Haiku's queries, while lightning fast, are a bit too complicated to use with the Find panel. You have to navigate through too many drop-down menus when all you want to do is quickly find a file of a specific type.
Here is a suggestion how this could be improved. Excuse the imperfect mockups, I'm sure the real thing would be much more pleasing to the eye... :)
Instead of tuning all search parameters in the Find panel and be surprised what turns up in the result window, then go back to refine/rinse/repeat, I'd like to see instant results while typing the search strings. So, it's more like narrowing down a search by more and more filtering.
Quick Icon BarTo speed up everyday searches, there's an icon bar at the top where a user can drag&drop his most often used query templates. These templates only consist of the filetype and the layout of the attribute columns which will determine which attributes can be searched.
Query FiletypeIf you don't already have it in your quick icon bar, you choose the filetype and the partition to search. There are also the expandable options from the current Find panel for temporary queries and in/exclunding the trash.
It should be possible to search through a whole supertype, like audio/*, video/* or image/*, because a user normally doesn't know/care what exact type the music/video/image is.
You can drag the icon into the quick bar. If it gets too crowded up there, they can gradually shrink from 64px.
If a dragged filetype already exists up there, its setting (attribute layout) is updated.
Query StringsWhen your filetype is set, you have an empty file list below with the attribute layout typical (or saved with the quick icon bar) for that filetype. You can add/remove columns via right-click etc. as usual.
Now you begin typing in the textbox above the attribute-column you'd like to search. After, say, 3 letters the query gets updated live and the file list fills with results. You can change the criteria with a drop-down menu above every textbox according to the type of attribute: contains/contains not, is/is not, begins/ends, larger/smaller, before/after... etc.
The different attributes are always AND linked, as this to me makes sense in real life: You search for an artist AND an album, but I can't think of a real use for looking for one OR the other.
More Query StringsHowever, if you need to search for more than one string within an attribute, you can click on the "+" button and add another search box for the column. Here you can choose between an AND/OR link with another drop-down menu. Removing a search box is done with its "-".
Here's the whole panel:
Next Generation Find Panel
So, a quick query would now go like this, for example:
* ALT+F
* Click music-icon
* Click into artist search box
* Enter "Breeders" (which I promplty forgot in all the mockup images...)
Opinions?
Thanks!
BTW: There's also a thread on the dev mailing list for discussion.
Regards,
Humdinger
PS: I would've preferred not to use thumbnails for the mockups, but after taking about 10 minutes just to upload 5 images I'm at the end of my tether...
