Name: PortableSearch
Description: Portable Search is a search application made by me because I really dislike the built in windows one and I hated its slow speed. Portable Search is probably more than 5 times faster than windows search and easy to use. Still in development but it pretty much has many basic features that will help aid the user in finding files. Its very quick. You can right click in the list view and there are some common options to access such as delete file, getting the modified, created, or accessed times, and also if its exe you can get the file version. You can also enable a progress bar so you can see what is going on but usually there is no need because of its fast speed. Progress bars are usually recommended for really large directories that have many files.
Tests I have done: Just to get an idea of the speed of this I scanned my whole C:\ drive and it only took about 35 seconds to complete the scan. While scanning most commonly used directories such as Desktop or My Documents, the scan was less than 3 seconds. I Also scanned my Western Digital 500Gb harddrive that has many many photos, music files, and movies on it that with the windows search tool takes around 10-15 minutes to complete. With PortableSearch it took around a minute to scan. Also I have been developing this off and on for the past 3-4 weeks. I made many improvements during this time so users could test out most of the abilities without having to worry about many bugs. So far with my testing I have not noticed any bugs at the moment but Im sure there can be some in it but probably minor bugs.
Download:
Download PortableSearch Test 2
(MD5: f9da1a9ad02f6c9c8a8e939eca7598fa)
Test 1:
(7/11/09)
- Initial Release
Test 2:
(7/29/09)
- Few Gui Modifications
- Fixed a couple of minor bugs
- Added PA support for Open with menu
- Many new features
- See here for more
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This is the project I hope you got word of last time I was on IRC. I hope this can be implemented somehow or just used by PAM so that away when you click Search for files on PAM it will use this instead as Ive been on computers that have the Windows Search disabled and its a pain to find anything. This pretty much does the same thing that the windows one will do but its a lot faster and I hope to make more improvements/options available. If anyone has questions please check out the help.html file for more details as there is more info in there on how to use this application. Please test out and let me know if you like it and what you would like to see in this.
Thanks!
Edit: Almost forgot, if you just want to scan a directory but you dont have any specific text to search for (you just want to list the files) in the search box just put a period in it then choose a directory to scan and hit scan and it will list all files in the directory you chose. To scan for a specific file type just type a period followed by the extension. For example an executable you would type ".exe" without the quotes and it will list all executables in the directory you chose.
An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.
Mahatma Gandhi,
Indian political and spiritual leader (1869 - 1948)
Just as a note, check out Everything. It creates a tiny database file on the first run, taking
Ill check it out. Just wondering, how are all the current features? Does this function well on your computer (speed wise, usability, etc)? Hope this is easy to use and in the future i will add filters such as finding files based off of the text using size, dates, and a few other things that ahk will allow me to do.
An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.
Mahatma Gandhi,
Indian political and spiritual leader (1869 - 1948)
It doesn't really have any features, like network drives, searching a specific folder, or searching inside text files. It does one thing and is amazing at what it does. I don't think any other app could beat it at speed. But yeah, not much in the way of features.
Although it does have an 'Enable Regex' option in the Search menu, I'll have to check that out...and it looks like it has an inbuilt HTTP server. Interesting. ??
EDIT: I've also been able to integrate it with Launchy, so I can search without having to open the program first.
Hmmm I'm really interested in the searching in a text file bit. I might try and implement that into a future release. Though I havent quiet thought the whole process behind it through such as would it just display the text files it found that contained that text or it would actually open it up and point to that text? But if that was added then scan time would probably increase as file reading does take a bit longer to do. But no doubt that would be a useful feature and could probably benefit a few people, and probably wouldnt be that bad if a small directory was scanned.
An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.
Mahatma Gandhi,
Indian political and spiritual leader (1869 - 1948)
Firstly, It does function = ) Tested without admin rights on XP SP3. Some questions and suggestions:
Hope that helps = )
PortableApps.com Advocate
Thanks for the feedback. Hopefully someone will test this on vista to let us know how the testing goes. I'm pretty sure that this will work on Vista. Thanks!
An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.
Mahatma Gandhi,
Indian political and spiritual leader (1869 - 1948)
Well I got my hands on Vista, I went to a friends house and tested it on his computer which has vista. I used all the default dropdown search paths, My Documents, Desktop, and Program Files. So far all the testing went well. Now Im almost done with the next release but Im wondering if I should even keep the progress bar. I mean for small directories its wonderful but for large ones its a pain. It wont really show anything till the end since progress bars need something to compare itself to and then it will update the progress bar. Currently the way the progress bar works is it saves the number of files it has scanned and then once it parses through them then it will be shown until its done. I guess if scanning of a drive is gonna be done then I could just get the size of the drive as that would be faster than the other way. But if its a folder within the drive then the other way is best. If anyone knows of some other method for a progress bar that would be much faster and can be achieved in ahk then let me know I would appreciate it.
An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.
Mahatma Gandhi,
Indian political and spiritual leader (1869 - 1948)
K just a quick information update. So far in the new update I have added many new features. I have the ability to search other drives at the same time as a regular C: drive search. You can now set it to use portable apps. It will scan all removable drives and if the PAM folder format is detected it will allow you to use portable apps to open applications (via right click --> Open With --> PortableApp). For a future release I will try to add the ability to configure command arguments for particular applications. You can cut and copy files to new locations. Attributes of a file can now be modified such as created, modified, accessed. Added basic filters such as Pictures, Movies, and also Music. This will also be configurable through a menu. I should be able to release this tomorrow but for now I am wondering if there is any other small feature that could be added? Something that might not take long to implement such as a new Context menu for when you right click that would do something that ahk can do. Just let me know and Ill try to implement it into this next release. If not then it will have to be set for another one. Im hoping this next release will make this a bit easier to use and broaden usability.
An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.
Mahatma Gandhi,
Indian political and spiritual leader (1869 - 1948)
New Update. Hope this is useful to most of you. I have added basic filters such as Pictures, Music, and Video. Also It will detect other drives connected to your computer on startup. Ill try to fix this later so it will be in real time. Also it only can comfortably support 6 other drives. After that it will mess up the format of the GUi. Ill add support for more if it is needed. Also I plan to add the following features in the next release, Saving Search History, and Saving the open with program so it can be used over and over for that particular file type. Viewing of pictures through ahk. Also I will try to boost performance of this. Any other suggestions would be appreciated. Please let me know how you like this new update.
Enjoy!
An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.
Mahatma Gandhi,
Indian political and spiritual leader (1869 - 1948)