Find and Run Robot 2.71.01

Find and Run Robot 2.71.01 is a versatile program for keyboard maniacs - it uses an adaptive "live search" function to rapidly find programs and documents on your computer as you type.
Press your chosen hotkey to display the FARR window, then just start typing the first letters of the application you want to launch and the results appear instantly. Hit enter to launch the top result, or refine your search with special modifiers and commands.

FARR also lets you quickly run web searches, send email, manipulate files, control on-screen windows, and much more. Build and share custom commands or install plugins to add tons of new features, like live search features for your clipboard history and your internet bookmarks; a popup a calculator with history tape and persistant variables; and many more..

Major Features:

1. Ready to run, right out-of-the-box with no configuration needed.
2. The most customizable application of its kind, for those who love to tweak settings.
3. Caches programs you launch for instantaneous repeat searches and adaptive scoring.
4. Comes with dozens of built-in special alias commands that allow you to perform tons of different web searches and other operations.
5. Create and share (xml) alias packs with your friends or download them from the forum.
6. Completely free; signup requested and donation recommended -- your donations fund continued development!
7. Indexing vs. Non-indexing:
   • One of the features of FARR that some people really like and others don't, is that FARR does not index directories.  This means that all searches are conducted on the actual directory structure.
   • Benefits of this are that FARR is never using background cpu scanning the disk for changes and is always up to date, and uses very little memory when minimized.
   • A disadvantage is that FARR can take a little longer to search large/deep directories. In practice the start menu can be searched very rapidly which is the main use of FARR, but if you want to use FARR to search a huge directory structure of documents, an indexed solution might be better (though in this case you might be better off with a proper file contents indexing program like the desktop search tools, as opposed to a launcher).
   • One important exception to the non-indexing is that FARR does cache the list of launched files, so that even if a desired program is not found instantaneously, once it is launched once, it will forever more be found instantly.
   • (there is also a plugin for FARR that uses the Locate32 free indexing search program to conduct indexed searches -- it's not as seamless as native indexing launchers but it is useful for occasional searching of certain directories).
8. Heuristic Scoring
   • FARR may have been the first launcher to use heuristic scoring to do a good job of ranking found files.  There are a wide range of heuristics employed, and advanced users can configure the differential weighting of various factors.
   • By customizing the weighting and adding new weighting patterns, users can easily exclude certain kinds of results or bring others to the top.
   • Special modifier keywords can be used to bring certain scoring heuristics into play only in certain cases (for example one could set up a +music modifier which weighted certain file extensions and added certain directories to the search).
9. Result List:
   • While some launchers focus on showing and auto-completing a single best result -- FARR always shows the top ranked results.  Hitting Enter launches the top result -- but the user can also directly launch any of the top 10 by hitting alt+#.
     
   • Right clicking on a result brings up a menu of common operations (including excluding the result from future searches, changing the weight of the result, adding the result to a user-defined group menu.
     The result list is also a standard windows file list -- so files can be dragged out of the results to other programs, and the normal right-click file context menu can be accessed.
10. Plugins:
    • FARR is coded in C++ (C++ Builder by CodeGear/Borland), and a native C++ plugin interface is available.  But one of the unusual things about FARR is the extent to which users have contributed wrappers for writing plugins in other languages.
    • Plugin API wrappers exist for coding plugins using Delphi, C# and other dot net languages, as well as javascript (and python and other active scripting languages).  Javascript has turned out to be an extremely popular and easy way to write plugins.
    • Some plugins that have been written include a calculator with tape history and persistant user variables, clipboard plugin, default printer switcher, uninstaller, commandline shell and capture, language translation, delicious integration, todo list, alarm system, firefox/ie/opera bookmark searcher, google calendar plugin, and many more.
    • Plugins can display standard file result, or ask to display information in the FARR window as a richtext memo which is useful when displaying textual information.  An html output spreadsheet output mode is coming soon.

Requirements: Windows 9X/2K/XP/x64/VISTA/Win7.