also, how do i turn off the frightening big bold text on the edit line?

i was afraid not everyone would love that.. looks like i will have to add an option to go back to normal..

I can't tell you all how helpfull it is to have your bug reports and suggestions.. Really makes it fun.

glad to hear that, mouser..

btw, my rationale behind the copy path action is mentioned here in this thread.
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but please disregard it because i feel that the Ctrl+C shortcut is sufficient enough..

You actually dont need to use the * with folders or files, it will find patterns that have just the first few letters already.  the only time to use * is when you want like *.mp3 file patterns.  otherwise just do ABC and FARR interprets that as *ABC*.

Understood! (That's what has made FARR so user-friendly all along.) But now with the universe of FARR-accessible folders and files so much larger, it becomes useful at times to do explicit narrowing of the search, with the most common two examples being your example (*.xxx) and mine (XXX*). So why not have wildcard searches include both files and folders? Folders ending in *.xxx are extremely rare, so this capability would not interfere with your example.

lanux128, could you tell me what skin you're using?
Some thoughts from a bit of playing with Alpha 7:

It's surprisingly fast, directory searching works far better than I imagined.

I'm very glad by default it opens up the standard folder view like you'd get from browsing by "my computer" rather than Windows Explorer with the 2 pane view.  I've never liked that view, yet so many launcher programs use solely that.

Tab auto-complete is great.

It's a little confusing at first on how to navigate to a root, ie C:\ (alt+enter), so you may want to make this more clear or work with a standard enter.

I will definately be using FARR 2 over FARR 1!  Great improvements all around.  Seems stable to me so far, no bugs yet.

File explorer wish list:
--

It's tempting to try and use FARR as a file explorer, because it's so handy and works so fast.  There's been some good suggestions here on doing that.  Things that would also interest me, perhaps things that wouldn't work in general, but just throwing them out there:

Though 9 results are perfectly fine, it'd be nice to be able to scroll down to get more results as needed if possible.  Search for all matches can be pretty slow going.

I'm a little curious how when I type a directory, say C:\downloads\, it decides what 9 to show by default?  I'm guessing it's by alpha.  It would be nice, at least I think, to be able to sort by last modified.  Typically that's what I'm looking for when going to any directory.

Delete via keyboard key would perhaps be nice, if possible.
(Also just noticed the "shell context menu" option, that's really nice.)

Visuals:
--

I'm sorry to say I have to agree, the big bold font on a plain window background isn't too appealing to me.  It's counter intuitive to how input boxes usually work.

I'd go with either the original default icon, or the square-man icon.  Many of the new icons seem to have white pixels around the edges and it looks a bit unprofessional.  Perhaps its because I use a slim taskbar.

I also feel the skin should not colorize the results by default.

I like the new FARR very much.
The “folder Search” capacity is *great*.
The only thing I might still want or miss is the ability to “find” misspelled files or folders (i.e. : xeplo = explorer) and... even to use it more efficiently with a voice recognition software...
Apart from that, it’s really almost perfect as it is. Of course, more days of testing will either confirm that or give me ideas…

Thanks for a great app.

 

Armando

There's nothing about the new FARR that should use more memory, but there is a new option that tries to let FARR use more memory if it is available; you can change this easily, by unchecking the option in General settings tab, and then minimizing the program to the system tray:

I am partial to the blue F. That or the winman. Great icons!

I like the blue F too.

thanks tony - yep, it will be fixed in new version - seems the new directory searching messed up aliases somewhat.

thank god for all you alpha-beta testers.

entries would disappear

entries from what section?

i obviously need to make an option to put back the old input box.

thanks for the other bug reports, i'm going to try to get out a new version this week, lot's of little bugfixes needed.

thank god for all you alpha-beta testers.

We're all happy to help, and thank you for both the preview and the continued work on FARR.

Read the help file page on directory searching!

the \ is used to specify DIRECTORY patterns to look in.

there are a few special rules though:
the \ at the end means only display directory names in results.

the \ at the begining is like typing C:\ i think (if my memory serves me correctly).

so when you do \dow\dow\
it is looking for only folders matching c:\*dow*\*dow*\

farr behaves differently if you start with a real path like c:\ or \
it will only look where you tell it.

but if you do like dow\dow
then it is going to look for *\*dow*\*dow*

which can take a long time and search everywhere..

it seems i was probably wrong about the starting \ restricting it to c:\

to speed things up farr also does handle * stuff in dir names, i was just using them as a way of explaining what it does, dont actullay type those in your search.

in general what it does is this:
IF it thinks you are specifying an exact path, like
C:\program files\....
then it will ONLY search there.

if not, it will search all your normally specified search directories.

so the first thing it does it tries to grab the left most eact path match and start there.

so if you type
c:\Program Files\ad\acro

it finds "C:\Program Files"
but not
it finds "C:\Program Files\ad\"

so it will search everything in C:\Program Files

ill have to study your other screenshots for more comments to make..

I just installed FARR. I know the interface is the last thing you want to think about, but on my system some of the text is clipped.
I attached a bit of a screeen capture.
dk