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FARR version 2 - discuss the best way to handle 'actions'

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Amadawn:
Wow! This is an interesting thread!

mouser, you talk about having the first word be always a verb. In my opinion that causes a problem because most of the time what you want to do with FARR (or at least that is what I want) is to find SOMETHING. So why not do as QuickSilver does, and require always to have first a "SUBJECT" (i.e. what we are going to work with), then a verb (what we are going to do with it, which by default would be launch) and finally an object (if the VERB requires another parameter, like where to copy a file for instance).

I think that would solve the problem because you would get the current, default behaviour (which is what you normally want) but can still add modifiers to the task at will. Also it does not limit you to actions that work on a single file.

Amadawn

mouser:
i think its impossible to do what we want and have subject first.
the only choices are always verb first, or combined verb+subject first.

why cant you do subject firt? well because we want to support things like being able to say:
"email [email protected]"
or
"define subjunctive"
or
"google happiness"

ie after you type the verb only then does it know how to interpret what you type.


but we could stick with the approach we have now which combines the two and tried to guess what you want.


requiring a verb first (which would default to "launch" if you hit space or tab) would make life a lot cleaner.

the main problem is it makes the 95% case more troublesome.

jgpaiva:
OK Jan-S, i think you got me convinced ;)
Double-pressing TAB to select the first result seems the right solution to handle all the problems.

I think that now this solution has came to a mature state, it can successfully handle all the cases and is both intuitive and powerfull, now, let's hear the word of the "headmaster" (aka mouser  :tellme:), and i think it would be nice if other Farr-using members could post their opinion (who knows, there might be a better way to do this? :D ).

Actually it's not my idea, I've read that SHIFT+TAB is used by Quicksilver (in another thread). And again, ESC is easier to use than a key combination here, but nothing speaks against using both shortcuts here, does it?-Jan-S (February 03, 2006, 09:11 AM)
--- End quote ---
Yes, i agree that ESC is easier to use, but SHIFT+TAB makes more sense. This only proves that not always the most intuitive way of doing things is the easier way ;)

As for the manuals and help files for this, i hereby officially offer myself to do (at least a few) screencapture animations of how to do use these new features.

Pro users should be able to remove them, though :D -Jan-S (February 03, 2006, 09:11 AM)
--- End quote ---
I agree, having the possibility of removing them would be nice, since Farr will also become a launchbar, you want to have as much space available as possible :D

And the buttons could have a "return key" and a "tab key" icon so users will eventually try them and notice how much easier this can be ;)
-Jan-S (February 03, 2006, 09:11 AM)
--- End quote ---
Agreed!  :Thmbsup: :Thmbsup:

jgpaiva:
the only choices are always verb first, or combined verb+subject first.
-mouser (February 03, 2006, 11:39 AM)
--- End quote ---
So, does this mean that the right approach is the context-sensistive groups?

Amadawn:
i think its impossible to do what we want and have subject first.
the only choices are always verb first, or combined verb+subject first.

why cant you do subject firt? well because we want to support things like being able to say:
"email [email protected]"
or
"define subjunctive"
or
"google happiness"

ie after you type the verb only then does it know how to interpret what you type.


but we could stick with the approach we have now which combines the two and tried to guess what you want.


requiring a verb first (which would default to "launch" if you hit space or tab) would make life a lot cleaner.

the main problem is it makes the 95% case more troublesome.
-mouser (February 03, 2006, 11:39 AM)
--- End quote ---

OK, I understand the issue. However, I still believe that there must be a way to cover all cases and keep everybody happy.

As you say, the cases in which we absolutely need the verb to come first correspond to perhaps 5% of the functionality of FARR. Those, I believe, can be covered as "special cases" where the user can define "keywords" that when selected would require some additional parameter.

But if the user types/selects any other item, it could then simply type the name of one of the actions linked to that action, and perhaps follow by another parameter.

For instance:

Type: tax<tab>(finds "tax plan.doc") em<tab>(finds "email to")[email protected]<ENTER> (eventually FARR could even search in the addres book, but that's another issue). This sends "tax plan.doc" by email to "[email protected]".

But you could also type:
define<tab>(finds "action define:", stops searching for stuff)rose<ENTER> which fires the default web browser and looks for the definition of "rose".

I think that this method has the advantage of being very intuitive, covering all cases and requiring very little keypresses. Of course if at any point there is some ambiguity (like for instance if there were both a "tax plan.doc" and a "taxi address.txt" the user would need to use the keyboard arrows or the Ctrl+number technique to select the one that he wants. Same thing for actions, where instead of typing "em" you could simply use the arrows to select "email", "copy" or whatever other actions supported by that file type.

I agree however that this might be complicated to code, but hey, you are the wizard coder and the one that seemed eager to solve a complex UI puzzle! :)

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