Features in windows and explorer not in opus

I think I've seen a couple of these mentioned before but I don't think there's ever been a post listing the few nice things Explorer and Windows can do to help manage my files but opus can't. I hope to see some of these in the future, especially the first two.

Indexed search
Microsoft added an indexed search facility into Vista that allows certain locations to be searched very fast. What is and isn't indexed can be set from within Vista. I'd really like to see the opus find panel tap into the Vista search engine. This way we can have the best of both worlds with the fast indexed search of vista and the ability in opus to have the search results sent to a collection and have all the opus abilities of filters, sorting, saving of collections etc. I don't want to have to download another bit of software like Google desktop search when I have this facility built straight into Windows, besides having two pieces of software indexing the same location is just crazy. Also the Vista search allows you to save the search query into a virtual folder.

Virtual folders
Along with Indexed search, virtual folders are the one other thing I miss in opus. I have a lot of virtual folders setup to keep track of my documents, images etc. I would like to be able to create and manage these from within opus. At the moment it's possible to display them in opus via an explorer display like my computer. Would it be possible for opus to get native support for these folders so we could create them within opus use the opus displays and add them to toolbars etc?

Tags
Vista allows you to tag your files which you can then use later in searching for your files. It's also possible to apply a star rating as well.

Groups
Explorer allows you to group your files by groups, could a new view mode be added to opus to support this?

Stacks
Vista and the new MAX OS allows you to stack your files, again could this get added?

Before Vista I very rarely had to drop out to Windows or Explorer to carry out any file manager type tasks but since I upgraded these new features mean I'm moving forward and backwards to manager my files. If it's possible to tap into these new Vista features I think it would be a big benefit to opus.

  1. Turn off Vista indexing and use GDS
  2. How virtual folders differ from collections?
  3. You can do using advanced search tab.
  4. I'd like to see this too.
  5. Use folders instead of stacks. A propos, I don't like such half-baked solutions. Either we should have relational/object-oriented storage system (WinFS) or traditional file system...

X.

  1. Turning off Vista search would turn off one of the big benefits of Vista for me. The vista search is integrated in lots of different parts of the system. For instance I use the search bar in the start menu and the control panel every day to find and launch applications. So to me it would be like turning off a good application I already have to download a less functional version. But one other important reason why I need the vista search is because this is the best place to create virtual folders.

  2. How do virtual folders compare to collections? Well first of all virtual folders are dynamic. If I do a search in opus for all word documents and then save that in a collection and then do the same with vista search and save the results as a virtual folder they look the same. But then if I create a new word document the next day the virtual folder will automatically show me that new word document along with the previous ones, the collection wouldn't show the new word document, only the ones previously.

On top of this virtual folders are more flexible. I can say "Show me all the spreadsheets that were created by my girlfriend in the past month" or "show me all the photos tagged with the keyword car" for instance. These folders would then be saved and every time you opened them they would show this subset of files that you want to see. This is very useful and now I've started using them I can't stop.

  1. As far as I know there is no way to apply tags to files from within opus and then use opus find to search for these tags later is there?

  2. Yeah groups would be nice.

  3. Stacks I can live without, they are not a biggie. It's just the one other thing I use on rare occasions in explorer that opus can't do.

I just came across zenFolders, which might be an alternative to virtual folders. I will try it later.

  1. Are 1 and 2 basically the same request?

  2. Today I noticed that the Show me all the files and folders I am sharing link in the Network and Sharing Center opens a saved search (virtual folder) inside of Opus. It works as well. Maybe there's a way to see other saved searches inside of Opus, although double-clicking them doesn't seem to work so there's more to it than I've worked out. Opus also lacks a UI for editing the saved searches so that would still need to be done in Explorer for now.

  3. You can use the file comment (descript.ion) system in Opus as a way of tagging files.

  4. Groups might be nice in a few cases, like when sorting by date or type, I guess.

  5. I haven't used Stacks much in Explorer but they didn't look that useful to me.

Hi Nudel,

  1. No 1 and 2 are not the same. What I'm asking is that when you call up the opus find panel and perform a search can it tap into the vista indexed search engine to perform the search? That's the first thing. The second thing is if for opus to understand and create virtual folders natively.

  2. I've managed to get virtual folders to open up in opus when I double click them, but they work like the "my computer" view. In other words explorer is displaying them and not opus so you can't get full control over them.

  3. Is it possible to search for files using the descript.ion field? What I'm really after is the information displayed in the screenshot to be available in opus, maybe via the set attributes dialogue or some other method.

@ mark_d. I've never heard of zenfolders before, I'll take a look to see how it compares. I still don't like the idea of downloading a couple of different utilities to perform a job that the OS does very already, but then again I'd like to add this functionality to opus. Thanks for the links mark.


(Click for larger version)

Got ya. I wonder how easy it would be to make that work well since an Opus search may include things that Vista's engine doesn't support. Opus would have to use it for some things but not others which may be complicated (but I am only guessing).

I haven't looked at how those folders work from a programming point of view. How possible this is depends on whether or not Vista lets you get at them via an API. Hopefully they look like any other Shell folder but it could be more complex than that.

Yeah, just use the Description clause in a Find filter. You can then pick wildcards or regular expressions to allow yourself to search for multiple tags.

Most of those things are already available by using an Image clause in a Find filter.

Got ya. I wonder how easy it would be to make that work well since an Opus search may include things that Vista's engine doesn't support. Opus would have to use it for some things but not others which may be complicated (but I am only guessing).
[/quote]

Under vista your able to tell the system what locations you want indexed. So in my case I have my profile folder set to be indexed as that’s where I have all my documents, images etc stored and where 90% of my searches take place. If I decide to search for a file under vista and tell it to look in my profile folder and for instance the windows folder it will use it’s indexed search to quickly search my profile folder and drop down to a opus-style manual search for the windows folder as it’s not been indexed. So in effect the vista search engine can take care of all searches regardless of where your searching, there is no need to decide what vista searches and what opus searches, everything can be passed to the vista search engine.

[quote]

Most of those things are already available by using an Image clause in a Find filter.[/quote]

Image clause? I’ll have to take a look at that. In my opinion being able to tap into the vista search engine and having native support for virtual folders offers the biggest benefit, the other items are more, would be nice type things.

URL to WDS 3 API description:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb331575.aspx

X.

And a propos tags- can't you add/edit them in Properties dialog? You can search with Advanced search, using Document, Image etc clauses.

X.

There are still a couple of things that Opus lets you search which Vista doesn't, though. I think people would also expect the search to match what is shown in Opus so if Opus shows information about files using one system (e.g. an Opus plugin reading music tags) then it makes sense to search via it as well, else it would become confusing.

[quote="nudel"]
There are still a couple of things that Opus lets you search which Vista doesn't, though. I think people would also expect the search to match what is shown in Opus so if Opus shows information about files using one system (e.g. an Opus plugin reading music tags) then it makes sense to search via it as well, else it would become confusing.[/quote]

Ah didn't know about that. In that case I agree, the opus search should still be able to search for the extra stuff as well.

Xyzzy, it's good to see that there's an API that could potentially be used to tap into.

[quote="Xyzzy"]And a propos tags- can't you add/edit them in Properties dialog? You can search with Advanced search, using Document, Image etc clauses.
[/quote]

I agree. I use tagging in DOpus on XP quite a lot, since DOpus can show these tags and search within. I guess Vista uses a combination of NTFS tags and MP3 tags (and the like), which is nothing more than we already had in XP, but only presented more handier. The only drawback is that you have to click Properties, Advanced, etc. in DOpus.