New Spotlight clone

[Saladin]

OK, sorry guys

it looks like MS didn't update their link to the BETA 2 .NET framwork v2.0, so here is the good link:

http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=44381

[R1CK13]

Wow, the one on the first page works excellent for me, only 1 bug i've found is it's showing some results twice (And i've checked there not the same files in different folders).

The .net one just spits errors at me all the time >.<

[rancourt]

Hmm. Having trouble on my end with it. Install was successful, I can initiate the search, but always get 'No Results Found' regardless of search item. Verified that the search URL was correct by cutting and pasting it directly into my browser, which worked. GDS is installed and running correctly.

Any thoughts, friends? Apologies for the trouble, just curious and interested in getting this wonderful, promising little application working. My thanks for your time and thought.

[TomLapp420]

Sorry it's taking so long, I have been working on the core of the program. I am taking my time building the core to make sure it's efficient and bulletproof (no errors). So far .net is handling everything well, searches are fast and accurate.

[xxdesmus]

can't wait for a new release guys...please let me know if you need testers or help, i will help in any way if i can.

[Saladin]

Well, I'm currently starting afresh (with v1.1, since the 2.0 framework produces unmaintainable code and is not convenient for most people).

I've got loads of great ideas, and a good memory-efficient, instant search engine running including accessible DLLs for people wanting to make a finder with spotlight searching integrated. Porting it shouldn't be too hard, but with the workload I have at the moment, it may take some time. I'm going at my own pace, and it'll be released when its of a good quality.

[al cap]

This whole thing seems to have turned into a bit of a mess, Toms spotlight was a very good program and he was working very hard to improve it, just look at the amount of builds he released over a short period of time. and now what? Tom has disapeared and Saladin has appeared making claims that he is making claims that he is working on his own version of spotligh one which as yet we have seen no working version.

Come on guys cant you work together and make this thing work for us other members instead of trying to inflate your own egos.

[Saladin]

tom's one was in VB, but he soon saw it was hard to develop into a true spotlight clone. So, he wanted to do it in .NET.

Tom's currently learning .NET, so he isn't releasing anything. I was working with him, since I can program in .NET, and soon found I had recreated spotlight by myself (with lots of tweaks available to make it very fast). However, it used lots of memory, and was in the framework v2.0, so I decided to start afresh in v1.1 (which windows update makes sure you all have). I released a sort of VERY buggy version a while ago. I talk with ghostwalker a lot, and so he has quite a few builds. If you really want, I could show you what I've done in 1 day of work on spotlight (basically, searching and search shortcuts). The UI is the last thing that goes on, so if I do, it'll look crad.

Tom's spotlight was ncie in that it worked. Unfortunatley, the engine wasn't flexible and used lots of inefficient routines to get results. With the .NET versions, we hope to minimize memory useage, improve flexibility and performance in terms of result retrieval speed. My one right now looks ugly, but it uses 15MB ram and returns results instantly. Even my old one with a 1:1 UI but poor mem conservation got the results instantly. .NET provides things to make this a lot better, like better XML implementation, multithreading, automatic Garbage collection...etc

I'm not sure how tom's doing right now, but it'll probably take him a little while to get an efficient engine running.

[suleiman]

Come on guys cant you work together and make this thing work for us other members instead of trying to inflate your own egos.

If you haven't been following all the posts in a thread, at least have the courtesy not to accuse developers taking the time out to provide you with these applications of "inflating" their egos.

[al cap]

sorry, sorry, sorry guys!!! keep working your doing a great job and i only wish i could be of some help....other than keeping my stupid thoughts to my self

[Saladin]

exactly. I was just about to add a popup in spotlight saying you were a twit

nah, here's a little demo I thought i'd ease your frustration with. Like I said, UI comes last.

http://s22.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=3MMCDKD...TV2G7X9L5HQ2558

Instructions (please read carefully, these will be unnecessay when we get an installer... that's in beta1):

1) Unzip to a folder of your choosing

2) Run Associate.exe

3) Drag Data.xml into EditSRCH.exe

4) paste your security code in there, click OK

5) Now, you can run spotlight.exe, or see the really nice thing in this build

6) Right click somewhere, and go to the "NEW" menu

7) Notice that spotlight search shortcut icon? click it

8) Right-click on the shortcut you've just made, and click EDIT

9) Enter a search criteria for the shortcut

10) Doubleclick the shortcut to open the results

EDIT: oh, and BTW it needs .NET Framework v1.1 (which you really SHOULD have)

[Ghostwalker]

Excellent very fast search capabilities I like the way this is going, really love the sptlight shortcuts.

[mike2005]

Great lightening speed!

[TomLapp420]

Hey everybody, I'm working on the .net version and it's coming great. It will be so much faster than the other ones since the old one loaded the results into listboxes, this one will load them into string tables (all of the sorting will go on completely in memory).

[TomLapp420]

I think everybody is a little misunderstood about the multiple versions thing. Me and Saladin have exchanged notes, the only problem is he works in Visual C .net, where I work in VB .net. We both don't know enough about each others programs to be able to work together indefinetely, but we have tried our best to provide each other with as much knowhow as possible. Saladin has definetely been a large part of the development of spotlight, he has helped me a lot. We are both working hard to create something awesome, who cares who releases it as long as it's good. Besides, it's good when this kind of thing happens. People get into a race to see who can make the best build, the result is it makes us try harder and release way better programs.

[firecracker6]

amen to that..

[Saladin]

Yea, right now we're sorta seperated in development, thuogh we're working on the same prject. What I think it may come to, is that we each develop our versions, and merge the best of each version into one, since all .NET languages integrate very well inline (which means, in a C# program, you could add #ifdef "VB" (or something.. i forgot exactly how it goes), and then put loads of VB.NET code in there, which will be compiled just as if it were C# (due to the way .NET programs are first compiled into MSIL, they can be part of the same assembly).

Rather than a string listbox however, which was going on in my teaser M2 build, my one has the results rendered by custom controls (meaning it can get 100% spotlight replication and nothing else). Tom, I would urge you to get it working rather than working against me as a competitor, since I would be very happy to merge the two of our programs once they are up for any sort of release (to give you an estimate, i'm on M3 and i intend to perfect the UI and release in M8).

After that, comes the full mode, which i haven't even started yet, but will eventually be the way you view search shortcuts

That said, if anyone can give me a zip/rar/whatever of the file type icons I can include by default, it would be very helpful in development.

[bhpaddock]

Hi guys.

A while back someone asked about doing an MSN/Windows Desktop Search version of this (someone else linked to my blog which showed how to encapsulate a WDS Results View by hacking the PIDL).

Well since that time I've been hired by MS and one thing I've worked on was C# samples for our fancy new SDK!

So if anyone is interested in checking out how to develop add-ons that work with the Windows Desktop Search indexer, check it out!

http://blogs.msdn.com/msnsearch/archive/20.../08/437045.aspx

[firecracker6]

bhpaddock, you rock for sharing this information with this crew in this thread. I really do hope a WDS capable version emerges. cheers.

[xxdesmus]

WDS would be absolutely amazing...thanks for the info

[TomLapp420]

I really want to use the windows desktop search for my program, but I literally cannot find anything on it using vb.net. I do have a C# sample program but I don't understand C#. I guess eventually someone will put some info on the internet about it

[AndreasV]

Doesn't WDS now have a COM interface? I am sure you can use COM in VB(.net)!

[TomLapp420]

so far I added the WDSQuery.dll, as a reference. I have tried to dimension the object but it always gives me an error

So far I tried this

Dim mSearchDesktop as New Microsoft.Windows.DesktopSearch.Query

[TomLapp420]

This dimensions out ok:

Public mSearchClass As New Microsoft.Windows.DesktopSearch.Query.SearchDesktopClass

it gives me three methods

.ExecuteQuery

.ExecuteSelectQuery

.GetType

but that's all,

[firecracker6]

good luck Tom... I'm root'n for you!