Hi! Most people are familiar with the Software Map, which allows you to browse through projects by topic and view some basic information. However, there are features that many of our users may not be aware of, ones that I find useful every day, and this post will cover a few of them.
For now, I’ll start with filters. Filters allow you to narrow down a list of projects based on their registration date, license, language, and a few other criteria. To add a filter, click on the Filter link above the search box. Then, define the filter using the drop-down menus and hit Apply.
I prefer to start with every project available and narrow from there, so I usually go to the Software Map and select Display All. Then, I add a filter to require OS X support, a filter to require only projects with released files, and three filters to exclude software in the Planning/Pre-Alpha/Alpha phases. Typically, I will also use the search box immediately above the results to take me the last mile.
By default, the results are ordered by rank. I think that’s a good start, but there are times when I want to know, for example, which projects have the most recent releases. I can click on the Latest File heading to bring those projects to the top. Needless to say, I also change the value in the pulldown to show me more than the default of ten projects per page.
Sounds like a fair bit of work for a single search, and it is – but if you’re logged in, you can save your filter sets and reapply them quickly. In fact, I’ve also got a saved filter for showing me GPL-licensed projects and one that shows me projects that have been registered in the past 30 days. You can also set the default number of projects shown per page in your UI Preferences.
Oh! I nearly forgot. All of this can also be done on search results. Neat, huh? Documentation on these features can, of course, be found in the site docs. Enjoy!
If enough people are interested, my next post on the Software Map will be on how you can skip all this garbage and use the Lucene search syntax directly. Add a comment or drop me an email if you’d like to see that!
Cya,
Ross (the community guy)