Searching on swfchan.com

In name - What you write here must be in the file name. Certain characters can't be searched for in order to yield more results: " " (space), "_", "-", "%" and ".".

AND operator is " " (space). If you search for "hello there" the file name must contain both those words, in any order. If the order is important for you, use * instead of spaces or type the words together ("hellothere").

OR operator is "|". Searching for "banana|apple|orange" will find flashes with one or more of those words in their name.

10 words separated by space can be used and each of those can contain 10 words separated by |. If you use more the extra spaces or | characters will be replaced by *.

You can use asterisk (*) in a word to represent any number of any characters. Put * at the end of a word to require the file name to begin with that word, put * at the beginning of a word to require the file name to end with that word.

Searches are case-insensitive. "Example" is the same as searching for "*example*" (meaning you never have to put * around your word) and "exa*mple" is the same as "*exa*mple*" (meaning if you need to require a file name to both begin/end with something you have to either split the word into two ("exa*mple* *exa*mple") or perform an exact search).

You can perform an exact search by ending your query with ".swf". Searching "goodbye" will find both "goodbye.swf" and "hello_goodbye.swf" but searching for "goodbye.swf" will only find "goodbye.swf". Turning off lazy search can make your search even more exact if need be.

Wildcards can still be used inside your query during an exact search. "good*ye.swf" will find both "goodbye.swf" and "goodpie.swf" but not "hello_goodbye.swf".

If a word inside the "in name"-field starts with a minus dash (-) it will instead be put in the "not in name" field for exclusion from your results.

Example: Searching for "simpson homer|bart marge|lisa|maggie -springfield" will find file names that CONTAINS {simpson AND [homer OR bart] AND [marge OR lisa OR maggie]} and DOESN'T CONTAIN {springfield}.

Not in name - Works exactly like the "in name" field except that it will filter away results. If you enter "haha" here no flashes that contains that will show up.

Size between - Limit the results to a certain file size. If min is blank it's set to 0 KiB. If max is blank it's set to 1024 MiB. Note that this searches all file sizes that a flash has been seen as! Even if the file stored on swfchan is 100 KiB it might have been seen with a 101 KiB file size.

Sizes doesn't have to be integers, can use "0.1" for example. Also, if MiB is selected and the number entered into the size field is larger than 1024 it is assumed that the unit is bytes. Spaces are allowed in the size number, "1024 1024" will be read as "10241024".

Order results - How the results should be presented:

+ "By Threads" with "Big-to-Small" will put the most posted flash on top.

+ "By ID#" with "Big-to-Small" will put the newest flash in the system on top.

+ "By Points" (default) sorts the flashes by the flash's most seen file name that matches your query (not to be confused with the total number of times the flash has been seen with any file name, the "times it has been spotted"-number is not searchable).

+ "By Size" sorts by the number of bytes in the flash files (using the most seen file size for the flash matching your "size between"-restriction, which doesn't necessarily have to equal the actual size of the file stored on swfchan).

The order "By Posts" doesn't exist, you can however set a min/max range of post count during a .net search.

Categories - show results that are in these categories.

Enter one or more category names here to make sure the resulting flashes are in these categories. The categories should be written without spaces or special characters, but it doesn't matter too much since the system does its best to interpret what's entered. Separate the cats with space or comma.

Since a lot of flashes are uncategorized I recommend trying to first search without specifying a category, otherwise you might filter away desired results. Add a category or two if you're getting too many unrelated results otherwise.

Not in cats - show results that aren't in these categories. Same as 'categories' but excludes instead of includes.

Show alternative name matches - When ticked all matching seen names for a single flash will be shown instead of just the most seen matching name.

Don't lazy search (care about diacritic) - By default the system will search file names translated to only english characters (your queries are also translated). This means characters using diacritic marks are transformed to english characters (example: "åäöìûü" becomes "aaoiuu"). Additionally, numbers and all other non-english characters (like Asian characters or unicode symbols) are removed. These removed characters are however still included in the search since the original file names are also searched.

This also ignores repeating characters so searching for "hello" will find "helo", "hello" and "helllo".

The "Lazy Search" feauture helps to find results but should be disabled if you get too many results or are looking for non-english file names. With lazy search enabled your "ö" query will be read as "*o*", which will yield quite a different number of results compared to "*ö*".

If any of the name fields contains a number lazy search will be disabled automatically since the system assumes you are looking for something specific. Replace any numbers with * if you can't find what you're looking for.

List all (no thumbnails) - Will dump all results in a long list with printed links (no pages, but also no thumbnails or additional info to keep the document file size down).

Scan alternative sizes - When left unchecked the search engine will only take into account the actual sizes of the swf files stored on the server when not searching for a file name. This will provide better matches when for example searching for a flash of a certain size in a specific category. If checked the query would first check for matching file sizes and then filter down the results to fit the category demands (meaning you are more likely to reach the max number of matches). Bottom line is that you should never really have to check this box, it's mostly provided just because there are alternative sizes stored in the database from times when a swf file has been spotted with a few missing or extra bytes.

Normally 100 flashes are shown per page. Your search can give at most 22222 matches. 15555 if you only search for a file size and scan alternative sizes as well (due to performance reasons). If you hit that number the results are not complete and you have to try to make your search more complex to reduce the number of matches. One flash can have several matches (for example if you search for "lol" and a flash has been seen with both the name "lol.swf" and "lolol.swf" then that flash will produce two matches).

There are three shortcuts when searching:

+ Start your main query with / or \ to turn off lazy searching immediately.

+ Start your main query with > or < to search for an exact file size. For example if you put ">4910181" into the top search field just below the swfchan logo you will find all files that have been seen with a file size of exactly 4910181 bytes.

+ Words beginning with - in the "in name" field are moved to the "not in name" field.

Keep in mind that the search index is only updated globally once every fifteen minutes (at best). It means that recently added flashes might not be included in the search index yet.

The number after the "age" text is how far away from the highest flash number on the site that flash is. The higher the age is the older the flash is.

A green age means that the flash is among the newest flashes in the results. A orange age means it's among the oldest. If = is between the "age" text and number instead of : it means that that flash is either the absolute newest or absolute oldest flash in the results.

Results are cached up to 45 minutes to save users time on well used queries and to reduce server load. If the results shown are at least 1 minute old they are clearly marked as cached and it is written just how old they are. Results that are 10 minutes or older show a "refetch"-link that bypasses the cache, however you can do so earlier by manually adding "&cache=no" to the page URL. Each page of a query is cached separately.

You can search threads by using the search engine on swfchan.net. A good way of finding that flash that you can't remember the name of is to search for words that you think people has written about the flash when discussing it.

If you want to search for some text that is mentioned somewhere on a certain flash's info page you'll have to use external web search engines and hope for the best that they have indexed enough of swfchan for you to find what you seek.

Add "site:swfchan.com", "site:swfchan.net" or "site:swfchan.org" to your query to limit your search to just one of the swfchan domains. Works in several popular search engines on the web.