Search Page

Overview

The Search Page is where you enter the keywords for the files you are looking for, and where you receive the results of your searches. After you are well connected to the network, you enter your searches, receive results, select one or more files, and download the files.

Appearance

Search Results List

This list shows you all of the results which have been returned by your searches. The file name, along with its size, the speed of the responding host, and the host's IP address are reported. These are the columns displayed

Search The original set of keywords you entered.
QoS This is the quality of the server. The quality of the server is measured based on the operating system, connection speed, ability to receive incoming connections, and number of hops.
File Name This is the name of the file as reported by the host. Directory names are removed from the display. Portions of the file name which match your keywords are hilited in blue. Only the first matching keyword found is hilited, not all of them.
Size The exact file size, in bytes, as reported by the responding host is displayed here.
Speed The speed of the responding host is displayed in bits per second. This speed is configured by the user, and not measured by the program, so the actual speed may vary.
Version The vendor and version number of the software returning the search results, if it can be determined.
Uptime The length of time since the server was started.
Host This is the IP address or computer name of the source of the file. IP addreses that fall in the private IP address range are displayed in red. This usually means that a push download will be required to get the file.
Web Indicates whether or not the remote host has enabled the Web Server feature. Only enabled Web Servers can be browsed through the Browse Web Site menu item.

If the file is drawn in grey, this means you have a file with exactly the same name and size in one of your shared directories. If the file is drawn in red, this means that you have a file with the same name, but a different size, in one of your shared directories. A file which has been selected for download or completed downloading is drawn in green. Sorting on the file name will group these categories, and alphabetize within the groups.

You can select a file by left clicking in the list. You may select more than one file by holding down the control key when you click. By right clicking in the list, you have the option to download currently selected files, or to clear the list.

Double clicking a file in the list will queue it for downloading and switch you to the downloads page.

Search Menu

Right clicking in the search list produces the search menu. This menu provides the following options:

Download Initiates a download request for the currently selected items. You may select as many items as you wish from the list.
Browse Web Site If the remote host has activated the Web Site feature, this will bring up the default browser to the server's home page. The home page usually has a listing of all the available files, so this can be useful for browsing everything a host has to offer.
Clear List Removes all items from the search results list. This does not affect current searches, so new items may continue to appear.

Search Keywords

This is where you type in your search keywords. Searches on the Gnutella network ignore differences between upper and lower case characters. Any non alphabetic or numeric character is usually ignored by most hosts. You do not need to enter the extension of the file you want to find; However, if you were interested in search for all files of a particular type you could enter the extension without the period. For example, to search for all music files, enter "mp3" into the box.

For incoming and outgoing searches, BearShare requires that all keywords exist in some part of the file name to consider the file as a matching file.

Pressing Start submits your search to the network. Pressing Add will add another search to all of your active searches. Pressing Stop will cancel all of your active searches without clearing the list. When there are search results in the list, and you stop the search, the Stop button changes to the Clear button. Pressing the Clear button removes all search results from the list.

Search Preferences

You can enter the minimum speed of hosts that should respond to your search, and also specify a minimum size of the files you would like to find.

This can be very useful if you are looking for certain types of large files, like movies or complete albums. This can also be used with lower numbers to filter out small, useless files.

Search Results Indicator

This area shows you the number of searches active, the number of files that are in the search results list, and an animation providing feedback that your searches are active.