Apologies if this is OT...

[Redhat]

Just wanted to let you know mouser, that I found this, take a look if you like - looks like a "simpler" thing to FARR 

http://launchy.sourceforge.net/index.html

[Babis]

Launchy is very poor compared to FARR. The ram consumption is way to high if indexing music documents and programs and the indexing options really limited. If you want to try the best indexing program, look at the wicked avafind, which indexes all HDD, including all new files on the fly:

http://www.think-less-do-more.com/avafind/

[nontroppo]

Hmm, RAM usage is low here. And, sadly, I've switched over to using it. FARR, as much as it is superior functionally, is just too slow for me; not infrequently I hit the hot key, start typing and lose a couple of letters thus have to backspace and retype, defeating the point of a quick launcher. FARR indexes on-the-fly which simply doesn't scale to the number of shortcuts (not lots, I don't index docs, just program shortcuts) I index with the speed I type. And it rescans on each letter pressed. Part of the problem may be flushing RAM while it is minimised.

Launchy is pretty but dumb — not ideal; but it uses only ~1-2mb more than FARR and comes up instantly. It also doesn't suffer from a long-standing problem with FARR in which alt+space can cause focus issues (I find alt+space ergonomically optimal personally). The focus issue and performance are my current two issues which tips the balance away from FARR for the moment. I'm patiently hoping for a new version one day to fix those.

Mouser — nevertheless thank you for your time and passion and talent, it is important to emphasise that! 

[mouser]

I will win nontroppo back to FARR if it's the last thing I do. 

[kfitting]

Let me second nontroppo on the speed issue... it's better than it was, but faster would be better still!  Is there any way you could buffer all keystrokes after the initial FARR call-up? 

I have not stopped using FARR, though I can understand nontroppo's frustration... and support!  Thanks mouser,

Kevin

[mouser]

i will fix.

[lanux128]

Launchy looks aesthetic, but imo it lacks a bit on the customising side.. and it would be nice i want to make a screencasting on how to launch a program but for day-to-day use, i'd still stick with f+rr.

[Babis]

Hmm, RAM usage is low here. And, sadly, I've switched over to using it. FARR, as much as it is superior functionally, is just too slow for me; not infrequently I hit the hot key, start typing and lose a couple of letters thus have to backspace and retype, defeating the point of a quick launcher. FARR indexes on-the-fly which simply doesn't scale to the number of shortcuts (not lots, I don't index docs, just program shortcuts) I index with the speed I type. And it rescans on each letter pressed. Part of the problem may be flushing RAM while it is minimised.

Launchy is pretty but dumb — not ideal; but it uses only ~1-2mb more than FARR and comes up instantly.

The problem starts when you try to index all the hard disks with additional file extensions. Then the ram consumption doubles. Also if I choose to add directory names, the results I get are not satisfactory, as sometimes it finds the directory name and not the program. I believe this program should be used with default options.

Also you talked about quick launch. Please have a look at avafind, which launches instantly, indexes all hard disks for all files (including all extensions and directories) and all new files are included in the index automatically in the separate window "Scout Bot".

[Amadawn]

Actually I've also being using Launchy much more often that FARR for a while. The main reason why I use these launchers is to start programs that are in Programs Menu and Launchy is really good at that, plus it looks very, very slick (looks are important to me  ).
The other main thing I do is to open folders, and for that I must use the windows "Run..." dialog. I sure with that I could use a single program for this but for the moment I cannot :-(

Sadly, I must agree with nontroppo in that FARR is a bit too slow for this purpose and does not look nearly as good as Launchy. Also it seems that FARR develpment as slowed down quite a bit as mouser has so many other cool projects to deal with simultaneously.

I think that something else that makes me prefer Launchy is that it shows you the program that will be started right in the main launchy window, while "alternatives" are shown a bit later in the dropdown box. Somehow I find this less distracting that the way FARR currently works.

I must also agree with nontroppo when I said that this does not mean in any way that I don't appreciate mouser's work in FARR, which is an awesome program and I still use from time to time. FARR was the reason why I became a donationcoder member and I am still very happy that I did. I don't think that you can say that Launchy is better than FARR or the other way around. They seem to cover slightly different needs and at the moment Launchy works better for me. But I am actually eagerly waiting for the next version of FARR and I'd be more than willing to switch back to FARR if the next version proves to suit my needs better than Launchy.

Cheers,

Amadawn

[nontroppo]

mouser: :beer: and :strawberries: for any fixes provided

amadawn: Functionally, launchy is inferior to FARR IMO. For example, the heuristics to determine order in the list are primitive and really non-optimal. I cannot weight entries and of course there are no aliases for power launching. Its only benefit is that, because it is primitive BUT uses a cache, it is quick for the number of shortcuts I have.

Aesthetically, launchy supports alpha-transparency in its skins and so it is going to look sexier. Of course I'd love alpha-transparency in FARRs skin, but that depends on the engine mouser uses. Still, I think FARR looks smart (the skins are nice and the UI flexible) and this is a very minor issue for me.

[allen]

The other main thing I do is to open folders, and for that I must use the windows "Run..." dialog. I sure with that I could use a single program for this but for the moment I cannot :-(

This one can easily be remedied in FARR.  I use it rather than the windows run dialog.  All you have to do is go into the groups editing tab and make a new group for the file explorer you want to use -- I've used it with windows explorer, xplorer2 and xyplorer with no problem. 

The configuration I use basically looks like this--
Regex pattern:
^([a-z]:\\?.*?)$
And the results:
XYplorer $$1|c:\Program Files\xyplorer\xyplorer.exe "$$1"
xplorer2 $$1|c:\Program Files\zabkat\xplorer2\xplorer2_UC.exe "$$1"
x2 Flatten $$1|c:\Program Files\zabkat\xplorer2\xplorer2_UC.exe "$$1" /F:1
win explorer $$1|c:\windows\explorer.exe "$$1"

When I type something that looks like a path c:\windows for example, it gives me that list of file explorers to choose from.

[Amadawn]

Thank you for the suggestion for the folder opening, but that does not solve the "folder autocompletion issue". I use the Run dialog because it allows me to navigate the file system very easily thanks to the fact that it autocompletes the folder names that I input, which makes it very quick to go to any folder. I don't think that that is currently possible with FARR.

I agree taht FARR's functionallity is farr ;-) more advanced that Launchy's, but as I said I found out that most of the time what I want to do is to launch some program, and for that Launchy works great. Until today in Launchy you could not search for different filetypes in different folders (you either searched for mp3 in all monitored folders or in none of them, for instance). But today they just released a new version, 1.0.0 beta, which adds the capability to select different filetypes per folder. Of course it still lacks the awesomelly powerful weighting capability of FARR (it is really cool to be able to give a -100 weight to anything containing "uninstall", for instance), but even then it is quite useful.

I have all confidence that mouser can overcome all the little things that make Launchy better suited for my needs. But until then, it is likelly that I'll keep using Launchy.

I also understand that for some people looks may not be very important, but they are for me, so the alpha blending in Launchy really makes me "want" to use it. FARR's skins are not bad, but not as neet, more constrained, in my opinion. They look quite similar to each other...

mouser, I hope you see this as a challenge. I'll love to go back to Launchy!

Cheers,

Amadawn

[reko100]

I have just download v1.0 of launchy to try out to see how it fare with the current alpha version of FARR...

I have to say it looks really nice and so much faster than FARR...maybe due to its index...

I have used FARR for more than a year after coming over from AppRocket, it has served all my needs....but i really feel that it is really too slow for me (alway missing my first 2 key press)

Also, after using launchy today, i found out that my needs are really simple. I just need to launch programs. And Launchy will be faster for this purpose. Will try out more of its functions to make a more detailed comparism.