Re: [Announce] scout - search contacts, conversations and calendars
 

Version 0.6 works well now!!

Cheers

Re: [Announce] scout - search contacts, conversations and calendars
 

I'll add my three cents and say that scout would be a perfect app to become a "global search" of a device. Just a simple and convenient app to search many different (yet configurable) content types across the device - including applications, bookmarks, maybe even files (although that might be an overkill). I think it would be particularly bad idea to create separate apps for contact/messages search, separate for application search, separate for bookmarks etc. It's not a kind of user experience users (including me) generally expect.

I am anxious everytime I need to launch an app from my applications list, as there are zillions of icons not sorted in any manner. Frankly speaking, the ideal solution for me would be implementing a simple type-ahead search in just that view, so I tap upper-left corner of screen, all app icons show up and then I start typing name of desired application. Having Scout doing that type of search across applications and perhaps bookmarks would make my day.

Anyway, it's your app, your decision which way you want to follow, and ultimately we have very little to say. It's only about you hearing our voices (or not).

Update: I didn't read the whole thread through, I've only discovered Scout by accident (browsing through apps submitted to competition) and first thing I wanted to discover is whether it does support applications search.

Re: [Announce] scout - search contacts, conversations and calendars
 

Mh, yes... A good Idea. I would like to see searching for Bookmarks in Scout, too. :rolleyes:

Hmm... good Idea, but I'm afraid to say Scout wouldn't manage it this way... and I don't think it is a good idea to integreate it into Scout. :(

It's a hildon thing. Perhaps what about creating a Bug report, feature request against the hildon desktop and report it to Nokia?

Hmm... okay, I guess they won't do it... but plugins at the app launcher are, as far as I know, also not possible. :(

Perhapt a Widget could do it in a comfortable way?

What about asking the programmer of ApMeFo? :)

Re: [Announce] scout - search contacts, conversations and calendars
 

I am not saying Scout should do exactly it this way - that was just my "ideal" solution. I'm happy for Scout to be a separate application (ie. not integrated directly with system UI) as long as it can browse through applications.

Besides, creating internal index of launchable applications should be easy, isn't it?

Re: [Announce] scout - search contacts, conversations and calendars
 

App Search Widget

nicolai

Re: [Announce] scout - search contacts, conversations and calendars
 

You have made my day, thanks!

Btw, you should update your signature. ;)

Re: [Announce] scout - search contacts, conversations and calendars
 

Oookay, my proposal was at the 26. July 2010 and you announced it at the 23. of July... you own a time machine, aren't you? :D

Re: [Announce] scout - search contacts, conversations and calendars
 

The current version 0.0.6 is in extras-testing.
Please test and vote for it.

New features will be added after the coding competition is over.

Upcoming features:
restrict calendar search by entry type,
(search only notes, or tasks, or events)
restrict calendar and conversation search by time
(search last x days, week, month, year or other
timeframe

maybe?
restrict conversation search by contacts
edit calendar entries
(for example, use the detail view for notes to
edit and save it, the same for events and tasks?)

Further ideas or suggestions?

regards
Nicolai

Re: [Announce] scout - search contacts, conversations and calendars
 

What about restrict calendar search based on calendar? :)

I've got several calendars. Maybe I want only to search in my private calendar and not at my work calendar?


And my next suggestion is to show up some settings in the result window before the search.
Mmmh... do you understand what I mean? :D

Startup Scout. You have in the middle a empty space where the results are shown after the search. If I want to search only my contacts I have to go now into the settings, deselect all expect the contacts. Go to the main screen again and apply the search.

With my suggestion the user has only to start up the application, click on the settings he want in the middle of the screen, has to enter in the bottom what he wants to search and after the search has began the settings will disappear and in this area the results are shown up.

This will improve the procedure enormously. If the user want's to change his setting after the first search he has to go to the settings as in the actual implementation.

What do you think? :)

Re: [Announce] scout - search contacts, conversations and calendars
 

Yes, this is/ will be part of the calendar search option,
search only in specific calendars.


Yes, I already play with this option in my developer version. Three toggle buttons at top of the window to toggle search categories.
But they stay there, and the result list is a little bit smaller.

regards
nicolai

Re: [Announce] scout - search contacts, conversations and calendars
 

Hmmm... in my opinion they should disappear after the first query to give the user more space with the results. :)

Perhaps, you could show the result only in a stacked window? (without search field in the bottom)
When the user taps the back arrow in the upper right he will get back to the initial window with the search field and the options. :rolleyes:

Re: [Announce] scout - search contacts, conversations and calendars
 

I hardly dare to ask...adequate search in mail....?

Re: [Announce] scout - search contacts, conversations and calendars
 

It is not that bad, one result line gets lost:

Re: [Announce] scout - search contacts, conversations and calendars
 

nicolai,
IMHO on this screen you have to always think about resolution when designing UI. So when you lose 1/5 of screen information it means 20% of information and in long run it's huge amount :|

btw.
Most of apps use screen space too sparely imo.


.edit
Those selections could be in pull down box besides huge search box.

Re: [Announce] scout - search contacts, conversations and calendars
 

Good points.

I must admit, I like the idea to have those buttons on the view.
Maybe a sidebar:

Re: [Announce] scout - search contacts, conversations and calendars
 

I would like to include this as well, but
searching emails seems to be much more difficult in fremantle.
I couldn't find a good programming interface.

regards
Nicolai

Re: [Announce] scout - search contacts, conversations and calendars
 

Nice nicoli.. the sidebar idea looks goods
So far. an excellent app.. Thanks

Re: [Announce] scout - search contacts, conversations and calendars
 

Yes! Sidebar is excellent!

Re: [Announce] scout - search contacts, conversations and calendars
 

Oh, YES! :)

Hmm... what about to view this buttons only after the search to simply quickfilter the result list and not before the search has began? :rolleyes:

And I would still prefer to hide the search field after the results are got visible. So you cold view 6 results per page instead of 5.
The users are searching for something. And in the most cases they will get more than a single hit for their search. They have to search manually in the result list and find what they have searched for. So with 6 results per page it is more viewed, more visible at the same time. The user has to search more with his eyes and less by panning the list up and down. (easier)
With the back button can the user go back to begin a new search.
Perhaps it could be a good idea to quickfilter the search results as soon as the user begans typing at the result list. (like eMail does)

And the option to search only for full words would be good. :)

Re: [Announce] scout - search contacts, conversations and calendars
 

What about indexing and searching through MicroB bookmarks?

Re: [Announce] scout - search contacts, conversations and calendars
 

The content of the bookmarked pages or
to find a bookmark by name?

Re: [Announce] scout - search contacts, conversations and calendars
 

Bookmark by name and (ideally) its URL.

Re: [Announce] scout - search contacts, conversations and calendars
 

How about tabs for each of the categories? Enter the word in the general screen to search for and then hit a tab which opens that particular screen and starts the query for that particular category and shows the results for that category. 1 tab should be "query all", like you present the info right now. In all screens the word searched for should be visible and editable.

You can then "tab" through the results and minimise the amount of scrolling.

Re: [Announce] scout - search contacts, conversations and calendars
 

Thank you so much for this app. As an ex palm user wiith a calendar back to the 90's i can at last search again.

I prefer the settings as they are or maybe down the side.

Is the search quicker by just searching say calendar, rather than all options or does the setting selection just control the results display? Its not bad took just under a minute to bring up around 50 entries from 1994-2009.

Can you make the keyboard arrow up/down keys work for scrolling the results list?

Keep up the good work!

Re: [Announce] scout - search contacts, conversations and calendars
 

Second the idea, this seems more streamlined to use then the other way around.

Re: [Announce] scout - search contacts, conversations and calendars
 

Would this not unnecessary increase the query time? That was at least my idea when proposing hitting a tab to start the query for one of the categories.

Re: [Announce] scout - search contacts, conversations and calendars
 

Hi,

I need one additional vote in extras-testing. The current
version in extras-testing is the same as in extras-devel.
Please (test and) vote if you think this application is ready for extras.

thanks
nicolai

edit: That was fast :-)
Now promoted to extras.

Re: [Announce] scout - search contacts, conversations and calendars
 

Done! :D

This app has gone through great improvements, thanks again ;)

Re: [Announce] scout - search contacts, conversations and calendars
 

Hi Nicolai,

Any chance for addtional features in Scout in the nearby future?

Re: [Announce] scout - search contacts, conversations and calendars
 

Yes, work for the next update is mostly done.

regards
Nicolai

Re: [Announce] scout - search contacts, conversations and calendars
 

Hi,

new version of scout (0.0.7) is in extras-devel.

Many new features:
Buttons to enable/disable search categories (conversations, calendar, contacts) moved from the settings menu to
the mainview.

The menu has 3 buttons, one to enable/disable case-sensitive search, and the other two to configure calendar/conversations search.

Conversations serach:
You can select which kind of conversations (SMS and/or IM), and
define a time frame (last day, month, year or user defined timeframe).

Calendar search:
The same timeframe selection works for calendar entries as well.
For example you can search events from "one Year ago". This means, start search from one year ago, but find upcoming events as well.
And you can select which event type (notes, tasks, events) and select the calendars (N900, Private, ...).

Finally, the calendar entries are now editable.
Most of the event attributes can be changed and saved from the event details view. As a personal requirement I added
the feature to edit the interval attribute in recurrent events.

As you may know, you can not edit all recurrence attributes in the stock calenar app. Some events have a complex recurrence rule. Other events aren't considered as complex recurrence, even so they have the interval attribute (every 2. week for example). For those events you can now change the interval attribute.

Beware, this is in development. Please consider to backup your calendar data before your test this editing feature.

regards
Nicolai

Re: [Announce] scout - search contacts, conversations and calendars
 

Thanks, a great job.

Could you include searches in emails? And what tasks and notes?

Re: [Announce] scout - search contacts, conversations and calendars
 

Search in emails is difficult, I may not have the time to
implement this.
Tasks and Notes are from the calendar application.

Re: [Announce] scout - search contacts, conversations and calendars
 

Works fine here. Couple of requests :)

- Would it be possible to search all the terms. I do not know correct term but basically same as google does as default.

-would be nice if pressing right buttons after search would filter out that category.

Re: [Announce] scout - search contacts, conversations and calendars
 

Hi nicolai ..it works very well - but like always by me :cool: it found nothing of the conversations .. I search a sms conversation which I know for sure its in my mobile but nothing is as result in the scout app. :(

Re: [Announce] scout - search contacts, conversations and calendars
 

If I click a Filter Button on the right side while the search is still running I got a segmentation fault.

After the search is done nothing happens if I select or deselect one of the buttons. I have to search again to apply the filter.

Mh, and I would still prefer a stacked view with faded out search field to see more results at once. :rolleyes:

Otherwise it works just great! :)

Re: [Announce] scout - search contacts, conversations and calendars
 

Thank you for finding this.
Yes, these are no filters. They are there to enable/disable
a search category.
@PipoXtreme: I am sorry. I have no idea why the
conversation search doesn't work. I really would like to
find out, don't know how.

Re: [Announce] scout - search contacts, conversations and calendars
 

Thanks Nicolai - seems to work very well!

This is a very useful and esy to use app on N900.

Is there any reason for the desktop shortcut icon being so small? It's not really a problem, but looks a bit at odds against other icons.

Thanks once again for your hard work

Steve Barker

Re: [Announce] scout - search contacts, conversations and calendars
 

My missing skills in graphical design :-)

Re: [Announce] scout - search contacts, conversations and calendars
 

Ah, okay. In this point the UI design is not easy to grasp or I expected something else... :rolleyes:
In this case it works as designed. :D