You will be glad to learn that starting with HoudahSpot 2.1.4, you have an option to configure the accent color.

HoudahSpot 2.1.4 adds a hidden preference allowing for the accent color to be customized. Enter one of the following at the command line in Terminal.app and relaunch HoudahSpot.

defaults write com.houdah.HoudahSpot accentColor yellow
defaults write com.houdah.HoudahSpot accentColor red
defaults write com.houdah.HoudahSpot accentColor green
defaults write com.houdah.HoudahSpot accentColor blue
defaults write com.houdah.HoudahSpot accentColor grey

Best,
Pierre Bernard
Houdah Software s.à r.l.

iTunes stores its library in the Music folder of your Home folder. It can easily be searched by HoudahSpot. It is in fact searched in the default setup.

Try searching for “Content kind” is “Audio”

I see the point of the play/stop buttons. Still think that a pulsing stop button would be nice, it is nothing but a cosmetic change.

The fourth point I made is something that will be solved by a simpler search form.

I would still love for results to be displayed in the same way that the Tiger spotlight results were, within categories sorted by Kind. The real utility of this is that you can collapse the categories, so if you know that the file is a PDF, collapse all files except the PDF category. You can get the same effect by filtering or searching by type, but the old spotlight interface is just somethign that stuck in my mind as quite useful.

And as Joe Turner said above, perhaps being able to skin the app…

1. The play/stop button implies that the search stays live even after all results are found: newly created files appear in the results as long as the query is live.

1.1. There is an indeterministic spinning progress indicator above the result list. Just left of the filter field.

2. I hope for the BlitzSearch menu item to bring some relief in this area.

3. Worth a thought. For now the toolbar buttons bring the Preview and Inspector windows to front. E.g. they may be open but hidden behind the main window.

4. You just need to make sure to have your frequently used criteria shown in your preferred template. Criteria rows you don’t fill in are ignored. There is now harm in leaving many of them in the template.

Anyway, I’m liking the app, but am a little overwhelmed from my first experience. So, here are my suggestions.

1. Retinker the GUI. I like the two-pane idea. I hate the play/stop button idea. It looks a little out of place for me. I’d prefer binoculars for search an an X for stop.

1.1 Give an indication that a search is going on. Having a static stop button doesn’t tell me much (is it searching? where is it searching? how long is left?). At least make the button pulse while its working.

2. I felt very overwhelmed when I first opened the app. Perhaps give people a choice between a simplified and an advanced view? Simplified would be a single textbox that allows boolean searches. In a way, it would be the same as Spotlight, but the results would look better. The new “Show All” feature in Leopard is a disaster, and I can see HoudahSpot bringing people in just on that.

3. I don’t know if this is a bug or not. I love the quicklook feature. I love being able to hit the space bar to open quicklook and hit it again to close it. That’s where the problem arrises. Doing this with the quicklook button doesn’t work. Hitting the button will open quicklook, but clicking it again does not close it. I’d like to see this feature included, as it saves me from having to move the mouse to the (relatively) tiny close button.

4. Reshuffle the “What…” search options. Currently they are sorted alphabetically, which is cool. I’d prefer to see them listed by use. Name should be on the top. I don’t know, this might just be me.

5. Love, love, love the templates. Would love to see one search for duplicate files, would be a deal-maker for me.

6. Within “Where…” perhaps rename ‘Local volumes + home’ to ‘This Mac’. Slightly less verbose.

7. An intelligent search history feature. Remember searches and results over time, and provide some sort of report. For example. If I use HoudahSpot to find a single file 10 times, perhaps have HoudahSpot suggest that the file is badly placed so that I can put it into a more accessible (or at least easier to remember) folder. So, instead of playing with your files and moving them around (i.e., Hazel), it merely detects commonalities in searches and lets the user decide what to do (this feature would need to be able to be turned off).

7. Some way to integrate with note taking apps, just like it does with Mail at the moment. I’m thinking of integrating with, say, Yojimbo, or DevonThink, as these can already handle files (tagging them/etc).

That’s not how the demo period is supposed to work. This is a bug. I’ll see to get that fixed soon.

Best,
Pierre Bernard
Houdah Software s.à r.l.

You train it to organize your files the way you want them based on name and metadata.

Because of the the above problem, I wasn’t able to try it much, but I know it would be useful as I’m often frustrated at the lack of options in spotlight. As for a suggested new feature, I would like to be able to assign tags to files and bookmarks. Bookmarks especially can so often fit in different categories, but I don’t like clogging my bookmarks folder by duplicating them. It would be so much easier if I could just search for all documents and/or bookmarks with a certain tag.

About the new feature(s) that I would like to see in the next release of HoudahSpot…

1) I’d like to see BlitzSearch do a search according to template parameters, besides the general one. Meaning, we could use a drop menu by the little loupe with our search templates. Therefore, I could search “apple” directly within My Photos or My Documents or any other template that I have made (I’m thinking that would only be possible with the menubar BlitzSearch, and not with LaunchBar, but I may be wrong).

2) Another more cosmetic feature (on the general search window) would be being able to change the position of the “query pane”. This is personal taste, of course, but if the “query pane” could be placed on top of the “results” pane, the horizontal area occupied would be much smaller, thus allowing more columns to be added and seen (a must for some searches).

3) Finally, would it be possible to integrate some feature for tagging files and folders? Specially if it was directly in the metadata and not only in the spotlight comments. That would be great to save different searches related to chosen topics (for instance, all the images related to a research work).