FARR's what first introduced me to DC and one of the most used apps on my PC.  Went to use my wife's computer the other day and spent several minutes sure her computer was broken--alt+space did nothing, the catalyst which every application on a computer system relies upon was not present, nothing worked!  She did have something on there called a "start menu", but I am not one for fumbling with ancient technology that may or may not be booby trapped.

Haha, thats funny.  And often the funniest things are true.  I also spend an uncomfortable amount of time (whole seconds!) on a clients computer wondering why "pause/break" doesn't work, only to realize that they of course dont have FARR installed.

farr already has this, but perhaps i could add more options about maximum autosize settings to make it more obvious.

Thanks Angel for some very reasonable comments -- critiques like this will always be welcome on this site.

I'm in the middle of working on something right now so i'll reply more in detail later.  Some of these issues have been implemented with version 2, some have not.

At some point we should probably have a discussion about ways to improve the looks of FARR.  As someone who had to be dragged kicking and screaming to add skin support for FARR, i'm a hard sell.. I tend to prefer the standard windows interface.

Having said that, here are some screenshots of FARR demonstrating some of the visual options now available in version 2, including custom font settings and large icon mode:

BUT, the time it'd take to change the looks would probably be better spent in improving other parts of farr, at the expense of losing some "costumers" because of the looks.

jgpaiva was spot-on with this point. before the days of plugins in Farr, i was tempted to use Launchy not because of the looks but because there was a plugin for searching Firefox bookmarks. this plugin feature has been implemented in Farr since then and has expanded to several other useful plugins.. and also that Farr allows me tweak more than other launchers is another appeal, this is my personal opinion, of course..

In my opinion the only two options  amadawn mentioned that FARR 2 really “lacks” are the index and the uncontiguous search (but launchy lacks many features that Farr has).

So… An index, yes... and Mouser is well aware of that aspect (might even be using locate's?). But I’m sure Farr wouldn't be as great without also keeping its current search mode.  I’ve used quicksilver and Launchy, and, well, when I rename files — which I do all the time — I want my files to be available now. Not in 20 min, or after I manually reindex my HD.

Uncontiguous search? that would be nice, but I wonder if it really adds that much usability. Maybe.

Oh, and there’s the look thing. For me, if it’s functional, I couldn’t care less about the looks. And I actually like FARR’S look. Not very glamour if you use the windows default, but... Compared to other launchers, with farr I can see more files with more details (except for picture view — but then, I prefer to use something like faststone or something like that)… And I need that level of detail since Farr is also my file explorer for quick navigation.

Anyway, Farr is far from ugly -- the slenderFARR.skn is actually quite sexy -- it’s just not… flashy. But yes, a quicksilver bubbly shiny candy look might attract more people. Won't be using though. My windows still has the 95 looks...

What FARR will not do on its own is let you type a string of letters without spaces and match those at different places. 

Yes. I thought that was what uncontiguous meant in that context...

Personally, I don't care to much about "type a string of letters without spaces and match those at different places". I'm happy with "f f" (instead of "ff"). I usually type the first syllable of a word anyway. Faster and I don't have to memorize patterns.

Maybe the performance hit wouldn't be too bad IF there was an index? Dunno...

as an optional feature.

I'm all for it too... as an option. 

I personnaly love the fact that FARR searches without an index

so +1 for indexing BUT as an optional feature

what would be really great is the following :
specify in a "dosearch" command what kind of search you want to use

for a huge folder you want to use the index
for instance :

Music album search $$1 | dosearch -alias +folder_music +open_winamp +\ +USEINDEX $$1

i would use it !!

I really agree with nitrix, we should be able to select indexing (or not) for each alias individually. For example, i wouldn't use indexing to search start menu, but i definitely would to browse my mp3 collection.

mouser (and others),

thanks for your answer and specially for showing off the new skin capabilities in FARR v2. It certainly shows and improvement over FARR v1. It is still not as nice as other launchers but it is better than before, which is great. BTW, is it possible to disable the numbers in the "big icons" mode?

Regarding the "look" of FARR, one thing that I like in Launchy, Dash and Quicksilver is how they really "highlight" the current selection. That is, the element would be launched if you clicked ENTER. I think that this should be prominent in the interface, not just be the first result in the list of search results. I also like how Dash and Quicksilver highlight the letters that are being matched (this is more important when you have intra-word non-contiguous matching, which FARR currently lacks).

As a final note on "eye candy" and "looks". I love the way QuickSilver fades in and out when you use it. That sort of thing could be implemented without modifying the current skin capabilities of FARR. It could even be a plugin, with several fade-in/out animations to chose from (and obviously it shoul be totally optional). Maybe that is an easy way to differentiate FARR in the looks department compared to other launchers?

I will certainly give the new version a try once it is released. I am happy to see that a few of the weaknesses in the previous version have been improved.

One particular comment that I'd like to make is that I think that the "real" intra-word non-contiguous matching (sometimes called "fuzzy matching") is really a _must_. It does not seam a big deal until you start using it but it is really useful and once you get used to it you may never want to use a launcher that does not have it. When coupled with "automatic learning" (i.e. results re-scoring based on user selection) it becomes a really nice way of "automatically" creating keywords.

What I mean is that, in FARR, it is often suggested to create an alias when you want to use a certain name for a certain program or file (say ff for Firefox). But that is the whole point! I _don't_ want to have to manually create keywords. But that means that you have to do that for every computer where you use Launchy (unless you use a usb key or something). And it takes longer than letting the launcher observe what you do and learn what you want it to do. Not to mention that it is also harder for non power users to use this feature.

It is hard to explain, but it really makes a big difference. And having to add a space between the letters would be annoying (the best example is firefox, which I currently can start by simply tapping twice the "f" letter).

And this is another reason for indexing, I think. As you said, implementing this sort of "fuzzy matching" may be too costly in a pure search based program like FARR. But for index-based launchers this is not a problem whatsoever.

I really liked the idea that a previous poster had, were you could select whether you want to index or search each individual folder. I also think that it may be nice if you could do "both" at the same time. That is, quickly present the results of the index search, and then do a search in the background and show any additional results as soon as they are ready. Maybe this could bring the best of both worlds?

Another question that I have is: how does the new version of FARR handle "alternative" modes? I really like how in Launchy if you select "Google" (by typing gg for instance) and type TAB you go into "google search mode". In Dash this is even more evident, as the "Google search" text appears on top of your editbox which makes it clear that any words that you type will be used for a google search.

Another related question is how does FARR handle "alternative actions". By default, hitting ENTER opens or executes the program or file selected. Can you select things such as "open folder" or "copy", etc? In Dash and Quicksilver you can by hitting TAB until you select the action that you want to perform.

As a final note I'd like to answer jgpaiva regarding the trade off between improving the FARR interface versus adding new features. I have to say that the looks of an application can often limit its capabilities. For example, QuickSilver has a really neat "multi-level" "stack" interface, where you can select a file, type tab, select and action, type tab and select a "modifier" for the action (e.g. select a filename, select "copy to..." and select the folder to which the file will be copied). I don't think that this is something that is too difficult to implement. But in Quicksilver it is very natural as every time that you hit tab the selected item is "saved" into a "stack" that is shown in the interface very clearly. So the interface flexibility not only looks good but also adds a good deal of functionality, making it trivial to add this sort of feature. In FARR (and sadly, also in Launchy) this would not be nearly as easy to do, as they are based around the concept of a single edit box where you type your command. That could never be as powerful as the stack based interface approach that QuickSilver (and to an extent Dash and the new SkyLab from Candylabs) has.

Anyway, I'm really looking forward to the FARR v2 release. I don't think that I could give up "fuzzy" matching at this point, but maybe you guys will change my mind? :-)

Cheers,

Angel

mouser,

thanks for taking my comments into consideration :-)

Let me try to explain what I mean by automatic learning. Basicallly, what it means is that everytime that you select a certain search result, the score of the selected search result increases in two ways. First the overal score of that item (file or program) increases for any search that matches its name. Second, the score of that particular item for the set of letters that you used to find that search result also increases greatly.

For instance, let's say that I want to start visual studio. If I typed "visual" it would probably be one of the first (if not the first) result in Launchy. But let's say that I want to start visual studio with "vs" instead. Probably, if I just type "vs" Microsoft Visual Studio will not be the first result to appear in the list. Maybe it will be the 5th or 6th, for instance. I can then use the down key and select it (i.e. I press ENTER). Then, the next time I type "vs" Visual Studio will be the 1st or 2nd item in the list. If it is the 2nd I can just select it again and the next time it will certainly be the 1st result. Launchy automatically learnt that I want to use "vs" as the keyword for Microsoft Visual Studio.

The neat thing is that Launchy also scores higher any previously selected items compared to items in its index that have never been selected. So, imagine that when I first typed "vs" Microsoft Visual Studio were not even on the list. No problem. I can type "visual" that first time (or maybe just "vis") and find and start visual studio. Then the next time I type vs Visual Studio will certainly be on the list as Visual Studio does match "vs" and now it has a higher score.

I don't know the exact heuristics that Launchy uses, but it is really cool. You can feel how Launchy is learning what you want. Very often it will do the right thing right away, but when it doesn't it is very easy to "teach" it. There is no need to use menus and keywords to configure it.

Now, imagine that later on you install some other program called "version control", for instance and for some reason you don't want to use "vs" to start visual studio anymore, but to start this new program. Well, you simply need to select "version control" a few times (once or twice) after typing "vs" and Launchy will quickly learn that you changed your mind. Visual Studio will still be shown on the list of results, probably as the second option.

By the way, Launchy _also_ has a pretty flexible keywords plugin
(installed and enabled by default) but in my experience you rarelly need to use it as the automatic learning, coupled with fuzzy matching works fine in most cases. The only times that making a keyword is necessary is when you want to use a keyword that does not match the file name or if you want to be able to pass parameters to the program that the keyword starts.

BTW, I may be making sound all of this too fancy, with names such as automatic learning and fuzzy matching. The whole point is that the launcher should just pay attention and try to do what I want it to do :-)


Regarding the stack vs the +ACTION modifiers (which by the way I think are pretty clever and cool) I think that the stack based approach has an advantage in that, once you select one item in the stack, the launcher can use its "search" capabilities to match the next element on the stack.

Let me explain with one example:
Imagine that I want to send an email to you and I want to attach a certain log file to the email.

In QuickSilver I can first search for the log file, called "My log.log" for instance. Imagine that I type "log" and find "My log.log". I type TAB. The default action was "open" but I type "e" which finds the "email as attachment" action. I type TAB. I type "mou", which finds "mouser@donationcoder.com" on my address book. I type ENTER. A new email is open in Outlook, addressed to mouser and with the file "my log.log" as an attachment. Total keys typed:

"log[TAB]e[TAB]mou[ENTER]" -> 10 in total.
How many would it take with the +ACTION approach? FARR cannot continue matching after the 1st element is found, can it? And even if it could, it would be a bit ackward, because if it starts showing you the email addresses on the results list, then you lost the name of the file that will be attached (as you did not type the whole filename, you just looked for it my typing a few letters). With the stack based GUI, you keep all the information, and if you make a mistake you can go back easily (just type ESC to go back to the previous stack level).

Also note how after you type each "TAB" the "search context" changes in a Stack based approach. Initially it searches for files and programs. Then it searches for actions and finally, depending on the action type it may search for something else (in this case for email addresses). Plus, it you have automatic learning you can just type "e" for the "email as attachment action" because the launcher learnt that you want to use "e" to select that particular action.

I agree that these types of usages are a bit advanced. But when the interface makes this powerful capability extremely accessible, even for non power users.

So again, looks can improve the program capabilities in some cases. I think that this is a very good example.

BTW, as I said, I really appreciate you guys taking my comments into account. I will definitely keep checking on FARR from time to time.

Angel