Here goes with the feature requests. Actually the first one isn't really a feature request. It's actually just a suggestion to update the included NirCmd to the latest version which has the option to launch with elevated privileges.
My only real feature request is FARR integration. You've already mentioned the idea of using FARR alias files in LBC but there are a lot of things FARR does that would exponentially increase LBC's featureset and user friendliness. This might be more of a FARR feature request since interfacing with FARR is already covered by the existing plugin architecture. It might even require additions to it.
Using FARR as a backend you could let users create command nodes based on searches. Ideally it would probably go something like this. There could be variations on the current Command and Folder/FileContents nodes where the user can either enter the appropriate FARR command directly or launch FARR to create, test, or fine tune it. You could combine multiple commands in a single node, sort alphabetically, and whatever else might be LBC specific.
Farr could also be used to launch programs which would be generally beneficial IMO because there are some things LBC can't seem to launch with the same command line FARR has no trouble with. The Control Panel aliases from FARR are a perfect example. If I use one of those command lines for a LBC command node it doesn't launch on my computer. I'm assuming there's an issue with SysWOW64 redirection because if I don't include the path (ie control.exe vs %windir%\system32\control.exe) it works fine.
At least having an option to launch with FARR would also have the advantage of allowing me to change the command for launching an item on the fly to add or edit switches. Either using FARR directly or copying elements of its search results display could also add the ability to launch with elevated privileges. In fact just generally speaking it would be an upgrade in filesystem integration.
Here's what could really be groundbreaking in any number of ways - both for LBC and FARR. You could share alias files online by simply attaching them to posts here. Other users download them and LBC could present a list of programs it recognizes based on the aliases. Ideally that would mean they should be as universal as possible since the location could be wildly different from one computer to another. Fortunately that suits FARR's featureset perfectly.
Now let's say somebody downloads LBC to try it out. Instead of having to find all their software manually or rely on simply mirroring the Start Menu they LBC/FARR could be able to identify their programs automatically in less time than it takes to learn the basics of the program now. You add an online help feature to type a question into which FARR then uses for a web search.
The default option could be to search the LBC and FARR forums specifically and maybe have some preconfigured searches worded to generate results for alias files or other common topics. Assuming they're getting automatic updates you could even fine tune the searches over time. It would be sort of like a living help system which also has the benefit of leveraging this community.
So let's say a user wants to figure out how to add Open Office to their launchbar. They open the online help dialog, check the box to search for aliases and type in Open Office. LBC sends the appropriate command to FARR to perform the search and then results are listed there. If there aren't any results (or maybe if there are) it returns a link to the forum so they can come and ask for help.
There would definitely be some challenges to address - besides the obvious development questions I mean. It might make sense for LBC to use a different configuration for FARR. With LBC you already have a pretty good idea of the sorts of things people need to find and they might want files to be ignored for LBC that they might want to find normally. It might also make sense to add a special set of toolbar buttons to FARR when it's launched in a LBC help context.
Challenges aside, though, I think the power of FARR could make LBC just as easy to use as it is powerful - and also a lot more powerful.
