Quick access to files and folders

[admin]

I liked this features very much when i used it first, but after some days i disabled it. I need the functionality of the "old" usual mechanism often and unfortunatly one can have either one or the other. Perfect would be a combination of both, but i'm afraid that that in not possible?

With "old" you mean MatchFromStart, right. Now, if you start typing "c:" you will very likely get only matches that start with "C:"... is that a solution for you?

[jacky]

I liked this features very much when i used it first, but after some days i disabled it. I need the functionality of the "old" usual mechanism often and unfortunatly one can have either one or the other. Perfect would be a combination of both, but i'm afraid that that in not possible?

With "old" you mean MatchFromStart, right. Now, if you start typing "c:" you will very likely get only matches that start with "C:"... is that a solution for you?

I don't know if this is what ogroeger is talking about, but as for me :

- I did tried this "MatchAnyhere" thing, and it is pretty cool indeed. I would love to use it, sadly I can't because I need to have the autocomplete path on my GoTo window.

- So... Couldn't there be a way to mix the two of them ? I'm not saying use MatchAnywhere for the autocomplete path, but something like this : if user entry contains ":" or starts with "\" then use the system/path autocomplete, or else trigger MRU MatchAnywhere

The idea being that when those are found, it can't be a file/path name but most likely is something like "d:", "http://", "\\server", something where the path autocomplete would be nice. But if there isn't such a thing, path autocomplete - at least for me - is pretty useless (seems to me to only return URLs, which I don't really care about here), and the MatchAnywhere would be appreciated/much better!

[ogroeger]

This is a good idea, jacky. That would solve the following szenario, too:

I have MatchAnywhere active and i enter "ecl" in the address bar. The address bar offers "C:\Projects\eclipselauncher\" to me. I select this and want to continue from this path to the subdirectories of "C:\Projects\eclipselauncher\", but MatchAnywhere doesn't offer any more help because none of the subdirectories are in the history. This annoys me. Below the line, it is easier for me to use MatchFromBeginning for "C:\Pro"->"C:\Projects\ecl"->"C:\Projects\eclipselauncher\down".

Using MatchFromBeginning for absolute pathes and MatchAnywhere for anything but absolute paths could be the solution. More arguments, anyone?

Regarding your question, Don: The problem that i have with MatchAnywhere is that it offers the matches from the history and not the really available matches. E.g. when i enter "C:" it offers me a lot of matches like "C:\java\hibernate\doc", but not C:\php. So it doesn't help to "navigate", a kind of action that i do often.

[admin]

I understand and like the idea of on the fly switching of auto-suggest (this is the official name for what we call auto-complete ... I wonder why I did not take it...) strategies, but technically it is a can of worms I'm not going to open now.

[TheQwerty]

Instead of auto-switching is there a way the two could be combined?

Say include a new slider bar option with one side favoring auto-complete and the other favoring match anywhere.

With the slider directly in the middle there would be an equal number of auto-complete and match anywhere suggestions.

As the user moves the slider to either end more suggestions from that end would be used.

[ogroeger]

Not problem, Don. I can live with MatchFromBeginning very well.

[admin]

Instead of auto-switching is there a way the two could be combined?

Say include a new slider bar option with one side favoring auto-complete and the other favoring match anywhere.

With the slider directly in the middle there would be an equal number of auto-complete and match anywhere suggestions.

As the user moves the slider to either end more suggestions from that end would be used.

(I hope you were kidding)

I'm still undecided whether to add the complete history to the Address Bar MRU list... actually I tend to NOT to do it...

[TheQwerty]

(I hope you were kidding)

I'm still undecided whether to add the complete history to the Address Bar MRU list... actually I tend to NOT to do it...

I wasn't actually kidding. And I don't believe what I suggested is that difficult, although I'm not familiar with how you go about populating these lists. I imagine you have an interface that accepts an array of items though (or you define a custom comparator method).

I'm not talking about going crazy with this slider either. What I was thinking is you only have 11 positions (0 through 10) on the slider and you have a maximum number of results (I feel 10 is enough).

Assume the slider value is x, the array of Auto-Complete matches is AC and Match Anywhere is MA, that AC is on the left of the slider, MA is on the right, and we're only returning a maximum of 10 results.


You'll always return x MA results, and 10 - x AC results.

If it's in the middle (5), we'll have 5 of each.
If it's all the way left (0), we'll have only AC results.
All the way to the right (10), only MA results.
If it's a two positions left of center (3), we'll have 7 AC, 3 MA.
etc. etc.

Now the tricky part comes in when you have fewer results than the number desired for one search. So if you can get a count of results first then you'll be able to use more from either group.


Would that really be too difficult? (Sure it's more than just parsing the first few characters, but I think it would be more useful as well.)

[admin]

(I hope you were kidding)

I'm still undecided whether to add the complete history to the Address Bar MRU list... actually I tend to NOT to do it...

I wasn't actually kidding. And I don't believe what I suggested is that difficult, although I'm not familiar with how you go about populating these lists. I imagine you have an interface that accepts an array of items though (or you define a custom comparator method).

I'm not talking about going crazy with this slider either. What I was thinking is you only have 11 positions (0 through 10) on the slider and you have a maximum number of results (I feel 10 is enough).

Assume the slider value is x, the array of Auto-Complete matches is AC and Match Anywhere is MA, that AC is on the left of the slider, MA is on the right, and we're only returning a maximum of 10 results.


You'll always return x MA results, and 10 - x AC results.

If it's in the middle (5), we'll have 5 of each.
If it's all the way left (0), we'll have only AC results.
All the way to the right (10), only MA results.
If it's a two positions left of center (3), we'll have 7 AC, 3 MA.
etc. etc.

Now the tricky part comes in when you have fewer results than the number desired for one search. So if you can get a count of results first then you'll be able to use more from either group.


Would that really be too difficult? (Sure it's more than just parsing the first few characters, but I think it would be more useful as well.)

What slider are you talking about???

[TheQwerty]

What slider are you talking about???

One that hasn't been added to the configuration yet.

It's a suggestion for a new interface to these two methods as well.

[admin]

What slider are you talking about???

One that hasn't been added to the configuration yet.

It's a suggestion for a new interface to these two methods as well.

When Auto-Complete (paths/files) is active, I give control over the drop-down to Windows -- completely! It's not mine anymore. No mixing with my own MRU lists is possible. The only solution would be to write the auto-complete function myself... might be worth the pain... it's quite easy... but not now.

[TheQwerty]

What slider are you talking about???

One that hasn't been added to the configuration yet.

It's a suggestion for a new interface to these two methods as well.

When Auto-Complete (paths/files) is active, I give control over the drop-down to Windows -- completely! It's not mine anymore. No mixing with my own MRU lists is possible.

I was afraid of that.

Is there an interface available to just get the results from Microsoft or is just all one big package of auto-complete drop-down list goodness?