Gameboy - Search Results

Such games loudly proclaim their technological ambitions. The results can be stunning (take a look at Nintendo 64's Goldeneye or any of the other Doom-inspired stalking games). But the technological ambitions are also large enough to make the games' failures and limitations clear.

gameboy - search results

How about raiding Apple's nonexistent past? And by that I mean good old vaporware, specifically Copland. I want Copland's "live search folders." Since not everyone is familiar with Copland, I'll explain how they worked (or were supposed to work).

Imagine using the Finder's "Find" command to search for something--say, all files created today that are larger than 2MB and are somewhere on the volume named "My Work." Now imagine "saving" that search in the form of a "magical" folder that always appeared to contain the result of that search, as if the search was run constantly in the background.

For this feature to work correctly, the user should never perceive any actual searching being done. The folder should simply appear to contain the results, and the results should be updated every time the result set changes in any way.

If you're ready to pounce on the concept of live search folders as a violation of the rules of the Spatial Finder, think again! Not only can this feature avoid breaking any "rules", it can actually benefit from spatial interface features itself.

First, live search folders would have to be visually distinct from normal folders. A prominently badged folder icon along with a custom window status bar would accomplish that. Second, a live search folder would behave just like any other folder in all ways other than its contents. It can be placed anywhere on any disk, its window can be moved and resized, its view can be changed, it can be dragged to the edge of the screen where it will become a pop-up folder, and so on. In this way, live search folders reap all the rewards of spatial orientation, and fit right in with the world of the Spatial Finder.

Finally, there's the question of the folder contents. A live search folder does not contain any actual files. The actual files exist elsewhere. Nor does a live search folder contain aliases, since aliases are a kind of file as well. Furthermore, items cannot be dragged into a live search folder. (The only way to change the contents of a live search folder is to alter the query used to generate its contents.) Live search folders actually contain proxies for the files and folders that compose the search results.

The concept of a proxy for a file or folder may sound obscure or abstract, but proxies already exist in both classic Mac OS and Mac OS X. The icon in the title bar of a Finder window is a proxy, for example. You can drag that icon somewhere and it will move the actual folder. That icon is a proxy for the folder, not the folder itself (which, clearly, could not be located in its own title bar). But the most relevant existing location of proxy icons is in a search results window. Like the proxy icons in folder title bars, an item selected from a list of search results can be dragged to a new location and the actual item will move to that new location.

Since the contents of a live search folder are essentially "search results", making them proxies is not a big stretch. The only remaining question is whether or not to make proxy icons visually distinct. I don't think it's necessary, since proxy icons are clearly identifiable by context: in the title bar, in a search results window, or in a (visually distinct, remember) live search folder window. There's no need for the items themselves to also be visually distinct. But just in case, proxy icons could take advantage of the fact that the Mac OS X Finder has stopped using an earlier form of appearance differentiation: italic text. Alias file names used to appear in italic text in System 7. Later, an icon badge was added in addition to the italics. Mac OS X kept the icon badge but lost the italics, which makes this style available for proxy icons.

Before moving on, let's take a final look at live search folders from a different perspective. We've seen that this feature can exist happily in the Spatial Finder, but why is this feature useful? Put simply, live search folders are the first step into--and this may come as a shock--the world of non-spatial file management.

While the Spatial Finder allows the user to organize files and folders as if they were real objects in space, the contents of a live search folder represent files and folders organized according to arbitrary selection criteria which may or may not have anything to do with their "location." The contents of a live search folder allow the user to take an arbitrary slice across the "physical" world of the Finder.

Note that I've been careful to talk about the contents of live search folders as being organized non-spatially. The containers, the live search folders themselves, fit into the Spatial Finder because they follow all the same rules of regular folders. The consistency of the "world of the computer" remains intact, and no new concepts need to be introduced to reap the benefits of this new interface element.

And those benefits are significant. If you can't think of a situation where you would benefit from a live search folder in your daily work, then you're probably not thinking very hard. Without even getting into complex boolean queries, obscure workflows, or even more exotic metadata like labels, I can imagine almost anyone benefiting from a simple live search folder showing "items created or modified today." And any user of Microsoft's Entourage email client will already be familiar with the utility of its "Custom Views", which are essentially live search folders for email. 041b061a72