The search Pannel

It's goal is to browse your directory and create selections of files without needing you to pick each file manually. The selection criterion may range from name-base matching (contains a word / matches a regular expression), metadata mathcing (like the author, keywords, title, etc ... provided that the file belong to a class that can provide such informations), the modification date, etc...
Some file classes might provide an index to boost-up searches.

"A tout Seigneur, tout honneur"

Well, for now, the border decorations of the pannel are not really good-looking. They've been made in a rush. Anyway, like what's possible in Enlightenment, the user should be able to import new themes that will configure how such borders are to be drawn.
For lack-of-time reason, i've reused the icons from gnome nautilus , which is - according to me - some kind of 2.5G for graphical interfaces (it has some very smart functions like notes and emblems but still use the old look'n'feel of gnome for most operations.
The background of the window is extracted from a piece of art for OrangeJuice. If you don't like it, just imagine it's your favourite desktop seen through a transparency filter.

search-running pannel the pannel border, letting you move/resize the pannel, etc. A pannel has usually several built-in sizes (for instance, icons-only, icons and search report or the current full-view) remaining for a while above a pannel will automatically make it expand small icon showing the current pannel status (search running). might be animated if the user/coder feel so. It can be used to suspend temporarily the search request, delay it , schedule it for a given time (the system will run it when CPU is idle, etc). an information shortcut, here the current search status. Those infos should be available through software plugs so that external programs can have the status or wait for a given status to appear, etc. the files list. you can see it flowing except if you decide to click in this in order to select files. You can perform usual actions like renaming, deleting, moving, etc. Stopping over a file could make a separation appear with detailed infos about that file. The "search icon" can be used to add some filtering to a running search or start another search. It could also be used to retreive results of previous searches.

Search Completed now that your search is done, let's see what the pannel looks like ... You will note that the pannel title has changed, which will let a program bound to the "status" socket of that pannel learn that the search is complete. A possible use of this is to let the search running in an "iconified" pannel and having a graphical component that will detect the completion and send you an event (blinking icon) or even that could make the pannel being restored. the selection icon, that can be used to pass the selection to another program (for instance a zipper, a print forwarder, etc.) just drag'n'drop it ... You can also right-click it for a selection-context menu (saving, starting common actions on file selections, whatever) Another powerful option would be to let the user merge to requests (you have a list of *.c, and a list of files changed this day, let's find C sources changed this day :) the report is now changed to reflect the search results.  the "save" option has appeared. It will allow you to store the search result as a list of files or - why not - as an active directory that could grab new incoming files mathcing those critera. So you might have a directory that would permanently keep all the files you've been working on today,