FileHawk: Taking Desktop Search Beyond Your Desktop A New Desktop Search Tool Soars In Joseph Moran
Few mourn the days prior to third-party desktop search tools, when Windows' built-in search function was the only way (and not a particularly good one) to find files buried on your hard drive.
Thankfully there are numerous excellent (and free) products now available from the likes of Copernic, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo, but Spain-based Quadrom Services, S.L would like you to know that there are alternatives to the "big boys" of desktop search — namely, the company's new FileHawk search utility.
Interface and Features
The first thing you're likely to notice about FileHawk is its extremely simple interface. It's easy enough to use, but not particularly attractive or well-laid out, so it won't be everyone's cup of tea (it certainly isn't ours).
To perform a FileHawk search, you enter your search term into the field provided. Like most search utilities, FileHawk begins conducting the search as soon as you start typing and updates the results as you type. An Advanced Search expansion menu lets you conduct more detailed queries, such as searches based on file date, type, size, etc.
Search results are displayed in the right-side pane (the search term is always highlighted), and you can sort or perform actions on them (such as open, print, etc.) via right-click context menus and you're also presented with basic file statistics for the search results.
There's no distinct preview pane provided; instead, each result entry includes a plus sign icon, successive presses of which reveal more of the document. It's helpful, but not nearly as much as a preview pane would be. Moreover, once you expand an entry there's no way to collapse it back, which can make scrolling through results more cumbersome. On the "plus" side, when search results include a video or audio file, an inline player is included with each result.
One of the prices you pay for FireHawk's simplicity is that you don't get many of the convenience features that are commonly found in other products in this category (Google, Microsoft, Ask Jeeves, Yahoo, and Copernic, to name a few). For example, FileHawk lacks search term prediction, spell checking/correction, and a retained history of recently performed searches (unless you manually decide to save a search, as described later).
While there is a FileHawk tray icon from which you can call up the application, you must open the full application to conduct a search; you can't enter a search term from the tray or taskbar. FileHawk also doesn't include a browser-integrated toolbar, though this is somewhat forgivable since it's not designed for Web searches (as the major desktop search tools are).
FileHawk handles saved searches via a useful feature it calls Active Folders. When you save a set of search parameters for future use, it's set up as an Active folder and displayed in a hierarchical Windows Explorer-like list. (There are also several pre-defined Active Folders, such as files added within the past 3 or 7 days.)
FileHawk isn't the only search utility that lets you save searches, but the folder structure makes it quite easy to navigate through and jump back and forth between past searches (and as long new files are added in the folders that are indexed, the Active Folders are always current).
FileHawk uses the same Microsoft iFilter technology that the company uses in its own Windows Desktop Search tool. For its part, FileHawk supports a fairly extensive list of the most common file types (an alphabetized list can be found here), but there are some notable omissions, too.
For example, files created by the open-source OpenOffice.org suite of productivity applications — .odt, .ods, .odp, .odg, and .odf — aren't supported (perhaps no surprise there), nor can you use FileHawk to search the contents within Adobe PDF files — only filenames and metadata.
You can add support for the missing file types (and the ability to search inside of PDF files) by installing the appropriate iFilter plug-ins (you can find many at www.ifilter.org) but you have to find and install a separate plug in for each file type you want to add, which can be inconvenient. In some cases, you may even need to pay a registration fee for certain plug-ins.
Another considerable drawback is that FileHawk's search capabilities are limited to files only — they do not work for items like browser favorites or history, and while you can search e-mail attachments, you can can't search within e-mail messages (ditto for contacts).
