search · Grey Nicholson

Google Desktop 2 Really Annoys Me

2005-12-28T21:18:00+00:00

After a while I gave in and am now using Google Desktop 2, rather than Microsoft Desktop Searchbox Toolbar, to quickly find stuff. I don't, however, use the sidebar, mainly because it was battering the crapputer's CPU, and because its search box makes all of the toolbars (or “desktop flaps”) I used to have obsolete. And it's more zen.

This is why I don't use MSN Desktop Google (hang on...) - with GD2 I just type something and press Enter; if I want to Google my computer with MSN (you know it makes sense) I have to type something, press down, then Enter. Otherwise a results window is launched, showing the least relevant results first (or so it seems).

So Microsoft Google (take that, trademark!) is out of the question. Most of my pet peeves about GD2 are resolved by not using the sidebar, but not all. It turns out GD2 does have a hotkey - Windows+G or Ctrl+Alt+G; neither of these can be changed to my preferred F9, but I can easily AutoHotkey that problem away.

But there are still little, niggly annoyances: I can't have the search box on the left of the taskbar because it's re-added to the taskbar every time I log on - on the right. There's no need for a Maximise button next to the search field - the drop-down menu includes the option to display the sidebar.

It's fortunate GD2 doesn't display times very often, because Google insist on using twelve-hour clock-style notation, that hasn't been used by anyone real since the twentieth century (yeah, that's a long time ago); and there's no option to change the format. If you're going to pick one time format for everyone, rather than letting them pick (and this is actually a good idea because it avoids unneccesarily cluttering the user interface), and you refuse to use the format the operating system tells you to use, at least pick a non-stupid format and not the one your country (alone) uses.

GD2 doesn't seem to want to find the music I have stored in Shared Documents. I've specifically told it to index the folder, but it responds with “What? What are you on about? That doesn't exist. Seriously. Nowt there. Now go away.”. However it does return music files on my Desktop; or rather they were on my desktop for a few minutes and haven't been there for the past month. Guess where they have been... “There's nothing there. Really. La-la-la-not-listening-la-la-la-la!”

And it's really, obnoxiously American - besides imitating a twelve-hour clock. A normal “I'm Feeling Jammy” search for “news”, from google.co.uk returns BBC News; an equivalent search from the search box returns CNN. This despite downloading GD2 from desktop.google.co.uk - I obviously want searches done via google.co.uk, and not google.com. And there's no option to change this.

It's really annoying when 90% of something is damned good and the other 10% is imbecilic.

Google Desktop 2

2005-08-23T23:01:00+00:00

Well, that was good timing. One day later (even less actually - it was a measly 14 hours before the relevant remaindering), Google goes and releases Google Desktop 2. I have installed it and, very generally, I like it.

I like that it integrates with Firefox and Thunderbird by default and automatically. I didn't have to tell it my Gmail username and password for it to display incoming mail from Thunderbird. Apparently, the Web Clips panel adds subscriptions for websites I visit frequently in Firefox, automatically. (OMG they're trying to rename RSS WTF STFU!)

At the moment I use a custom native Windows XP toolbar. At the top I have a collection of frequently used files and folders, below which is the MSN Windows tooltop deskbar search text field jobby. Below that I have the contents of the My Recent Documents folder, i.e. twenty of the most recently used files and their containing folders.

GD2 can replace much of this functionality with its Quick View panel, and I can merge the rest with the toolbar on the left of my desktop. But, there are a few things that'll stop me from getting rid of my current setup and using GD2 full-time:

The sidebar can be auto-hidden, but it stays “always on top”; so the far top-right corner of the screen is no longer the currently maximised window's Close button, it's now just dead space on the sidebar.
When I point to the right edge of the screen the sidebar waits for a short while before appearing; this is obviously to prevent it popping up in front of a maximised window when I'm just trying to scroll, but that wouldn't be a problem if the sidebar didn't insist on being “always on top”.
When I click away from MSN Deskbar Windows Tool Search, it automatically dismisses itself and leaves me alone; GD2 persists, in front of everything else of course.
I've already got used to pressing F10 and having Windows Desktop MSN Bar focus itself; GD2 needs this option (and I have to be able to make it F10, not Ctrl+Shift+G or something similarly intricate).
I'd like to be able to see more than ten search results without opening a webpage. It doesn't matter how accurate the results are, it's not going to find all of a 13-track album. Desktop MSN Whatever still only shows 12, but the full-blown results window isn't a webpage.

There are a few other things I'd like to see fixed but that wouldn't necessarily stop me from using GD2:

Much of the news content seems distinctly North American; maybe it's actually just international. Maybe me looking at more UK- and Europe-related news would fix this automatically for me. But it should be a bit smarter and offer more tailored content (and fix the spelling of the UI) based on my location.
Panels should scroll automatically (where it makes sense), rather than just showing the first item
It still seems a little eager to fire up a webpage; there should be an option to turn off all webpage-based UI and handle preferences through proper chrome (or it should just do that anyway)
The search box is stuck to the bottom; maybe I want it at the top, or somewhere in the middle.
When I resize the preview box for news items (as I'm invited to by the grippy), I expect more content to be shown, not more whitespace.
When I type Maximo Park I also want it to find Maxïmo Park, like a Google web search would.
It'd be nice if there was a To Do panel that could integrate with my Sunbird iCalendar files, like Konfabulator's PIM Overview widget can. It'd be even better if it was an editor rather than just a display (only if it was properly interoperable with Sunbird, of course).
I'm not allowed to move the deskbar out of the taskbar and into another native Windows XP toolbar, like I could with GDS and can with Desktop MSN Windows Search Toolbar.
It'd be nice if the panels could automatically resize themselves to suit the amount of content they contain (as long as it happened while I wasn't looking).

So for now I'm sticking with Search Microsoft Desktop Windows Toolbar...box. If Google had been a day earlier, they might've just won.

Microsoft Desktool MSN Windows Search…top…bar

2005-08-21T21:55:00+00:00

Earlier today I installed Desktop Windows MSN Search (or whatever it's called) and I'm actually pleasantly surprised. I'd had Google Desktop Search installed for a while, but I've never found it useful.

Its results always seemed irrelevant. Of course, calling a desktop search program “Google” is something of a misnomer - Google is founded on the principle that “a link is a vote” and there are no links to inspect for local files.

GDS had two options to display the results it found: relevance and date. The former seemed very arbitrary, turning up files I haven't used in ages (such as archived files) over ones I use all the time (such as mqwtm.xml, The Big, Bad Source File).

The other option, sorting by date seemed backwards - it showed the most recently used matching file first - the one that I've just used and haven't had chance to lose yet; I'd only actually bother firing up GDS to find a totally obscure file.

Another thing - the firing up. GDS seems slow compared to Toolbar Windows MSN Search Desktop, because the former is HTML-bound. I don't want to have to load a webpage to find a file on my computer, no matter how fast Firefox is. And since the results are just links, I can't right-click and use the system context menu.

Windows MSN Desktop Microsoft, on the other hand, pops up a window showing incremental results as I type. Hang about - GDS could also do that. Oh, yeah - I turned it off because I don't like allowing Internet Explorer to render webpages, and Google's results are in the form of a webpage.

MSN Deskbar Search Tool does come with a lot of links to msn.co.uk inbuilt, but all of them can be turned off, and any search service (i.e. Google) can be used for the web search. With a few minutes' Options-massage, it can be adequately non-annoying.

Desktop MSN Windows' full-blown results window's interface resembles the Details view of Explorer, although it's clearly just an imitation - there's no context menu for the column headers. But it allows sorting by any of many criteria in both directions, including “relevance”. The preview pane is pretty useful in most cases, except when previewing a Microsoft Word format or even Rich Text Format document. Then it's headed with “You Need To Buy Microsoft Office To Look At This Properly Yes You Do Don't Argue No Wordpad Won't Do £££”. Seriously. Direct quote.

It's quite amusing that the icon for the inferior - well, useless - inbuilt Windows Search function thing appears in the results window's toolbar and can't be removed. Right Hand, meet Left Hand.

To summarise, MSN Desktop Windows Search Toolbar actually works. But Microsoft (or MSN or whoever's supposed to be responsible for it) do need to figure out what it's supposed to be and then assign it a name - one name, that it calls itself throughout. Like, everywhere. (Have I introduced you to Left Hand yet?)