Font colour and size issues

[Steve Adams]

In version 1.5.1.0, when navigating the results list using the arrow keys, the selection is highlighted using the background colour specified in [HKCU\Control Panel\Colors] Hilight, but the text is not highlighted using the colour specified in [HKCU\Control Panel\Colors] HilightText. It is of course possible to configure the font colour using the preferences dialog, so that there is still some contrast between the text and the background for both the selected item and non-selected items, but it should not be necessary to do so.

Also, if a large font size is used, the bottoms of the letters are not visible, because the height of the display line is not scaled with the font size.

I would prefer you to get all sizes and fonts from [HKCU\Control Panel\Desktop\WindowMetrics] for both the results list and for all the dialogs (particularly the main one). If this were done, the fonts section of the preferences dialog would be redundant.

[Dario]

I added the ability for users to pick their own fonts since, if they have two line fonts, they may want the two lines in different fonts and/or colors. They aren't redundant since they are a customization feature.

However, these should only affect the text color when the item is not selected. When it is selected, it should respect the HighLightText reg setting that you specified (which I just fixed).

I'll also fix the lack of scaling when you change the font size. That part of the code could definitely use some lovin.

Thanks for the feedback.

[Dario]

All are fixed (as well as from your other post).

Any other bugs or requests before I put out a build this weekend?

[Steve Adams]

Any other bugs or requests before I put out a build this weekend?

At the top of my wish list would be for the results to be sorted in order of file modification time (most recent first).
I would also like a shortcut action to do a "real time" search of the Firefox history, when it is not being cached.
The ability to define shortcuts to filesystem locations that contain too many files to cache would also be useful.

Finally, you may also want to document the idea of setting the HotKey to 0 in the XML file.
This fires when the HotKeyModifier key is pressed and released, without any other key having been pressed.

As others have said, Thanks. In my opinion, this is the best utility in its class.

[Dario]

Ok. A few questions.

Since the result list can contain any number of types of items (url, contact, etc) who don't have modification times, I'm assuming you want that sorting only applied when in file browsing mode. I still have to add grouping and other features to the results list.

Shortcuts and hotkeys are something that I need to apply a lot of thought to in how I want to implment them. They don't fit in "neatly" in a generic sense, so I'm trying to think of the best and most useful way to implement them. For shortcuts to file system locations, you can, in the intermediate term, work around. You can add the parent folder to the Filesystem preferences, telling it to match directories. You can then type in the directory name and hit Ctrl Enter on it to go into file browsing mode on that folder. Not ideal, but it's gotten me to file system locations fairly quickly. This would be much easier with your suggestion though.

Actually, I'd like your opinion about trying to match directories... Right now directory names (if you choose to have them matched) will have the include and exclude filters applied to their search (i.e. if you have *.mp3 as an include filter, directory names that don't end in .mp3 will ever get matched...). Do you think it will be more useful to not apply the filters to directory names?

And I'm not quite following HotKey to 0 issue. Can you elaborate?

Thanks for the feedback and kind words.

[Steve Adams]

Since the result list can contain any number of types of items (url, contact, etc) who don't have modification times, I'm assuming you want that sorting only applied when in file browsing mode. I still have to add grouping and other features to the results list.

No, I think alphabetical order with directories grouped first remains best for file browsing mode. I was thinking of files returned during regular searches. For example, someone might search for "report" and get many matches. Chances are they're looking for the most recently modified file. For urls, it is probably the most recently visited one that they want. If the history has been cleared, you could order bookmarks/favorites by their creation date. However, contacts should probably be grouped together and sorted alphabetically (although I'm not an Outlook user, so that does not affect me).

Shortcuts and hotkeys are something that I need to apply a lot of thought to in how I want to implment them. They don't fit in "neatly" in a generic sense, so I'm trying to think of the best and most useful way to implement them.

Shortcuts are good, but you could do more with them. I would like to be able to define a shortcut to enter file browsing mode at a particular directory. For example, "kb" to start browsing at the root of my personal knowledge base, or "ks" to do a non-cached search from there. I also mentioned the idea of using a shortcut, say "hist", to do a non-cached url history search. Similarly, you could define shortcuts to limit the search results to a particular category of results (say "cont" for contacts) or to a particular file extension (say "ppt" for PowerPoint files).

On the other hand, I don't think you should try to do hotkeys at all (other than the main hotkey to show the search dialog). There are other products that do that job very well. I use AutoHotKey.

Do you think it will be more useful to not apply the filters to directory names?

Yes. I am not using filters at all.

And I'm not quite following HotKey to 0 issue. Can you elaborate?

My Guillotine.xml file says

Code:

HotKeyModifier="4" ... HotKey="0"

so the Guillotine search dialog pops up when I just press and release the Shift key, but nothing happens when I use the shift key in combination with another key, for example to type a capital letter. It is quicker to press and release a single key, than to press a key combination (like Control-Space) and there is very little risk of needing the hotkey to mean something else in a different application. However, this trick does not work with the Win key, because of the way you are registering your hotkey, but one can work around that with AutoHotKey.

Any other bugs or requests before I put out a build this weekend?

A minor one that you might want to consider. Windows always hides the .lnk extension on shortcuts. You may want to consider doing so as well to avoid confusing novice users.

[Dario]

Guillotine 1.5.2 is up and has some of your changes.

Some of them will have to wait (e.g. shortcuts) and some of them (sorting by last accessed time) I'm having difficulty with. For file system objects (these include normal files as well as IE favorites), just me touching them updates their last accessed time, so I'm not able to do much with them. I haven't found a way around this. I can get it working for some result types (e.g. Firefox bookmarks), but not for most others, so it will have to wait.

Anyways, your coloring and font size fixes are in, as well as hiding lnk extensions.

[Steve Adams]

Guillotine 1.5.2 is up and has some of your changes.

Wonderful. Thanks.

For file system objects (these include normal files as well as IE favorites), just me touching them updates their last accessed time, so I'm not able to do much with them. I haven't found a way around this.

What about using the file modification time, instead of the file access time?

[Dario]

What about using the file modification time, instead of the file access time?

I considered that, but it seemed inconsistent, and would ultimately be confusing to users.

Some items would use the actual last visit time available to me, but only some of those would I be able to update that value. Others had no last visit information, so I'd have to use last modified. Then I would have to change the modified time of the item so that I would be able to get it's last visit value the next time Guillotine was run. I figured most users don't want their last access time changed just by using a search program.

Also, adding a sorting by last visit mode only felt incomplete and non-generic. I'd like to allow users to group and sort items however they want. That was more than I could chew off this weekend too.

Honestly, this, as well as a few other features will be MUCH easier to implement when I add a third searching mode (i.e. one other than Real Time and Offline); one where I have a peristent database kept between program runs. This will allow me to store all kinds of meta information for each item (such as last visit), with less intrusion into the file system. It will also make Guillotine consume far less memory. Most of the features users have requested will be much easier once I get that in place.

It's quite a bit of work, and free time hasn't exactly been something I've been finding much of. If anybody wants to throw some loose change my way, I could bump it up the priority list