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Written by Tom Mordasky
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Sunday, 27 August 2006 |
Avoid the spotlight
Spotlight was supposed to be the “Great Leap Forward” in search technology, giving users the ability to see not only files and folders but to search content and meta data within the items themselves. Fantastic. The only problem is it seems to have lost some basic search abilities along the way. Searching through specific files and folders, modified at specific dates and times has seemed to become more difficult, not less. In this installment of dotAPP, we'll look at two attempts to improve upon Apple’s design.
Like many aspects of OSX’s Unix underpinnings, Spotlight is very powerful behind the scenes. It periodically indexes available volumes and can provide a fast and robust searching ability. Unfortunately, much of its true power lies within the command line world of the terminal. The front end has actually become less straight forward and easy to use when compaired to its immediate ancestors. Is there hope for us Unix noobs beyond (kMDItemAuthors == "Kevin"wc || kMDItemAuthors = "Steve"wc) ? Lets see…
Though both apps we are examining seek to do the same thing, improve upon Spotlight’s front end, they approach the problem from opposite directions. NotLight, by Matt Neuburg provides a simple and technical insight into the Unix roots of OSX. SpotLaser, written by Frovil Heavy Industries, presents its users with an elegant and easy to use interface that would make Cupertino proud (or jealous).
NotLight is a simple, freeware app that will appeal strongly to minimalists, nerds and especially minimalist nerds. It’s footprint is modest and its abilities are straight forward and to the point. It is essentially a front end for the command line version of Spotlight (mdfind). I must strongly recommend reading the author’s help file. It contains an excellent explanation of how Spotlight operates, both on the front end (GUI) and behind the scenes. NotLight’s goal is to allow the user to easily construct search queries in the syntax that spotlight understands, something Apple has failed to do outside of the terminal.
It handles Boolean functions (AND, OR, NOT) with ease. It also supports “wildcards” where adding an asterisk before or after a term will provide results containing the requested item, either before “*item” after “item*” or both “*item*”. It supports searches based on spotlight’s built in parameters, called Search Keys. Display Name, Full Name, Content, Finder Comment, Extension, Type Code, and Modified Date are the defaults. Selecting a key will display a few quick tips on how to best exploit its strengths and avoid its weaknesses. Once a search string has been formed its results are displayed with full Unix style path names. Strings can be easily saved and recalled for later use. It’s not only a very solid app but it teaches the user the how and why of its functions as well. Something many “eye candy” programs fail to do. It is fast, simple and direct in its function.
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The Good: A simple and effective application that taps directly into the true power of Spotlight.
The Bad: Unix scares Grandma.
The Skinny: Savvy users looking to both understand and tap the power of Spotlight may find this app to be just what they were looking for.
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 Next, enter SpotLaser, by Frovil Heavy Industries. Now Spotlight can have a front end worthy of its powerful features and users can have the search options they need without sacrificing form for function. SpotLaser is an alternative front end for Apple’s Spotlight engine. It offers robust interface to create specific and powerful searches with ease. Its eye friendly window is divided into four main sections: What, Where, When and Who. It also supports Boolean searches, cleverly disguising them as simple, self explanative terms such as “All of the words” and “Without the words”. Imagine that! Additionally the Spotlight search keys are represented by check boxes allowing the user to easily specify types of files for the query.
It also addresses what to me is the most glaring omission in spotlight, its inability to specify specific folders or volumes from within the search dialog. The “Open” button allows one to choose any file or location to query. It conveniently displays the Unix style path for any item chosen.
Being a sucker for eye candy, my favorite feature of SpotLaser is hands down the calendar for specifying date-based queries. It’s an absolutely great idea to help visualize timeframes when searching for files. Overall SpotLaser does exactly what it needs to do and really what SpotLight should do: provide a robust, easy to use and no nonsense way of finding stuff.
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The Good: Easy to use, robust alternative to SpotLight.
The Bad: Cannot replace Spotlight entirely.
The Skinny: This is really how spotlight should have been done to begin with.
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