Some productivity and usability suggestions

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stax76

5 discussion posts

Hello,
I would like to thank for FileSeek and I've some productivity and usability suggestions:

Allow to pass line number to other application using macro, Scintilla based Notepad++ has a line number command line switch.
Support searching wildcards since it's easier and faster then regex.
Show combo box dropdowns when enter or double click, Windows 7 search text box in explorer shows it on enter, a lot faster than hitting a small button.
Enable theme support for the ListView: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/555383/making-vista-style-apps-in-c
Option to open with other application double-clicking a list view item.
Add context menu to the text preview in order to copy.
Option to add application icon to shell context menu.
Option to add to folder background instead of folder only:

Code
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Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\Background\shell\Search with FileSeek]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\Background\shell\Search with FileSeek\command]
@="C:\\Program Files\\FileSeek\\FileSeek.exe \"%1\""

I'm a .NET developer as well, how can I help?

I'm willing to donate 10€ with PayPal if the application continues to improve.

Question: how do you elevate privileges writing to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT, I thought it's not possible to elevate privileges for a running application. I know some file IO methods in th VB My namespace do prompt with the UAC dialog instead of throwing a exception, is this also true for registry methods in the My namespace? Registry methods in the Win32 namespace would just throw a exception when the privileges aren't sufficient.

Sorry for the long post.

Regards,
Frank

Jun 26, 2009 • #1

Hi Frank, thank you for the excellent feedback! I have been hard at work on FileSeek 1.8, and I am incorporating many of your suggestions.

Here are my responses to your points:

1. This is coming in version 1.8.
2. You can do this already. Just type the wildcard you want, like *jon*, check off "use regex" and it will search using those wildcards.
3. I think Windows 7 uses a different control for this, this won't be included in version 1.8.
4. This is coming in version 1.8.
5. Double-clicked results open using the user-configured application by default now.
6. This is coming in version 1.8.
7. This is more complicated. In order to add an icon I would need to create a shell handler DLL that Explorer would host in it's own process. This opens up the possibility for possibly Explorer crashes/issues, so I won't be adding this. I don't think the icon is worth the potential performance/stability trade-offs.
8. This is coming in version 1.8.

You can see the progress so far in the official change log here:
http://www.binaryfortress.com/fileseek/changelog/

Thanks!

Jul 6, 2009 • #2

Sorry, I forgot to answer your question about UAC. It's true, you can't elevate your own process while it's running. What a pain.

I just spawn a second instance of FileSeek that is elevated, passing it certain command line parameters that it uses to set the registry values. It's a bit of a hack, but it works perfectly and doesn't require me to ship a 2nd exe file along-side to manage the registry settings.

Jul 6, 2009 • #3

stax76

5 discussion posts

Fantastic, do you have any plans for profiles or command line support to pass in presets? I can help with the code for command line parsing if you like.

Jul 7, 2009 • #4

Thank you for the offer, I appreciate your support. Actually, FileSeek has a basic command line parser built-in to handle the registry settings I explained above.

What sorts of things would you like to pass in, and how would you do that? Were you wanting to integrate FileSeek into a script?

Jul 8, 2009 • #5

stax76

5 discussion posts

Trying to help is the minimum I can make. I was thinking it might be a good feature to start with certain settings, either with profiles or command line supports but suggested comand line support because it might be easier to add. Profiles could be added using the main menu or adding another combo box:

http://img209.imageshack.us/i/profilese.png/

Another similar feature would be changing the order of the combo box items from last to most frequently used. Firefox does this when you use the address bar to search for bookmarks and history and this turned out to be incredibly useful. This should reduce the need for a profiles feature since going to frequently used settings becomes easier. There are of course drawbacks like the time required to add the feature and what most frequently used in the past month might be different from what's most frequently used in the past 12 month.

I would probably just add profiles support using a combo box since I've did this very often in the past and it's not very difficult to do. I've done a open source application called StaxRip which has profiles features all over the place and it turned out to increase usability greatly.

Jul 8, 2009 • #6

I have given the profiles issue some thought, and have decided to keep it simple. I really want FileSeek to be a simple file content search tool. It isn't meant to replace any of the more powerful text searching tools. I really appreciate the feedback, as much of your feedback helped to shape the 1.8 release.

Jul 12, 2009 • #7

stax76

5 discussion posts

Thanks for the new version and feedback, I've used FileSeek more frequent recently so it's great being able to use the new features.

In the main menu a profile feature wouldn't be much in the way but it's not so important.

Saving the settings to file instead to registry would be easier to backup but it's not so important either since Windows has a command line utility called reg which can save keys to file.

Jul 12, 2009 • #8

Excellent - I'm glad to hear you have a work-around.

Aug 13, 2009 • #9

stax76

5 discussion posts

My robocopy GUI now also supports reg.exe

http://www.stax76.bplaced.net/index.php?slab=staxbackup