Under the View menu, there is the "Check-Box" mode.
Is there a way to make it act the way it does in explorer? Right now, the check boxes do not correspond with the blue selected files. But I see no benefit to having a selection of checkboxes and a different selection of blue highlighted files. Is there anything that can be done to the non-checked but blue highlighted files in the Check-Box mode? If not, isn't the explorer method better because then the selection can be restarted just by clicking a different item. It is also more straightforward. Either control-click to add to the selection OR click the check box to add to the selection.
If there is a benefit to the two different selections at the same time, then it may be worth it, but I haven't found any.
You can progressively select multiple files for an operation, and while doing so double-click on or drag & drop files without disturbing the check box selection state.
I'd be interested to know the benefit of the Explorer way, to be honest
Since the blue highlight state can be used independently from the check box state, then it is clearly superior to windows Explorer. Other than Windows Explorer being more simplistic (some would call that a benefit), there are no benefits. I like the way clicking and dragging on the check boxes works to select multiple check boxes - similar to how the photoshop layer on/off eye icon can be click/dragged to switch on/off multiple layers easily.
--- Potential Feature Improvement Idea:
With Photoshop, if one Alt-Clicks on the layer on/off eye icon, then it will check that layer and uncheck everything else. If Alt-Clicked the same icon again, it will toggle back to what it was. For Directory Opus the same functionality could be applied when Right Clicking a check box. This would make it easier to start a new selection of check boxes again without having to leave the directory and come back or manually uncheck everything.
Actually, that is the only other advantage to the way Windows Explorer check boxes work. Since in Windows Explorer: check boxes = selection, if some items are checked already, then left clicking a file (not the checkbox) will check that item and uncheck everything else making it easy to start a new check box selection. With Directory Opus probably the easiest way to clear all the checkboxes is to leave the directory and then go back. Instead, right clicking a check box could essentially restart the checkbox selection like photoshop does and the toggled previous state could be done the same as photoshop too. You'd probably need to play with the photoshop layer on/off eye icons to understand what I'm talking about here because those are essentially check/uncheck boxes for if a layer is shown or not.
And Middle-Clicking any check box could inverse all the checked items. (Photoshop doesn't have that functionality for layer on/off eye icon actually but it is more important for file selections.) This way, if I spent a while selecting a bunch of pictures and then decided to move the inverse items out of the directory for example, this would make it easy.
Last thing I would say is that the Directory Opus "Help" for "Check Boxes", it should mention how the normal highlighted selection can still be used to move/copy items etc. I read the help section for "Check Boxes" but for some reason, that concept didn't dawn on me. I'm sure I would have figured it out soon enough though.
And the middle click to highlight other items without control-clicking was basically what I was looking for. Thanks. I really have to play with the power mode as well. But the Check Box mode is useful for some things so I'm glad Directory Opus has it built in!
Don't know if it helps but there are also commands for converting the selection into checkboxes or vice versa. I'm not at my computer so I can't look up exactly what they are and what they cab do, but they might be useful here.
Is there a way to convert the checkbox states into a normal selection, in order to make drag & drop applicable? Some colleague from the german forum
wondered, how he can use it with drag & drop, because d & d works on the normally selected files only. Obviously it can be used per button or hotkey,
but no drag & drop.
