Request for comment: A built-in "search to launch" feature for Haiku?
Most operating systems and desktops are moving to the "search to launch" style of starting applications. After using these for a while, I do think they speed up my core desktop usage.
I also think everyone is doing it wrong. Below are my general thoughts on this kind of application launcher:
- Search to launch shouldn't distract the user.
Gnome 3, Windows 8, and Unity. All of these user interfaces distract you from your work by bringing up a full-screen launcher. While I think some focus is needed on the "search to launch" interface, it should only distract you enough to let you think about what you want to start.
- Search to launch shouldn't search files on the disk.
Haiku has a wonderful gui file search application, lets not try to mesh Applications and Files
- Search to launch shouldn't replace the traditional desktop experience
The desktop had a long time to evolve to what it was. Haiku has put a large amount of work into the Tracker resulting in a fast and stable method to manage your desktop.
After some discussion in IRC, many seem open to investigating some of kind of "search to launch" feature for Haiku. The general consensus in IRC was that the best user experience would come from a hot key to bring up the "search to launch" dialog / window. Here you could begin typing the name of a known application from the application menu and press enter to launch it.
Humdinger has actually already made such an application on Haikuware that seems to cover most of these items. The name of the application is QuickLaunch. (here http://haikuware.com/remository/view-details/utilities/desktop-accessori...)
I wanted to post this to get a feeling from the community on how people would react to such an addition.
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Re: Request for comment: A built-in "search to launch" ...
I do like the search to launch app in Ubuntu and agree that the full screen/file search everything no matter what, is a little anoying.
I have tried QuckLaunch before but am not too crazy about the interface.
Something a little more integrated into the OS would be nice.
Re: Request for comment: A built-in "search to launch" ...
'Tile' it into Tracker so (1) a Tracker sub-pane appears with the search field and results, and (2) it disappears when the app is launched, or it's cancelled.
If it isn't already there, add filename globbing; if you only remember the middle of the name ("It's something Play something"), typing *Play would limit it to apps with Play somewhere in the middle (like mediaPlayer). Mayhap Play should include every app with Play anywhere in it, *Play should limit it to apps ending with Play, Play* would limit it to apps starting with Play, and *Play* would limit it to apps with Play somewhere in the middle. Maybe of limited use now, but as the app portfolio grows, it could prove useful.
Re: Request for comment: A built-in "search to launch" ...
All that Win8 jazz is fine on tablet devices, but please for the love of Lold let desktop be desktop.
Re: Request for comment: A built-in "search to launch" ...
All that Win8 jazz is fine on tablet devices, but please for the love of Lold let desktop be desktop.
Aah! Yeah, that's the last thing Haiku needs.
My general thoughts are that you shouldn't know "search to launch" exists unless you know the hotkey :)
Re: Request for comment: A built-in "search to launch" ...
That would be nice :)
We also have Run Program from DarkWyrm
http://haikuware.com/remository/view-details/utilities/desktop-accessori...
Re: Request for comment: A built-in "search to launch" ...
That would be nice :)
We also have Run Program from DarkWyrm
http://haikuware.com/remository/view-details/utilities/desktop-accessories/run-program
That's definitely another option. However I do like the ease of being able to type the first few letters of an application and being presented with a list of matching apps.
Example: hotkey + Te + Enter to launch terminal. (or arrow down + enter if you have multiple apps named te*)
I really think the QuickLaunch app would fit nicely here. (maybe with the GUI made a bit simpler and any preferences integrated into deskbar preferences?)
Re: Request for comment: A built-in "search to launch" ...
Isn't Haiku even more document centered than most other OSs? Yes, there are apps that don't fit into the scheme, ranging from desktop calculators to IDEs returning to the projects open when last using them.
There's two things I'd really like for that reason:
Re: Request for comment: A built-in "search to launch" ...
3 things:
1) The launcher should be discoverable through the menu (and an option to have it start at start up would make it more useful, though I am not sure of Haiku's policy on such application settings).
2) When there is no text entered in the search field, the 5 most recent / often used applications should prepopulate the list to make it more useful.
3) Allowing a right click (open in folder) option would be useful as well as potentially uninstall options as well, though I know that's not really a possibility until package management is solid.
Re: Request for comment: A built-in "search to launch" ...
QuickLaunch is perfect in my opinion. I've set it up to launch on Super+Space. It doesn't need anything to run in the background because it starts so blazingly fast.
Unity is horribly bloated and slow in comparison. You're absolutely right that it gets in the way. And it shows more and more useless crap. In 12.10 it shows search results from Amazon. If you want to start the "Calculator" app, it suggests to buy a physical desk calculator on Amazon. I mean WTF?
+1 for inclusion of QuickLaunch, but please keep it simple.
Re: Request for comment: A built-in "search to launch" ...
Something QuickLaunchy would be nice.
I use another launcher even more regularly that QuickLaunch: Brian Hill's Einsteinium. (Besides a launcher, it's also a "re-launcher", i.e. it can ask you to restart any app/server/daemon that is quit or has crashed. But this feature is beyond what this thread is about.) The Einsteinium launcher sorts a list of applications according on how often they were started and the amount of time they're used. So, it keeps track on what apps you use most often and the longest time. I have a newer development version from Brian that has nicer visuals etc. Everyone contact him to make a new release. :)
I normally use Einsteinium for all the apps I use regularly and QuickLaunch to start the more exotic app/pref by name. So combining these two would be cool.
Though the option is currently disabled due to a bug, remember possible localization of app names.
And: what can be done to find apps that you forget the name of? Maybe add keywords and categories to apps one can filter?
Regards,
Humdinger
Re: Request for comment: A built-in "search to launch" ...
Yes adding categories for apps that you forget the name of would be great. If you forget the name of Koffice or Abiword etc, just type "word processor" to get a list of word processors. Maybe it is possible to have attributes for the category of different applications, so the search would go to the attribute where the relevant applications are grouped. How about synonyms so the exact category name does not have to be typed? For example "media player = music player = video player".
There might be sub categories like "internet", for amedia player that can play directly from internet. Or a sub category of h264, so it can play those file types as a requirement. If there are no players like that installed then it offers to search in a repository. This would mean having attributes grouped under other attributes. Can this be done?
Of course this would only be of much benefit when Haiku has a proper installer and enough applications.
Something simpler in the meantime cold be:
some dropdown list box with different categories as an alternative to typing the name in another box above it and search on either or both boxes if a key word is in the top one it might help to narrow down the list.
Re: Request for comment: A built-in "search to launch" ...
The whole tracker/Deskbar must be rewritten. I guess somehow in the direction of how stippi once suggested. And I guess the whole desktop needs to become more pretty, and the gui easier to handle and having in mind already the touch-screens. But I guess we need first to wait till the appserver is hw accelerated. Not without reason all the other operating system improve/change their UI every few years, and Haiku still has that UI that looks that similar to the 20 years old beos UI.
Re: Request for comment: A built-in "search to launch" ...
The whole tracker/Deskbar must be rewritten.
-100,000
Tracker is the best feature of Haiku. It's stable, unified, and works *really* well.
I guess somehow in the direction of how stippi once suggested. And I guess the whole desktop needs to become more pretty, and the gui easier to handle and having in mind already the touch-screens.
Touch screens are a fad. Just like 5 years ago everyone needed to redesign their GUI's to function on Netbooks.
Sure touchscreen support would be neat, but you have to face the cold hard reality that without anyone working on such a thing... it will never happen. (patches welcome!)
But I guess we need first to wait till the appserver is hw accelerated. Not without reason all the other operating system improve/change their UI every few years, and Haiku still has that UI that looks that similar to the 20 years old beos UI.
Thats kind of the point of Haiku :-)
Re: Request for comment: A built-in "search to launch" ...
Yes, it works well, but it could much better. I started to appreciate the live-preview of the applications/windows, in the deskbar of win7. Just one example. Also the aero glass is better accepted by my eyes then let's stay the style of windows 98. The "pinning" of applications to the deskbar is also very handy. What do I do in haiku if I have a group of windows and I don't know how to associate the name of the window with the content of the windows. Then I have to click/select all windows till I get to the right one. In win 7, I just move my mouse over the group of windows, then live previews of all windows pop up, and then i can choose the right widnow that interests me.
And yes, most people like more pretty stuff, that's why all the new versions of most operating systems have great colors and shine and have translucency efects etc. , if this wouldn't be like by the users, the producerers would have gone back to the old and gray windows 98 style.
You might not believe it, but touch screens have a good chance for the future. If we take in account of the ibm scientists and researchers, we have good chances to fully get rid of mouse and keyboard in the next 5-10 yeras (if i remember correctly).
If I have the icons in my deskbar, then i want to be able to sort them manually and chose another rearrangement. Which is possible with win7 but not with haiku.
And my desktop gets messeup up, I saw often enough that when making a link, or when unzipping something to desktop, or when mounting a new disk, it happened regulary that the new icon that appeared was overlapping another.
So please don't tell me how great all that stuff is.
I can understand, if one says that haiku doesn't have the man-power for such improvements to the gui, or if one says that haiku first needs to reach R1 status, and then it can continue with it's evolution. But to defend it as being great is a little exagerated. The haiku gui has text-dropdown menu, but doesn't have built-in image-dropdown menues, or text-image-mixture , or even dropdownmenues with animations, or whatever. A lot of stuff can be improved to make it be optically more appealing, to see and understand the functionality more intuitively.
Perhpas even more, perhaps even an "intelligent desktop" could be imaginable, one that adapts itself to the behavior of the user, one that tries to predict the next step of the user, and that helps the user to find/do the stuff more easily and more fast and that saves the user to do 1000 clicks.
The OS of the future, is not the os with a gray and boring interface, with a lot of text-menues that are tight, and where you need to be carefully on what you press, so that you don't select the wrong menu and submenu.. etc.
The future OS must be more interactive, more lively, more intelligent and more personalized.
take a looks at video from this page: http://www.ga-project.eu/
The OS of the future should be able to collect all the data from that kind of sensors, and make my life better and easier.
One can not stay forever in the 90s, the life goes on. If you dont have an evolution, if you don't adapt, you risk to disappear. And with good reason.
Re: Request for comment: A built-in "search to launch" ...
Sounds like you got a truckload of patches on your disk.
About IBM predicting the future … "I think there is a world market for about five computers."
I don't know what you do for a living, but I work with computers "9 to 5". Painting with fingerprints on the screen and having to either hold up my arm or looking down all day gives me eye cancer, arm cancer, and neck cancer from only thinking about it. Plus using your fingers for input hides the very thing you want to "click". Touchscreens are a compromise invented for compact devices like smartphones. They don't fit desktop computers at all.
Change for the sake of change seems utterly stupid to me. Don't fix stuff that isn't broken, as the saying goes. Tracker and Deskbar might have a few flaws, but they sure aren't broken.
Re: Request for comment: A built-in "search to launch" ...
What do I do in haiku if I have a group of windows and I don't know how to associate the name of the window with the content of the windows. Then I have to click/select all windows till I get to the right one. In win 7, I just move my mouse over the group of windows, then live previews of all windows pop up, and then i can choose the right widnow that interests me.
I would agree this is a positive feature that would go well in Haiku. Many times it has come in handy when I have multiple windows that are minimized or obscured in windows 7.
And yes, most people like more pretty stuff, that's why all the new versions of most operating systems have great colors and shine and have translucency efects etc. , if this wouldn't be like by the users, the producerers would have gone back to the old and gray windows 98 style.
Transparency has also been handy sometimes for me when I've had one window I need to monitor at the front and another underneath that needs less monitoring as in the sim FlightGear in Ubuntu 12.04 or Windows 7. I can see the value of some of these effects but having them for artistic, although been attractive can slow down a machine if more processing power is been diverted, from playing a 3d game. Users should have the option to turn them on/off easily.
You might not believe it, but touch screens have a good chance for the future. If we take in account of the ibm scientists and researchers, we have good chances to fully get rid of mouse and keyboard in the next 5-10 yeras (if i remember correctly).
Touch screens are good for mobile devices or the likes of ATM's where a mouse and keyboard are not practical but for a desktop computer it would just mean continually cleaning the screen of fingerprints. A better solution to get rid of keyboard and mouse would be speech recognition. This is accurate and flexible enough technology now to be applied but it is not been applied in any way that reflects its capability now. On windows 7 the speech recognition is using specific phrases and words, for commands. If you go outside, vary a phrase or use a different word but same meaning, it will not always respond or do so inaccurately. It is possible now, with some examples I have heard, in the case of telephone answering agents, that take or modify orders, to speak in completely natural way and they still understand. This could be adapted to operating systems.
And my desktop gets messeup up, I saw often enough that when making a link, or when unzipping something to desktop, or when mounting a new disk, it happened regulary that the new icon that appeared was overlapping another.
Yes I would agree this can be annoying when mounting a drive covers over another folder or drive. It is a basic thing that needs a reasonably high priority fixing it.
Perhpas even more, perhaps even an "intelligent desktop" could be imaginable, one that adapts itself to the behavior of the user, one that tries to predict the next step of the user, and that helps the user to find/do the stuff more easily and more fast and that saves the user to do 1000 clicks.
Yea I could see the value of an OS that adapts but it would need to be intelligent enough to know when to get out of the way as well. Sometimes a user wont follow the same routines. Perhaps the user could have the option of easily turning it off/on.
The OS of the future, is not the os with a gray and boring interface, with a lot of text-menues that are tight, and where you need to be carefully on what you press, so that you don't select the wrong menu and submenu.. etc.
I would agree but here we are having an opportunity at least with opening applications to comment on a search function, that would mean not navigating menus or sub menus. Although there is hardly any sub menus when opening applications in Haiku. Maybe the same search function might be good for tracker too. Adapting Haiku Search to be more flexible and intelligent would be better here.
The future OS must be more interactive, more lively, more intelligent and more personalized.
take a looks at video from this page: http://www.ga-project.eu/
The OS of the future should be able to collect all the data from that kind of sensors, and make my life better and easier.
One can not stay forever in the 90s, the life goes on. If you dont have an evolution, if you don't adapt, you risk to disappear. And with good reason.
Yes that is one thing but applying intelligence to an OS at the user interface level wont mean much if the software has lots of or even just some bugs. I think it would be a better priority to apply intelligence at the development or debugging level, say with Genetic algorithms, that have proven themselves for a long time already.
Re: Request for comment: A built-in "search to launch" ...
one must take in account, that google is taking his voice recognition from the mobile android to the desktop too (integration in chrome). And which has a really good accuracy, where you can choose your language etc... and which can also understand dialects. I can imagine that their data is growing strong, and I can imagine that in a few years it will have a really good accuracy, so that you will be able to dictate e-mails and control your browser.
Perhaps even integrating it in their chrome os.
Some years ago, most people where laughing about cloud computing, thinking/saying that you want your data to be local. Now today a lot of people are already using dropbox, google drive, mega.com.nz, Adobe has it's own cloud, etc etc etc..
So, in the end, the voice recognition will be in the next years a better integrated system, at least I expact that from google.
I even can imagine that the computer will be able to be controlled party buy gestures done in the air, using something like the xbox camera (and in fact some people have done something related to do).
Next on the list, is the control of your mouse with your eyes... or even with your brain (this stuff already works, but not yet good enough).
If haiku continues to make the clone of beos even more perfect, I can imagine that, in let's say 5-10 years we wake up, and notice that we are still in the 90s, being completely old fashion, and the other os's being more productive and more fun to use and more attractive to the human eye.
the above project "ga-project" is real, and they work on it, and they are applying now for EU funds, about 1 billion euro, and they are in a good position to get this funding, and their project is aimed for the next 10 years.
Perhaps one would need to work already on a new UI for haiku, at least to make plans. A UI that is more adaptable, that can be more easily changed to fit a desktop, a tablet, or a mobile phone, or an ebook-reader.
But if we want something new and great in the next few years, we already need to make plans now, and collect information and try to come up with something perhaps revolutionary, that will be able to compete with the future KDE, GNOME, OSX, Windows, Chrome OS,...
But I guess the problem is, that nobody from haiku (or at least not many) is willing to spend time with that (me neither in fact) ... and on the other side, you can also use the argument, that we don't have the man-power, the money and the highly educated programmers and scientists of google. Haiku has it's own exceptional programmers, that they also don't have all the time of the world to work on haiku, they need to do their jobs to support their families.
And on the other side you see a lot of users that are very beos conservative. When stippi came up with some great ideas to improve the deskbar/tracker , people started to be in panic, and one even ask stippi not to break and touch tracker/deskbar since it's perfect.
And in general if i remember correctly the majority was against the ideas os stippi, even he is one of the best programmers of haiku, and who did a lot of great stuff.
Re: Request for comment: A built-in "search to launch" ...
Microsoft in 2019
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWxqSEMXWuw
Haiku in 2019
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwqi9HnN17w
I know it looks like an exageration... but 6-7 years can go past very fast, and we risk to have haiku in 2019 being still very similar to the beos of the 90s.
Re: Request for comment: A built-in "search to launch" ...
The problem of programmers not having enough time might be overcome if Genetic Algorithms could be used in programming. They do a very accurate bug free and quick job. The initial task would be to get this method working and accepted by all developers. There could be some reluctance to introduce a method like this, for the reason that code produced is hard to understand from a human viewpoint. It is not commented. It maybe could have a method of automatic commenting but I have not heard of this. The one big thing it really works well and efficient. It could cut down development time greatly, so Haiku can keep up. I do not know if any Haiku programmers know much about Genetic Algorithms?
If a lot of the current users are too conservative for change then I'm sure Haiku would gain a greater number of users if it developed fast enough applying really positive change.
Re: Request for comment: A built-in "search to launch" ...
Love Quicklaunch. Just wish it wasn't so purist about what constitutes an application. It only seems to detect native Haiku apps written against the API in C++. Not xicon'd scripts, not apps written in yab or python or anything else.
A built-in launcher should, IMHO, search for apps anywhere on the system by their signature. But it should also include anything below /boot/home/config/be. If the user drops some favourite documents in there, so be it.
Oh, and it should close itself down if it loses focus. On Mac OSX there's an app called Chuck that does precisely that. Unlike the more famous Quicksilver and Alfred, it doesn't try to take over your entire computer. It launches apps, end of story. On my new Haiku setup(*), Quicklaunch is keyed to the same rightAlt-/ combination I use for Chuck ... a little muscle memory goes a long way.
* Yes, I'm back playing with Haiku again. I don't know why I keep doing this to myself.
Re: Request for comment: A built-in "search to launch" ...
Oh, and it should close itself down if it loses focus.
Have to be a little careful here... We poor focus-follows-mouse users run into apps from time to time that downright blow up when the mouse is moved, all because the designers assumed that focus would only be lost via an explicit click away from the application window!
Fortunately this seems rather rare in Haiku and BeOS. But it makes my fur stand on end thinking about software on some other platforms...
Re Quicklaunch, is it expecting an ELF MIME type and using that as part of a query? This would exclude "executable text files" (as Gnome so amusingly calls them)
"Search to launch" is right under one's nose!
-
-= Tracker windows =-
-
In tracker, one types text into the window. The contents of the folder are then narrowed by the search terms in real time (if the option is enabled)
This is delightful!
-
-= Right-click folder navigation menus =-
-
Should be made to work the same way!
Right-click a folder, see the big tall menu pop up with all the files in it?
Just start typing with the menu still open to narrow the results in exactly the same way.
[currently this just launches some unexpected item on the first keypress - not very useful]
This would be doubly delightful!
-
-= The Applications menu in the Deskbar =-
-
Exactly the same as a right click folder menu.
1) Go to Deskbar -> Applications.
2) Type some text.
3) See the results get narrowed by your search terms in real time.
4) Of course, pressing return will launch the selected item (the search result) just as it does already.
With a keyboard shortcut to pull up the Deskbar menu, the "application launcher" is accessed via a single keystroke. There is no application launcher, it is all the same Tracker that we know and love
.
*tail-flicks in nervous anticipation of creaturefeeping*
Re: Request for comment: A built-in "search to launch" ...
As a complete novice to any OS outside of OS/2 and Windows, I always envisioned 'search to launch' AS THE OS! I always wanted to see an OS that starts with ONLY a search dialog as the desktop. Forget access passwords, etc. put the damn fingerprint biometric on the START button!
As for the 'search to launch', well it's the opening splash screen
Like this:
Welcome to lifeBOX, what are you seeking:_______________________________________________
I want to call a document, I input doc: [name of file] or [content within file]. I want to call a photo, I input photo: [tag on photo] [date], etc. Music? music: [artist] [song], etc. I want system info, sys: [device name]. I want the web, well, web: [url] or [search phrase] and so on and so on.
A second dialog presents a drop down list to scroll and choose, either in file name form or thumbnails list. Select it and a window renders content to screen. Search to launch is ALWAYS visible [sort of like Tracker]. Simple, clean, radical.
If I want to add [create] a new document, I input new: doc: [name of document]
If I want to add [create] a new spreadsheet, I input new: sheet: [name of spreadsheet]
If I want to add [create] a new plain text file, I input new: memo: [name of text file]
EVERYTHING gets saved to the users 'home' directory (one place to store all, highly indexed)
I don't need pretty. I need SECURITY, EFFICIENCY [speed], STABILITY, and FUNCTION in an OS. Users should also ALWAYS have the option to save their content locally. CLOUD is nice, but when it becomes the only way for storage, IMHO, we lose much personal freedom.
Re: Request for comment: A built-in "search to launch" ...
Personally, I'm pleased by the fact Haiku differs from Gnome 3, Windows 8, and Unity when it comes to features like this.
I believe 'search and go' is best left to third-party utilities, but then again, I kind of like menus...
Re: Request for comment: A built-in "search to launch" ...
I quite agree reverendsean!
At this point Haiku is quite literally the only computer platform I can bear using.
15 years ago when we had Windows 95 and Mac OS 9 there were viable alternatives which I could wrap my head around. Sure they sucked horribly in various ways, but I wasn't forced to use BeOS.
But now look at what's happened to the software world!! Oh my god, what the hell are these systems?? Am I even using a computer any more or some overblown glorified phone? Do I even own my computer any more, or am I running in some kind of non-root account where I can't even play with the system files? Not that I could anyway, I could never understand the layers and layers of steaming cow poop that make up the "software stack" of today's systems!
Haiku is our last chance for a sane, normal personal computing environment. We can't mess this one up. If it goes the way of Linux or Mac OS X or Windows 8, what the hell am I suppoed to do, dig my Atari ST out of the loft and get it back online? Frankly I don't blame the thousands of Amiga and RiscOS users out there still using their original hardware to get a sane computing experience
Really good user interface design doesn't get old. This isn't fashion, this is usability. An alien word in today's world, I know!
Look at Mac OS 9, though it did suck in various ways, it had a reasonably solid user interface (save for the menu bar and modality) - but then Apple flushed the whole thing down the loo in a single moment. Two decades of user interface research and development, wasted. Haiku must never be allowed to go the same way.
Re: Request for comment: A built-in "search to launch" ...
I like QuickLaunch a lot and also really like Alfred on Mac OS X (though just for app launching, I could do without the other bells and whistles.)
I think Haiku should integrate some sort of search to launch feature.
I may experiment with this (taking a close look at QuickLaunch and Einsteinium) when I start working on the new Deskbar.
Re: Request for comment: A built-in "search to launch" ...
I may experiment with this (taking a close look at QuickLaunch and Einsteinium) when I start working on the new Deskbar.
Don't look too closely at QuickLaunch... :)
If you're exploring Einsteinium, make sure to contact Brian Hill for the latest version. I'm sure Brian won't mind if I gave you his email address. Shout if you need it.
Regards,
Humdinger
Re: Request for comment: A built-in "search to launch" ...
I like how KDE implements a search function in Debian Wheezy. Just start typing the application name and a search box appears in the top center of the screen with a list of apps that match the first few letters entered.
If Haiku could gain a file and app search function that is only enabled when entering a hot key, then I would be in favor if it! Perhaps Alt + S for "Search"? I suppose the new search program would utilize the OpenBFS attributes metadata as well as the mimetype database to quickly search for files and apps.
I look forward to testing this new addition!
Re: Request for comment: A built-in "search to launch" ...
I know I'm a little late to the party but hey.. Anyway, I don't see the harm in having a search to launch feature. Quick Launch is a good shim in the meantime. Adding a search item to the desktop leaf menu at the level of the programs and preferences area shouldn't be a big deal, nor should anyone really have a cow over it. It wouldn't get in the way really at all. It would also provide users who aren't computer savvy with a way to find their apps that are installed, etc.
I just wouldn't include internet search results in the results listed.. That's useless and downright screwed up to me (could be just me). I don't like that some desktops are integrating internet searches into their desktop searches. That's what the browser is FOR!
Anyway, having it hotkey on a user typing in a name, etc would be ok as long as no application has focus. Otherwise I think that's a pita to deal with for you and the end user.