What New Major Feature is Most Important for you in Find and Run Robot?

[mouser]

I'm trying to decide which of these two major feature to work on next for FARR:

• Indexing for Faster Search - this would involve building a large database index of drives/directories to facilitate faster searching
• Support for Plugins/Addins - this would involve creating a plugin api so other coders could write custom plugins for generate custom results or searching custom things.

Which one would you like me to work on first?

[urlwolf]

I voted for indexing.

Mouser, have you seen an ahk script called 320MPH? This is my current favorite for quicklaunching things. Really well thought of.

[lanux128]

Mouser, have you seen an ahk script called 320MPH? This is my current favorite for quicklaunching things. Really well thought of.

-urlwolf (January 30, 2007, 10:08 PM)

actually it's listed at the top in the 'Related Programs' section in Farr's help..

[lanux128]

forgot to mention earlier, i'm going for Plugin Support. btw, Launchy's version 1.0 Final already has this plugin support. among the plugins:
 

Foxy Plugin (foxy.dll)

The Foxy plugin will automatically load your FireFox bookmarks into the database.  Just search for them as you would applications.
Quick searches: Launchy loads Firefox quick searches and will index the keyword into the database.  Use it like you would a web search.

also, folder search & calculator plugins.. hmm.. do their authors lurk in Farr's forums? anyway, more info here -> Launchy v1.0 release notes..

[TucknDar]

I voted for indexing, but plugins would be awesome. Bookmark searches like lanux128 described would change the way I launch my bookmarks.

[lanux128]

yes, since firefox's bookmarks are not in a url files, it's difficult to search for them without opening Firefox itself.. so, i'm going to try out Launchy just to see how the the Foxy plugin pans out..

[TucknDar]

I use Opera, and the same thing can be said for the bookmark file that it creates. It shouldn't be too hard to eventually write a plugin as all links are stored in plain text format. but until there is plugin support, I'll try not to get too excited about possible plugins

[lanux128]

yes, with a plugin structure in place, all those talented programmers can try a hand in writing a plugin thus enhancing its popularity/usability even more.. then mouser can sit back and watch how Farr's usage expands..

[TucknDar]

nice try, lanux128, but I don't think mouser'll fall for that. Sitting back and watching, I mean

[jgpaiva]

I want to change my vote!!
Grr... 
I inadvertedly voted for plugins when i wanted to vote for indexing! Sorry

While i think it'd be nice to have farr search even more stuff, i think that it's more important for t to be able to search my whole disk. That'd make it just perfect

[TucknDar]

jgpaiva: I think I'd have changed my vote from indexing to plugins, so if it's ok with you, we'll just swap votes 

[nontroppo]

I want both!

Mouser, remember the idea of a memory cache too (simply store search results in RAM), that gets the speed of a cache with the simplicity of what FARR does now...

[nitrix-ud]

Hi mouser,

i know you'll hate me for telling my most wanted new feature (it's not really a feature...), but i'd like to switch to FARR so much

I'm still using Launchy, because it is much much faster to wake up, and never misses a keystroke...
When i use FARR, the time it opens, it misses 2-3 letters, for example when i launch Power Calculator, when i use FARR, i just have "er" instead of "power"
i'm not that fast a typist (around 60 wpm, maybe 100wpm when using keyboard launcher...) and my computer is quite powerfull (centrino, 1.5giga ram)

My guess is that launchy is faster (maybe not faster, but it does not miss first keystrokes) because it only loads an input box (and then a dropdown list of results) (pretty  much like app rocket...)
I'm pretty sure some people does not feal confortable using FARR because of this, just my two cents...

Keep up the great work, Cheers !!

[mouser]

nitrix are you using the lastest v2 alphas? I think (hope) they solve this problem. I'll send you the link.

[kingcrimson]

Mouser,

If you'd asked this question a while ago, I would have voted for improved speed. But since I got a new computer (and maybe because of search enhancements in FARR 2), I don't think the extra speed is now a priority. I also think that having the directory modifiers helps in the speed department as well.

I vote for the plugin system, especially for indexing the outlook address book, which I think would be a useful feature. Also, I envision a plugin architecture as eventually allowing access to the indices compiled by programs like google desktop, copernic, etc. These results could be assigned a weight, just like the internal FARR results.

Bob

[nitrix-ud]

nitrix are you using the lastest v2 alphas? I think (hope) they solve this problem. I'll send you the link.

-mouser (January 31, 2007, 02:30 PM)

yes i am ! 2.00.39

[JennyB]

I've downloaded GoogleDesktop,and it took all night to index my files.  It doesn't play too well with Opera: the sidebar is unsable. 

It does have a nice FARR type serch box though, which is faster than FARR, but not by as much as you might think. FARR's incremental search is a bonus. 

Perhaps it would be best to develop FARR in the directions that GD is not taking, which is why I am voting for plugins rather than indexing.

[kingcrimson]

In line with JennyB's comments - what I like is FARR's ability to easily tune search results. IMO, that is a great advantage over GDS (and something I think that GDS will probably never add, it would give away too much).

Now having the ability to talk to GDS via a plug-in would be cool. Assimilation is the key - resistance is futile 

Bob

[tranglos]

(Moved message from the contest thread where it didn't belong)

im still finalizing what the plugins will be able to do and hope to have an api in about a week.  they will be able to do several things - suggest results, affect scoring, take over actions on results, and even use the output window for arbitrary display of info.

-mouser (February 09, 2007, 02:38 PM)

One great piece of functionality would be to let plugins search against sources other than the filesystem. I once started a project I called Sling; the idea was to scan for matching executable "items" much like FARR does, except I wanted to scan for anything that was vaguely executable. I.e. not only files, but also Firefox bookmarks, telephone numbers stored in my PhoneDeck addressbook (or Outllok contacts), etc. That project never made it out of planning, but I would still love to have FARR run against my Firefox bookmarks. If the plugin API supported that, I'd try writing that plugin.

This has potential issues - in all likelihood it would not be as fast as FARR's "native" operation. Also, you might need to expose something like an IExecutable interface, since FARR cannot possibly know how to execute everything a plugin might find as a match for user's input. (Or just delegate launching the matching item to the plugin).

[mouser]

oh this is absolutely planned from the start.
a plugin will be able to return a list of results that FARR itself may have no way of knowing how to "launch" - and the plugin will take over launching, whatever that means to it.

(note that FARR does know how to launch urls so if a plugin returned a list of urls FARR could handle the launching).

[masu]

I vote for faster indexing

[dantheman]

Is this indexing thought still in the works?
I hope so!

 

[kartal]

I vote for true email and true contacts (thunderbird, outlooks express) search.

[wreckedcarzz]

I vote for more plugins and an API

[f0dder]

Indexing and unicode.