Some bizarre questions:

a)  Is Novell planning on updating QF "soon" (ie, next 3 months)?

b)  Can the CURRENT product be customized so that the "advanced" search
is more similar to Google in this way:  On Google's Advanced Search, I
can have cute little pulldowns where I can specify file type, etc.

The reason I ask is that we got the email about how wonderful QF is and
that we should use it instead of users downloading Google Desktop.  The
problem is that Google Desktop has much "easier" and enhanced search
abilities (ie, the user can search just PDF's for "whatever") in an EASY
to use format.

QF does not seem to have this ability unless you spend lots of time
educating users on the odd parameters to specify in the search query
itself (which won't fly here).

We'd much rather have a server-basd search index than thousands of users
searching the servers, but if it's too difficult for them to use . . .

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

m_jonis wrote:

> a)  Is Novell planning on updating QF "soon" (ie, next 3 months)?

The next major release of Quickfinder will ship with OES2, which is not
due until later this year as far as I know.

> b)  Can the CURRENT product be customized so that the "advanced" search
> is more similar to Google in this way:  On Google's Advanced Search, I
> can have cute little pulldowns where I can specify file type, etc.

You can customize the current product in almost any way you want... the
limit is your HTML skills. It is all template-based, so you just use
whatever means you like (drop-downs, whatever) to pass the necessary
form criteria.

> The reason I ask is that we got the email about how wonderful QF is and
> that we should use it instead of users downloading Google Desktop.  The
> problem is that Google Desktop has much "easier" and enhanced search
> abilities (ie, the user can search just PDF's for "whatever") in an EASY
> to use format.

The products have different purposes. Quickfinder is an enterprise web
crawler/indexer for web sites as well as a server file system indexer
(honoring your Netware file rights). It does NOT index local content on
user's machines.

> We'd much rather have a server-basd search index than thousands of users
> searching the servers, but if it's too difficult for them to use . . .

Have a look at the templates and you might be surprised what you can do
with them.

--
Jim
Support Sysop

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

M_jonis,
> a)  Is Novell planning on updating QF "soon" (ie, next 3 months)?

Probably. I cannot say more I am afraid 

> B)  Can the CURRENT product be customized so that the "advanced" search
> is more similar to Google in this way:  On Google's Advanced Search, I
> can have cute little pulldowns where I can specify file type, etc.

You can customise QF pretty much any way you like. You can change both the q
uery page and the results pages just by changing templates. Dunno if you can
 read swedisg, but this is from the Swedish Geneaology site:

[url]http://search.pedago.fi/NSearch/SearchServlet?site=skogsjo&encoding=ISO-8859-1[/ur
l]

> The reason I ask is that we got the email about how wonderful QF is and
> that we should use it instead of users downloading Google Desktop.  The
> problem is that Google Desktop has much "easier" and enhanced search
> abilities (ie, the user can search just PDF's for "whatever") in an EASY
> to use format.

But imagine what will happen if you have 1000 users all indexing the same se
rver. Your network will die..

> QF does not seem to have this ability unless you spend lots of time
> educating users on the odd parameters to specify in the search query
> itself (which won't fly here).

Tried this?
http://www.caledonia.net/qfr.html

> We'd much rather have a server-basd search index than thousands of users
> searching the servers, but if it's too difficult for them to use . . .

Then make it simpler... With QF you can have it both ways. You can have a si
mple search page for simple users and an advanced one for advanced.

- Anders Gustafsson, Engineer, CNE6, ASE
NSC Volunteer Sysop
Pedago, The Aaland Islands (N60 E20)

Novell does not monitor these forums officially.
Enhancement requests for all Novell products may be made at
http://support.novell.com/enhancement

Using VA 5.51 build 315 on Windows 2000 build 2195

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

In article <VA.0000237b.003f38d5@nomail.to.me>, dalton@nomail.to.me
says...
> M_jonis, 
>
> Probably. I cannot say more I am afraid 
> 
>
> You can customise QF pretty much any way you like. You can change both the
 query page and the results pages just by changing templates. Dunno if you c
an read swedisg, but this is from the Swedish Geneaology site:
>
> [url]http://search.pedago.fi/NSearch/SearchServlet?site=skogsjo&encoding=ISO-8859-1[/
url]
> 
>
> But imagine what will happen if you have 1000 users all indexing the same server. 
Your network will die..

Yes, tell me about it.  That's what's happening now, so we'd like to get
rid of it, but if it's not "easy" to use  . . .
> 
>
> Tried this?
> http://www.caledonia.net/qfr.html
>

Yes, I did and we may end up going with that (I see it has a file search
thingy).

But if we can customize the code (I just wasn't sure if it was possible
for what I wanted it to do) that will suffice too.

Thanks!!!! 
>
> Then make it simpler... With QF you can have it both ways. You can have a 
simple search page for simple users and an advanced one for advanced.
>
> - Anders Gustafsson, Engineer, CNE6, ASE
>   NSC Volunteer Sysop
>   Pedago, The Aaland Islands (N60 E20)
>
> Novell does not monitor these forums officially.
> Enhancement requests for all Novell products may be made at
> http://support.novell.com/enhancement
>
> Using VA 5.51 build 315 on Windows 2000 build 2195
>
>

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

M_jonis,
> But if we can customize the code (I just wasn't sure if it was possible
> for what I wanted it to do) that will suffice too.

You can do pretty much anything with HTML and Javascript. For the
Genealogy stuff they wanted the target to open up in the existing frameset
or as a separate window, based on what index the hit was in. Piece of cake
with the templates.

- Anders Gustafsson, Engineer, CNE6, ASE
NSC Volunteer Sysop
Pedago, The Aaland Islands (N60 E20)

Novell does not monitor these forums officially.
Enhancement requests for all Novell products may be made at
http://support.novell.com/enhancement

Using VA 5.51 build 315 on Windows 2000 build 2195

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]