Creating a user-friendly find tool for OS X

I've been gradually beating OS X into something that's relatively user friendly. It's quite a struggle, and I'll summarize it at some point. The experience reminds me again how I miss the unequalled brilliance of the pre-switcher (eg. pre-pre-multifinder) Mac OS, or even of the clever GeoWorks 1st level GUI. Heck, even Simple Finder classic would be welcome (a pox upon Simple Finder OS X).

One thing I've wanted is a simple Find function that would search documents and email. Spotlight is too geeky and searches too many areas. The embedded Find you get when typing in a folder bar, or the Find you get from Cmd-F or the Finder menu is a bit better, but not simple enough. MoRU is almost right, with a few changes it could become a very novice friendly tool.

None are quite right however. The best I could come up with was a tweaked Smart Folder, unfortunately it doesn't search mail (more about that). Here's what I did:

1. Create a smart folder called 'Find Documents'. Put it on the desktop.
2. For the initial search text enter 'Type your search here'.
   
3. Right click on the center of the window and choose View Options.
4. Set View to icon only, make the text displayed 16 point and the icons very big.
5. Save the Smart Folder.
6. Right Click 'Get Info'. Click 'Locked'.

The resulting file sits on the desktop and is easy to see. Open it and see the instructions. Click there and type. It's locked so it can't be saved and overwritten.

BTW, the Get Info dialog will show part of the Spotlight query represented by this folder. The exclusion of com. apple.mail.emlx, I think, is what prevents Smart Folders from returning results from Mail.app.

Google takes the domain name business

Hey GoDaddy! Here's my Promo Code from Google - Digital Inspiration - Amit Agarwal

Good summary. Google is the spot now for most new domain registrations. I wonder when they'll offer switching services?

Putting the OS X trash on the desktop

Bin-it 1.2.1 – Mac OS X – VersionTracker looks like the best option for putting the trash on the desktop. The other alternatives are a script solution and exposing the .Trash folder so one can create a shortcut to it.

I may do this for my mother -- the dock is such an annoying usability mess.

OS X esoterica: key mouse combos and the Dock

Somewhere some eccentric geek has memorized every known mouse/keyboard/gui interaction in OS X. They belong on reality tv -- the list is very long. Now comes a new list for the Dock. If Andy doesn't read this first I'll be able to stun him with geek wizardry (emphases mine):

Mac OS X: Additional features of the Dock

... to press the mouse button means that you hold the button down until the desired action happens.

....

* Command-click
Reveals the original item in the Finder.

* Command-Option-click
Hides other open items, in addition to click action.

...

* Option-press
Force Quit replaces Quit in menu, in addition to press action.

* Shift-click
This applies to minimized windows only. The item is de-minimized in slow motion. You can see the item minimized in slow motion by pressing Shift while minimizing it.

* Shift-drag
When used on Dock separator, changes Dock position on screen (left, bottom, right).

* Option-drag
When used on Dock separator, resizes Dock to common icon sizes (128 by 128, 64 by 64, 32 by 32, 16 by 16).

...

* Command-drag a Dock item from the Dock
Copy the item without removing it from the Dock.

* Command-drag an item to the Dock
Create a Dock item without moving (sliding) existing Dock items while dragging. You might use this feature when dragging to a folder icon on the Dock, for example.

* Command-option-drag a file to an application's Dock icon
Attempt to open the file with the application regardless of file type or what application the file is associated with (if any). The application may or may not be able to open the file.

Update 12/14/06: I've since found that some of the same key combinations work with the Spotlight results drop down. In particular cmd-click opens the item in its containing folder. Now THAT is a great shortcut.

Configuring Parallels in Coherence mode

In coherence mode individual applications appear in their own windows next to OS X apps. I've not tried it yet, but a user has detailed what they did to optimize the experience: Hack Attack: How to run Windows and Mac apps side-by-side with Parallels - Lifehacker

Graphing calculators - on the web

Download squad has a brief review of Calc5 and mentions InstaCalc as a competitor. Both new to me. InstaCalc is particularly neat.

Spotlight for a Simple Finder user: How?

Update 12/12/06: You can't delete a file in Simple Finder.

Think about it.

Simple Finder is proof positive that Apple is quite capable of producing absolute cr*p. I wasted several hours of work experimenting and learning Apple's undocumented Simple Finder, only to realize I could create files in SF, but I couldn't delete them.

Simple Finder in OS 8 was an important addition to the OS. In OS X it's an blight, a festering sore, a sick joke on Apple's customers. (Can you tell I'm annoyed?).

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My mother's Mac Mini will run Simple Finder -- at least for a while. I've been experimenting with SF and, if one ignores the official way to configure it and uses the 'Full Finder' configuration method (more on all this is a later post, I'll create a future link) I think it will work. Nisus Writer Express, which can be configured to look and feel like a very simple word processor (it's really quite powerful), will be her writing tool.

The biggestA relatively minor problem is that Simple Finder knocks out Spotlight. That's right, there's no way for an SF user to use Spotlight to find items. Kind of ironic, since Spotlight is in part a response to the complexity of the folder/hiearchy world.

So now I'm looking for a Spotlight front end. I searched on one I've licensed (MoRU), that led me this post where the comments mention a few others [1]: Hawk Wings: Two apps for a smarter Spotlight. I'll also play with Launchbar and see how that will work -- but a simple Spotlight front-end that works with Simple Finder, and that can be constrained to only search Documents, is what I'm looking for. I'll see if I can configure MoRU to do that.

Any suggestions?

[1] My favorite technique for finding good reviews of a class of products is to find two product names, search on the two together, then find three, search on the three together, etc. Chances are a review that discusses 2-3 competing products is a genuine review, not a fake.

Update 12/12/06: I tried creating a smart folder that would emulate a spotlight interface, using the trick of defining the smart folder to show all files created in the past 99 years. Alas, smart folders are inert in Simple Finder. Then I tried MoRU ($10). It works pretty well, and with a bit of tweaking I was able to create a simple interface. It even supports zooming the UI. So far MoRU is looking like a good bet, but I'll try a few others.