Using DO v11.1 is it possible to assign a specific color or tab icon based on the drive letter of folder?
I have two partitions and keep certain work files on one or the other partition/drive. At times I might be working on something where the folder name is similar or identical between the two and need to easily classify that the folder is on a particular drive. Is that possible? Color, icon, Bold, Underline... anything to visually differentiate one folder tab from another based on the drive that it's on.
Only by linking the tab (which will tie it to another tab in the other side, and also color that tab), or assigning an icon to the folder (which would mean changing all the folder icons on the whole drive if you want them all to be different in the tab).
I created a wildcard label and now all the folders on that drive are labeled with a unique color... but that doesn't seem to work in the tab row. If I navigate to one of those folders, the tab's appearance doesn't change whether it's to a folder with a label or without.
@tbone, yeah I think that's what I need. Or at least for the tab to respond to the folder label... or a preference that allows for it to adopt the folder's label or not.
@rcoleman I've tried that. it's not bad but not as visually distinctive as what I wanted.
I would make heavy use of colored tabs, because I have the same folder structure on every computer in my lan and a lot of equal foldernames on the same drive.
Additionally, when using UNC-Paths (which I always use instead of mapped drives), there is no drive letter visible, so it's not obvious which "tmp", "bin", "dat" folder of which computer is opened in the tab.
My screenshot shows in the upper lister:
d:\bin
d:\dat\bin
\192.168.0.1\d$\bin
\192.168.0.21\d$\bin
and in the lower:
D:\tmp
D:\dat\gfx\tmp
D:\dat\sfx\tmp
\192.168.0.1\d$\tmp
\192.168.0.21\d$\tmp
Hi Leo, thanks.. o) Well, yes, some of the local folders will be opened by these buttons in the middle, but anything on my lan will not.
I think, renamed tabs don't help much to see instantly, what the location is "behind", a path-based background color on the other hand would be much quicker for the eye.
Imagine local drives being green in the backgroud, anything from 192.168.0.1 being blue and folders from another machine are colored more reddish.
And if one could specify foreground-color/fontstyle independent from the background, one could quickly determine a local/remote mp3-"tmp" folder or a local/remote-backup photo-"tmp" folder alone from its fore/background color. I know, these colors would collide with the coloring system used for linked-tabs and stuff and one should really carefully choose the colors, to not get lost in them or to get hard to read contrast situations. These shots are quickly edited and surely would look somewhat better in reality, but they hopefully transport the idea behind.
Really? Regarding color in the tab-background (the foreground color thing is maybe to special) and looking at what we have already: Path-based folder-formats, wildcard/filter-based labels, content-type detection etc., I don't really think people would not understand colors being mapped to local drive letters, folder names or paths.
Regarding my tmp-folders, well I don't know, I'm open minded here I guess, but would you call a "tmp" folder below a folder called "music" -> "music-tmp"?
Isn't that kind of redundant? o) I could move all "tmp" folders for music/video/images/development below "D:\tmp" maybe, but then the problem is just reversed, I then have tabs showing "mp3" for my main music folder, and showing "mp3" as well for temporary music stuff in "tmp\mp3".
Ooh, an idea pops up!o)
What about an option to show (parts of?) the parent folder in the tab-label as well? Showing "mp3\tmp" instead of just "tmp". That would be a another very nice enhancement on finding the right tab quickly.
Good point. If it tied into the existing folder formats, as an extra thing you could define for each format, then that wouldn't add any complexity and would probably work quite well.
It's a shame folder tab colours are already used for tab linking, but people can choose colors that don't clash, or choose to use one feature and not the other, I guess.
I would if it was causing problems, sure. I've renamed folders to make their standalone names more distinct in the past.
That makes sense. I thought we did that already, but it looks like only the full path, drive letter or folder name are currently options (from here). Should be easy to add a % code for the parent name.
Another option would be to implement Tab.SetBGColor() for the scripting guys, this way efforts on your side may be heavily reduced, as we could integrate the rest on our own.
I did not know this is possible, nice! In case another % code finds its way, it would be even nicer, if that code can be made persistent as a global setting. I saw, you need to enter these codes while renaming a tab, this is something I surely won't do for every tab I open.
But then again, let's have Tab.SetLabel() and you can lean back. o))
As Leo gave the missing piece of information, to set a tab label by script (by raw-command), that Tab.SetLabel() is kind of less important I think.
Being able to set fontstyle or background color would still be nice.
As it fits this thread, I'd like to mention the "Tab-Labelizer" here again, imagining it incorporating Tab.SetBGColor() or Tab.SetFontstyle(), and it would be even more useful and wow!. o) Till then, you could maybe get away with setting up some kind of alias and adding special characters to be shown for special paths or foldernames with this add-in. Thinking of *#+ and whatelse catches your eyes, there could be some nice eyecatching characters in the unicode-land too to make use of.
