about forcing actions first, or necesitating pressing space before searching for items. I think there should be flexibility. I prefer using *action as a shortcut to do something and letting default typing search as it does now. Sorry if I've misunderstood...

And nesting aliases is neat, a textual equivalent of Quicksilver's visual guide.

mouser · « **Reply #24 on:** February 03, 2006, 04:15 AM »

im a bit concerned as well with having to specify an action first... sometimes it would match your brain and sometimes not..
see my FIND + THEN post above for an alternative.

the basic idea here is that it would behave like FARR does now, except
youd have a 2nd editbox which showed you what was going to happen when you hit enter (ie launch the file)
and you could hit TAB to go to that editbox to change the action (and search actions in the results list).

to me this is pretty elegant, the only problem is what happens when the file you are interested in is not at the top of the results list. hitting tab to go to the THEN editbox would be showing you commands for the top result which is not what you want, so youd have to specify the correct item first.

you could get around that by having like

FIND: _________________

[results list]

THEN: _________________

so that the THEN editbox was at the bottom.

so you type the file, hit tab to go to restults; if your chosen result is not at top then select it with arrow keys and hit tab again to go to THEN box to choose an action or hit ENTER to launch.

furthermore, i suppose you could let user choose the order of these 3 panels,
some might choose:
ACTION: ___________
FIND:___________
[retsults]