learing means storing last decisions (search string - choosen action - last time - number of times - ?), i.e. an extended bookmark concept. so you do not have to search the whole disk all the time, but alt-f2 presents: - a choice to open a file (click and take) like a google search result - choices what to do otherwise: search disk (maybe also areas of disk), search the web pick application, ... the current alt-f2 behaviour is more like googles "i'm feeling lucky" behaviour, you immediately get the result or the error, and the presentation of the features is not very good ... i think not too many people know about things like "gg: " opens google with the search result, or "http://blabla.hallo.com" opens konqueror with the web-site, or "laout@tuxfamily.org" will open the mailer. maybe rename alt-f2: run command to somehting else? "search task"? "find command"? btw, i don't think macos has a database based file system: http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Performance/Conceptual/Performance/Carbon/Carbon_and__File_System.html ------------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Tue, 28 Oct 2003 12:03:52 +0000 From: Sebastien Laout Subject: Re: 1st strategy to useability: find and learn, and therefor scale well To: KDE Usability Message-ID: <1067342575.2394.14.camel@localhost.localdomain> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-15 Le mar 28/10/2003 à 10:07, solo turn a écrit : > additional to "structured information" like menues, you should be able to search for things you > want to do. to make the find-algorithm more precise, something "adaptive" would be necessary. > something which learns out of users preferences or behaviour. > > the best thing i saw in this respect up to now is http://www.obdev.at/products/launchbar/ (mac os > x innovators contest 2nd place). these guys deserve the oscar for novel application of well known > concepts. > > its basically a "search" on the options/programs your system offers, and it remembers the choices > you made last time and rates it higher. and it is abbreviation driven. > > this is a neat approach to forget about menus, discussions about where to put what. and, it is an > addition which can be improved just by changing algorithms. > > alt-f2 is already doing some of this (see http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=66203), but no > search, no learning is included. > > why this is important? > > to find things there is 2 kinds of people: > - the ones who click through folder structures > - the ones who open a search&find window > > the more information you have, the more "search" is important. www started of as structured thing > (links, etc), later it got so large, that by bookmarking and clicking you get no results. search > has become the most important thing to find things. > > with such an approach you are prepared to: > - have 20 webbrowsers > and the user chooses which one to use and not redhat > - 100.000 configuration options > - a big disk > - new filesystems which employ different techniques to store information > new windws, new reiser > where a file may have different attributes, where one > is folder, multiple tasks it belongs to, etc.etc. > > sorry for crossposting this to two useability lists, but i am convinced that the "find and learn" > thing is not trivial, and gives value to every system. > > -solo. Hum ! Very good : A new brick of the task oriented concept... Browse informations and data without thinking about applications that have produced them and where they are stocked... I often use Alt+F2 to open applications (if I don't use khotkeys for it) : I hate to lost time... Very good if it also could be done with files and documents ! Hum... What could we do ? Alt+F2 is a good start point (or do it in another location?)... Is Mac OS X use a data base based file system ? Search for files could take time with our "old" file system... Or we could limit search to home directory (or ~/Documents), for the files. Ok. Then, is exist a system to browse into bookmarks, adress book... ? Could be good if all applications can access to an API to browse this sort of data and not parse files by themeselve, and be noticed changes. I personnaly will add a "bookmark mirroring" in my BasKet app and this API would help me (I haven't searched yet) __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree _______________________________________________ kde-usability mailing list kde-usability@mail.kde.org https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-usability