I have tried to make Find Stuff a very powerful and yet easy to use file location program. I hope that you think that I have achieved my goal. But, if you have suggestions on how to make it easier to use or there is some feature that you would like to see in a future version, please let me know. I will try and add it.
The Basics:
Find Stuff allows you to search multiple volumes, or multiple folders on one volume. You tell it what you want to search by selecting the volume or folder in the volume list, located in the top-left of the Find Stuff main window. If you double click on a volume or a folder it will open it (just like in the standard file dialogs). And if you wish to go back to where you were before, just click on the pop up menu above the list.
To tell Find Stuff what you want to search for, you select items in the ‘Find By’ list. Only items that are selected will be used as parameters for the search. To edit a parameter, click to the left of the name (or icon) and the options will appear on the left. The blue arrow points to the arrow that is currently being edited.
The various parameters are:
Name - find by a file name (or partial name).
Date Created - find by the date the file was created, or a number of days ago it was created.
Date Modified - find by the date or the number of days ago it was modified.
Finder Flags - find by things like alias, visible, locked, label, file or directory.
Data Size - find by the size of a files’ data fork or files within a range of sizes.
Resource Size - find by the size of a files’ resource fork or files within a range of sizes.
Content - find by the content of the file (you can search both forks)
Type - find by the type of file.
Creator - find by the creator of the file.
Get Info Comment - find by the comment that is typed into the Get Info window.
You can select any one or multiple parameters to search by. The more you tell Find Stuff about the file you are looking for, the faster it will find it, and the less number of files you need to look through.
Once you have specified the volumes/folders to search and the parameters to search by just click on the ‘Find’ button and Find Stuff goes to work, trying to locate the file you are looking for.
Found Items Window:
Once Find Stuff starts looking it shows you a window that contains a list of all the items it has found that match your request. On the left hand side of this window is the list of all the files found. When you click on an item in this list the right hand list will show you the path of the selected item and vital statistics about the file such as Type, Creator, Date Created, Date Modified, and the size of each fork.
The buttons on the left ‘Show File’ and ‘Open File’ do exactly what they say. ‘Show File’ will show all selected files in the finder. ‘Open File’ will open all selected files in the applications that have created them.
If you choose to search by contents, a button labeled ‘Pattern Locations’ will be enabled when you click on a file. When this button is clicked another window will appear and Find Stuff will start searching for all occurrences of the pattern you are looking for in the selected file.
Preferences:
The Type/Creator preferences is directly linked to the type and creator parameter for the search. When you go to either of the parameters there is a little pull down menu next to the edit field where you specify the type or creator. If you click on this menu you will see the list that is specified in the Type/Creator preference window. By selecting one of the items it’s type or creator will appear in the edit field automatically (so you don’t need to remember it!).
The General preferences allows you to specify some general preferences that you would like Find Stuff to use.
Default Volume - Tells Find Stuff which volumes to select by default. Either all the volumes, only the startup volume, only local volumes, or no volumes.
On Open - Allows you to select which parameter is shown by default when a new Find Stuff window is opened. This is useful because if you find your self using searching by file type frequently then you can have that selected first.
Sort - Lets you specify how the list of founds items is sorted.
Save Prompt - Tells Find Stuff to remind you to save search parameters (if they are not saved) before they are closed.
Auto Start - Automatically start searching when a file is opened.
Concurrent Searching - If this option is check (and you have Thread Manager installed) all of the volumes you are searching will be searched at the same time.
Large Icons - This option allows the large icons to appear in the main window. I like the small ones because you can see more of the selected options, but the large ones do look a lot cooler!
Shortcuts
In the main window the Find By list is totally navigable by the keyboard. The up/down arrow keys change the selection (the parameter being viewed on the right). The right arrow key selects the items being edited, the left arrow key deselected the item being edited, and the space bar toggles the selection of the item being edited.
In the Found Items window by double clicking on an item in the found items list all selected items will be opened with the application that created them. Pressing return will show all the selected items in the finder.
Saving
In Find Stuff you can save your search options. What this does is to save all the parameters and your volume selection so it can be used again later. If you check the Auto Start option in the General Preferences window, when you open one of these files the search will automatically start and show you all items matching your request.
If you go to the Finder Get Info window and select the ‘Stationery Pad’ option then when the document is opened in Find Stuff only the parameter options that were saved will be loaded. The volume selection will be what you specified in the General Preferences window and the search will not automatically start (even if the Auto Start option is chosen).
Thread Manager
I have written Find Stuff to take full advantage of the thread manager. If you don’t have it, I really suggest that you get it, and install it. Apple’s Thread Manager allows applications to have multiple threads (processes) running in an application. This is how I have implemented the concurrent volume searching. For each volume that you select a thread is created, each running the same search code. Lastly, when you search a file for all the locations of a pattern (when you search by contents) that is also done in it’s own thread.
Drag and Drop
If you have Macintosh Drag and Drop installed then you will be able to drag files out of the found items list into the finder to ease copying, moving, or erasing of the found items.
Searching
The actual searching that Find Stuff does is one of two ways. If a volume supports something called PBCatSearch then that is what is used. This is a toolbox function that searches through the Desktop Database on a particular volume for files matching (or partial matching) your request. Then I run all these files through a filter to make sure they totally match your request. (PBCatSearch doesn’t check all of the stuff I allow you to look for, like file contents and get info comments).
If you want to search a volume that does not support PBCatSearch (like a Novell volume, or a UNIX volume) then I am actually looking at each file on the volume to see if it matches your request. As you can probably guess this is quite a bit slower.
Also, if you only want to search for files by Get Info comment and/or content keep in mind that PBCatSearch doesn’t do this so I have to search the entire volume (even if it does support PBCatSearch). If you specify a another parameter also, that will limit the search more, I can call PBCatSearch first to find all the files with that parameter, and then search the comment or content, making it much faster.
