Directory Opus Pro v12: Bugs and Feature Requests
Please be aware that I am a new user and still don't grasp some aspects of using Directory Opus, however I have lots of experience voluntarily testing various commercial and open-source software and hope that at least some of my observations are accurate and help push DOpus to greater heights.
Also, these points are merely being posted with the intention to help improve the software and introduce some potentially new ideas. No reply is expected, but with any luck, it'll at least be read!
Bugs
-
Resetting the
Columns
tab/page to factory defaults forFolders > Folder Formats > User Default
causes theWidth
fields to become blank:Expected: All fields should have a
Width
value shown after resetting the page options, I believeAuto
the default. -
Dragging a MTP folder into DOpus's Folder Tabs bar causes all its sub-folders to be added to the bar also:
A local folder from File Explorer dropped onto DOpus' Folder Tabs bar adds only the one folder. However, when dragging a folder from File Explorer which has navigated to an Android device connected via MTP, the folder dropped will be opened as well as all of its subfolders. The closer the dragged-in folder is to the root of the Android's filesystem, typically the bigger the issue as many tens of sub-folders may end up opening. At the time, I was also testing DOpus Light, and I can't recall if this bug was limited only to Pro, or both DOpus variants.
Expected: Only the one folder should be added to the Folder Tabs bar, unless customised to do otherwise via a Preferences setting, or unless a modifier key is held during the drag-and-drop.
-
The right File Display allows for pasting up to
261
characters into the Location bar, whereas the source's correctly caps this at260
:Expected: Both Location bars should support the same length of path to be pasted.
-
File Displays > Mouse > Single click to open an item (...)
does not respect either of theAllow file selection when clicking to ...
options above:Accidental clicks that would be prevented by these two options are possible in single-click mode, i.e. items can be deselected/opened before the Lister / destination File Display is active (has focus).
-
Folder aliases can be named with a pipe
|
in their name, but the pipe character cannot be typed into the "Go:" field (a backslash\
is produced instead). -
Close PROGRAM=onlast,confirm
does not exit the program when only 1 Lister is open if a toolbar button's function points to a user-defined command containing this close command:If instead the toolbar button's function is set directly to the mentioned
Close
command, then DOpus correctly identifies that there is only one Lister left, and quits completely. The,confirm
part is only for the convenience of testing.Another example below is a command created via the Command Editor and dragged to the toolbar as a button: the view changes, but the button icon changing is ignored. If the same code is added to a toolbar's
Right-click > New > New Button
instead, it works just fine.@icon:smallicons,Set VIEW=smallicons @icon:largeicons,Set VIEW=largeicons Set VIEW=smallicons,largeicons
I assume I'm just misunderstanding the workflow of customising the toolbar and should instead create buttons directly, not as a command first, which I have now been doing. At the very least, it's not clear what will and what won't work on a button if using the method I've just described. Perhaps the documentation covers this?
-
Toolbars'
Always Enable Drop-down
is broken:- Enter Customize mode.
- Right-click
Copy Files
and enableAlways Enable Drop-down
.
My expectation is that the Menu Button should never launch the command via the left side (main portion) of the button with this option enabled, but instead display the list of toolbar items no matter where clicked. This would essentially make this Menu Button behave identically if converted to a Menu (
Convert to Menu
), the only difference being that one shows the black drop-down arrow, and the other does not. At the very least, I cannot detect what the option is doing, if anything. -
When a toolbar item has been
Convert to Menu
, a label bug is possible (which may potentially be present in the other button modes):- Perform the steps from the last bug above, but as a step 1.5, Edit the button and make sure it has
Show label
set toRight
. Right-click > Edit
the top most item (i.e. on the toolbar, not within the drop-down list of buttons).- Change the Label to
AAA
> OK. - Click the Menu button and notice the menu itself has been renamed, but not the first item that it lists.
Right-click AAA Menu button > Convert to Menu Button
.Right-click AAA Menu button > Convert to Menu
.- Clicking the Menu button will now show the first item in the list has been renamed to
AAA
.
- Perform the steps from the last bug above, but as a step 1.5, Edit the button and make sure it has
-
Certain toolbar buttons should display
Convert to Menu
, rather thanThree Buttons
by default:The
Drive Buttons
button for example: enablingThree Button
renders the button inoperable (displays no drives, clicking does nothing). However, adding a another button to theThree Button
s list, and then disablingThree Buttons
to turn it into aMenu
brings back the expected functionality. Converting to aMenu Button
also works. -
Pressing
OK
on the Customize popup window closes the Command Editor without saving changes:- Open the toolbar Customize popup window and from it the Command Editor via editing a button.
- Make changes in the function/code area, .e.g write a comment.
- Now press
OK
on the Customize popup window behind. - Navigate back to the Command Editor and notice the written comment was discarded.
Expected: A warning for unsaved changes should pop up, or at minimum, do not discard the changes.
-
The Command Editor is always on top of all other windows on the system:
Expected: It likely should only be the top-most window in relation to the DOpus window and its children, not the entire windowing system. But perhaps there's a good reason for this beyond my current understanding of DOpus.
-
A lister in Dual Horizontal mode does not precisely retain its split proportions upon toggling the feature on and off (
F6
):For example, split a Single File Display perfectly into two (horizontally) so that the top and bottom File Displays precisely fit all 10 test files whilst in Details view mode (when selected, the last file item from each display should have a single pixel of white background border along its left and bottom edge at this point, with no vertical scroll bar present). The issue occurs after toggling the Dual Display off and then back on, as the bottom display now has a vertical scrollbar when it previously didn't. Splits should be created equal in size to remedy this.
The same issue with more details:
Dual Horizontal displays do not split equally on
Set DUALSIZE 50
:- Dual Horizontal display mode enabled.
Folder Tabs > Options > Display folder tabs:
Always
.Folder Tabs > Options > Tab position:
Below
.
Dual display position:
:-
Normal
: File Display area (inc. column headers) + Folder tabs + Status bar -
Together
: File Display Border (blue bar) + File Display area (inc. column headers) + Status bar -
Apart
: File Display area (inc. column headers) + Folder tabs + Status barEach of the three
Dual display position
modes above show the various UI elements of the bottom File Display that add up to the same height of the top File Display's column header and file area alone.Thus, using
Set DUALSIZE 50
produces two halves of differing sizes (top display is larger than the bottom). Ideally, the area where files are displayed should always be identical on both displays when a File Display split occurs, or when specifically split in half viaDUALSIZE 50
.
-
%T%G
as a custom string to showTarget
in the Lister title bar only shows when the left file display is a junction/softlink, and regardless if it is the active file display or not:If the left side is
A
, a softlink, and active, and the right side isB
(a normal folder), the title bar will readA [-> P:\ath\to\A_target ]
. Great. But clicking on the right file display will change the title toB [-> P:\ath\to\A_target ]
(notice it still points toA
'sTarget
too), instead of simply displayingB
. If theSwap file displays
button is pressed, now regardless of which file display is the active one, the[-> ...]
is never shown, even though theA
softlink is still open (in now the right file display).Expected: The
[-> ...]
should only show when a file display is active and when its folder is a junction/softlink. -
Relative graphs do not increase in height thickness when
File Display Modes > Details / Power Mode > Extra line spacing
is increased:Expected: The graphs should match the height of the
Name
column items, i.e. match theExtra line spacing
set. -
Setting the
File Display Modes > Details > Extra line spacing
to1
to rid of the 1px overlap of the file/folder name selection colours (as mentioned in one of your videos), is not mirrored by labels:- Make sure the above setting is set to
1
. - Make sure
File Display Modes > Details > Grid lines > Horizontal
are on and noticeable. - Set the grid line type to the thick black bar at the bottom.
- Create a label assignment with a different colour that affects all files and folders (regex
.*
) for easier testing. - View a File Display with multiple files, and notice that there is (by default) an alternating white and grey pixel gap between each file display item, which is actually an illusion due to the labels not respecting this
1px
increase toExtra line spacing
. - Increasing spacing to
20
makes the effect obvious.
I believe this is neither intentional or practical in use, and so labels honouring the spacing, for both
Details
andPower Mode
, makes most sense. - Make sure the above setting is set to
-
Sort-field specific key scrolling
does not match column content:With
Sort-field specific key scrolling
enabled for Power Mode, FAYT (Find As You Type) does not search theType
column when the file display is sorted by it (unlike as is explained in the documentationindex.html#!Documents/Prefs/Power_Mode.htm
).Expected: Perhaps I've misunderstood, but I expect simply typing into the File Display to start matching the sorted column, not
Name
any longer (unless it is the sorted column). -
Labels with the same foreground and background colour cannot always be read:
Sometimes you may want a defined label's
Unselected text
colour to be identical to its background (e.g.#ff0000
for both). A good example of this is when settingDisplay > Options > Blend file background colors with background
to a low value, say15
. This produces a pleasant effect of the foreground colour upon the same background colour, but semi-transparent to let grid lines show through (specifically in my case, the thick black bar grid "line").The problems:
- Both in
Favorites and Recent > Labels / Label Assignments
, the entries listed are unreadable. - Arguably more importantly, the File Display's right-click context menu's
Set Label
menu is again unreadable. - The
List
,Small
,Large
, andThumbnail
views also have this issue: a solid block of colour, no readable label name (unlikeList
,Details
,Details + Thumbnails
,Power
, orTiles
, which display well).
For the views,
Blend file background colors with background
should be honoured regardless which view mode is set. And for the appearances of labels in context menus and other places, maybe they can follow the same setting too? Or perhaps a special case can be made when colours are identical to display the foreground as something different to the background, for legibility's sake? - Both in
-
Resizing the DOpus window is quite laggy:
Resizing the windows is nowhere as smooth as seen in a YouTube video of yours. I'm not sure which feature may be responsible (if any) that could be turned off to improve this. In fact, the only slight improvement I've noticed is when using only one File Display instead of two (but it's still not ideal). Interestingly, File Explorer is about as choppy whilst resizing as DOpus.
Expected: The DOpus window resizing should be similar in performance to other applications, for example the Firefox browser, or Chrome.
-
After performing a search in the Preferences window, dragging the popup window around the desktop is sluggish:
After searching for
select
then clickingDisplay > Options
, moving the window around the desktop seems delayed, as if the movements are being smoothed out. Clearing the search to remove the red highlight boxes does not return the popup to a performant state. However, closing the popup and opening it again does. -
Clicking a sub-menu in a context menu should not re-show itself when the sub-menu is already open:
A small test of right-clicking the Windows 10 desktop shows that a sub-menu will open when the cursor hovers over one. Re-clicking that now open sub-menu does not hide, then re-show the sub-menu. It remains open. DOpus behaves differently and what it is doing I've found to be a poor experience. In my case, the delay time for a sub-menu to show when I hover over it is long enough for me to then decide to click it, but as I do, the sub-menu begins to show, thus the sub-menu hides and the delay to re-show it tricks me into clicking it again as now it looks closed, yet all that does it re-trigger it again, causing frustration just trying to get the menu open. Disabling the menu from being animated doesn't help the issue.
Expected: The menus should behave like menus found in most other software on Windows.
-
The tooltip for the
Help
menu item accessed via theOperations
toolbar says that it opens the "online help", which I don't believe is true:Both the local HTTP server and CHM methods to view help use a bundled local copy if I'm not mistaken. The tooltip should therefore be more accurate/generic. Perhaps an options for the
Help
function to define whether the local/online version is opened when accessing the HTTP Help view would be nice? The CHM Help would always be local I presume. -
When searching for
Check-Box
Mode via the Help, no results are returned:One must instead search for
Checkbox Mode
(no hyphen). Perhaps the Help can be improved to return the same results for bothCheckbox
and Check-box`? -
Some UI strings are both in American and International English (British, etc):
See Preferences'
Viewer > Behavior
andFolders > Folder Behaviour
.
Feature Requests
Do note, some of these requests may be possible to implement via the scripting and UI building I've seen glimpses of, however I'm too naive to determine what is and isn't possible yet, so please forgive any requests that make more sense to be built by a user rather than implemented into the core of the software.
-
The File Display Border toolbar buttons, e.g. the ones displayed via
Enable file display copy and swap border buttons
, aren't affected by the settingClick on destination's toolbar only changes state
:It should not be possible to click anywhere within the Border, not just the added toolbars, so that accidental clicks on e.g. the
Close
button, could not occur when attempting to just switch the focus to the destination display. -
A way to set the opacity of selected background colours found at
Display > Colors and Fonts
:Ideally, all colours could have opacity defined but background colours are the most important to me at this moment. For example, making the
Selected background:
red forFiles and folders
, shows that the selection background is already slightly transparent by default (label backgrounds and grid lines partially show through), so the ability to customise how transparent shouldn't be much of an issue.Display > Options > Blend file background colors with background
already exists, but has no effect on this (which judging by its name, is expected). A separateBlend file selection colors file backgrounds
option would give me control over the mentioned default transparency, but should all the colours end up supporting transparency, maybe all their definitions should be grouped with theDisplay > Colors and Fonts
section.For now, I will keep
Visual styles override file selection colors
enabled as it is more transparent (letting me see various file background colours easily), however the sacrifice in my case means no custom selection colours. Perhaps themes are the solution to this, however I have no experience with them. -
Display the luminosity value in the colour picker:
Currently there is no easy way to match different colours based on luminosity. One must guess where abouts the slider should be (the slider above the glasses) to be similarly bright to another colour.
-
A way to create your own palette of colours that can be sourced when customising
Display > Colors and Fonts
:With something assigned to a colour which exists in your palette, changing the source palette colour should update the colours for all items assigned to it. This could be expanded so that label colours (and any other colour assignment in the program) could make use of these global colours, making broad colour changes (e.g. from my understanding, theming) much more convenient. Suggested implementation: a Preferences entry for
Color Palette
that allows for their naming, definition, and deletion, in a list format. These colours would then appear at the bottom of the colour picker popup that is used for colour-picking tasks. -
Support for pasting in paths longer than
260
characters in the Location bar and elsewhere path lengths are limited. -
A file display column that shows the
Label assignments
(Wildcard Filters, Label Filters, ...) name an item is affected by, not theLabel
name:For example, it's much more useful to see
"Important files"
—the name of a label assignment—than"Red"
, the name of the label. One could argue to just change the name ofRed
, but then one would need to maintain the same red across multiple labels (e.g.Important
,>260chars
,Corrupted
, ...) instead of just leveraging a singleRed
label and using label assignment via regex etc. -
An
Open in Directory Opus
for files in File Explorer:Similar to
Open in Directory Opus
on folders via File Explorer's context menu, but a way to do so for files so that the parent folder is opened in DOpus and the item highlighted. Also, right-clicking in a blank area could also display thisOpen ...
option (meaning one needn't first go up/back in File Explorer to perform an open on the current directory). -
A way to have a button always highlighted when a view corresponds to it:
I'd like to be able to do this:
// Attempt 1: @toggle:if Set VIEW=smallicons;Set VIEW=largeicons @icon:smallicons,Set VIEW=smallicons @icon:largeicons,Set VIEW=largeicons @if:Set VIEW=smallicons Set VIEW=largeicons @if:else Set VIEW=smallicons // Attempt 2: @icon:smallicons,Set VIEW=smallicons @icon:largeicons,Set VIEW=largeicons Set VIEW=smallicons*,largeicons* // Attempt 3: @icon:smallicons,Set VIEW=smallicons @icon:largeicons,Set VIEW=largeicons @icon:detailsmode,Set VIEW=details Set VIEW=largeicons*,smallicons*,details*,cycle
Ideally no matter which view, the button should indicate that a specified view is in use. The default Flat View toolbar button seems to be able to do this, but only because it has several sub flat view modes I believe.
-
By default, A
Refresh
option in the right-click context menu of the File Display:This can be added manually via the Customize menu, but I think it'd make sense to be present by default as it is something I believe is used quite commonly in File Explorer. I have it set up as a Three Buttons button,
Refresh
,Refresh Both
, andRefresh All
, in the same group asView
,Sort By
, andGroup By
. -
All context menu items to have an icon assigned by default:
Currently, the context menu items don't have an icon assigned, and so setting
Image State:
toon
doesn't force them to show one. If an item, for exampleNew Folder...
had an image assigned to its1
icon, butShow image
disabled for it, then the menu would continue to look like it does now. The benefit would be that users could now enable icons simply by switchingImage State:
toon
for the specific context menu, or even all of them, and they'd now have a visual context menu experience. By DOpus doing this, it'd save users from having to go through every context menu item and assigning icons themselves. -
Allow a drag down motion in addition to the
Hold or Right-Click to Drop Down
option:As found in some applications, for example Firefox, it is possible to click and drag down on the Back and Forward buttons to reveal the list of menu items, which is often faster than holding. Granted, DOpus already supports right-clicking which is quick too, but dragging down can beat it only requiring one click (like when holding): click, drag down to expose the menu, and release on the item you'd like to select. It is also faster than waiting for the Hold timer to trigger.
-
An option to define what happens on Close (X), i.e. minimise to taskbar:
Other than being a fairly common option in applications, this would allow for one's current Folder Tabs to never be lost when pressing the Close button (not losing tabs is my main concern). It is possible to use
Launching Opus > Default Lister > Update Default Lister automatically when closing lister
to achieve such behaviour, but whether this option is on/off, DOpus must always re-load a Lister when none are open, which is somewhat slow compared to if the window were to never actually close and to just be restored from a minimised state.File > Close Lister
should always close the Lister.An argument could be made, "just use the Minimise button", and yes, I agree, that is the simplest solution, however the suggested feature would also act as a fail-safe mechanism when the auto-update Lister option is off, and it'd be a convenience for those of us accustomed to pressing a Close button expecting a session to be "saved" i.e. not discarded as Close would do in this scenario.
-
An additional option
Layouts and Styles > Layouts > Merge Listers when loading this layout
:Any open Listers would be automatically merged into the one being loaded. I can merge them via a button after loading a layout, but it seems like an option that could be part of the DOpus feature itself. Or perhaps there could be a way to use a Lister Layout as a Lister Style, which would remove the need to merge.
-
Explicit icons to indicate between Folder Tabs exceeding the available space, and when tabs are just reduced:
When
Folder Tabs > Options > Use Popup menu when tabs exceed available space > Show menu when tabs are reduced is enabled
, display, for example, a "hamburger" (a capitalE
with no vertical line) icon/character instead of the double-arrow (>>
), unless there are indeed items that exceed the available space. Currently, the double-arrow is misleading because there may not be extra folder tabs out of view (which>>
kind of implies), leading to erroneous openings of the popup list to find a folder that is in fact only reduced size, but still in view. An icon to differentiate between when the tabs are just reduced and when they are exceeding the available space is a better user experience than having to check potentially both sides of the folder tab bar to spot any "cut-off" tabs to glean the same understanding. -
A definable
Min
width for theFolders > Folder Formats > User Default > Columns
:This would allow for a column to have
Collapse
for the width, but then100
for the minimum it'll shrink to (in the case of decreasing the window width, orFill
filling to the available space). -
When the Folder Tree is locked, still expand navigated folders, just don't scroll to them:
-
With the Folder Tree's option
Lock the Folder Tree to prevent it from changing to follow the source folder
enabled (locked), the Folder Tree stops both behaviours: it doesn't scroll to, or expand to, folders opened via file displays. I'd like an option to make it so that locking the Folder Tree, only stops it from scrolling vertically, just like there is a way to stop it from scrolling horizontally. This way, when you want to manually scroll up/down, the folders are already expanded to the correct locations, rather than having to do this manually. The current behaviour could be the default, and then like forHorizontal scrolling style:
, present an alternate option to only prevent scrolling. -
A way to pin the Favorites item to the top of the Folder Tree, configurable on a per-Folder Tree basis:
It should be pinnable so that Favorites remains at the top of the Folder Tree as you scroll up/down. It should also remain collapsible/expandable, so that if you wish for it to be pinned but take up minimal space, just collapse it.
-
Open a favourite bookmark in a new tab via middle-click when choosing a favourite from the Border (blue bar) in a File Display:
This is already possible via the Folder Tree, just not the Favorites button drop-down found on the Border.
-
Display a dividing line just like in the Favorites button's drop-down (Folder Display Border) between normal Favorites and SmartFavorites, but for the favourites listed in the Folder Tree:
Currently, there is no separation and it is not possible to tell which ones have been added automatically, and which have not.
-
A
Drag over tabs brings them to the front after Xms
feature but for the folders listed in the Folder Tree:Currently there is no way to override the default delay time one must wait for a folder in the Folder Tree to expand.
-
Option when renaming files to override Windows' behaviour of skipping over underscores:
For a file named
a_b_c.txt
, navigating the filename viaCtrl
+Left
/Right
will skip from the file extension, to the dividing.
, to the start of the filename, nowhere in between (which is what I'd like). Essentially, the same behaviour as if the file was using hyphens (a-b-c.txt
) instead. Microsoft's VS Code has a setting"editor.wordSeparators": "`~!@#$%^&*()-=+[{]}\\|;:'\",.<>/?"
to which I've appended_
to achieve this. Maybe something similar could be implemented into DOpus? -
Better match File Explorer's up/down scroll amount when in Large Icons, Thumbnails, and Tiles view:
It'd be nice if DOpus better matched how much distance File Explorer scrolls in the equivalent modes. It feels like a tiresome experience covering too little ground with each rotation of the mouse wheel. I could improve this via Windows' number of lines to scroll setting, however that would affect all software, when it's only DOpus I am having issue with. Looking at File Explorer, it appears to use the number defined by the Windows setting as the number of lines to scroll items up/down in the single line height modes, e.g. List and Details, but uses higher amounts of lines to scroll depending of the size of the view items. Just compare Large Icons view in File Explorer to speed at which Large Icons in DOpus scrolls up and down.
-
Tooltips for any and all columns that are being cropped:
For example, the
Description
column often contains a lot of text, however when it is set toCollapse
its width, this information can be cut off to the point of being useless, something hovering over what remains of the string to produce a tooltip could remedy. I understand the Info Tip produced when hovering over aName
column's item could be edited to include this, however, I think that's more of a workaround to behaviour that most programs implement. -
Tooltips for truncated column strings in the Utility Panel, e.g. for the File Log.
-
Improve Gif viewing and loading:
"Not all frames of the animation were loaded due to memory requirements."
when viewing an 8MiB Gif file. -
Support for international English:
An option for British English strings used in the UI. This would largely benefit multiple regions, such as Britain, Canada, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, Malta, and South Africa, that mostly prefer international English spellings. DOpus seems to already provide some international strings under-the-hood, for example when typing "customise" into the Preferences search, it'll match the American "z"-variant. A note could also be appended to the
Select Language:
text at the bottom to remind users that all DOpus' commands use American English, so take care when spelling (I assume this is true). Alternatively/additionally the help documentation could mention that documentation is written in international english but all commands are in American.
Suggestions
-
This PC
when grouped byType
shows the group nameHard Disk Drives
(HDDs) when it should likely be the more genericDisk Drives
, sinceSolid State Disks
(SSDs) are common now. -
The SmartFavorites feature doesn't update when one would expect:
For example, set
Folder Activity Point threshold
to10
, and theDouble-click
configuration also to10
. With this configuration, one would expect a single double-click of a folder via the Folder Tree / Folder Display to immediately populate the SmartFavorties with the clicked-on folder, but it does not. It's not clear when the folder will appear in the Favorites list, but at some point, it does (maybe this is a bug?). I have tried exiting DOpus and re-launching it, but that didn't cause the list to update either. Perhaps the documentation on this feature could have more detail. -
Favorites not shown under Folder Tree's Favorites tree item:
-
In the case when
Folder Tree > Contents
hasSmart Favorites
(but notFavorites
) enabled, perhaps rename the displayed tree item toSmart Favorites
as to reduce the poor UX of adding an item to your Favorites but the tree item not displaying it (because despite still being namedFavorites
, it is now set up to only display the smart variant). Nothing other than remembering that the program has been configured in this way indicates that your normal favourites won't be appearing in that list any more. -
In the Command Editor, the
Name:
,Label:
and other text entry fields should expand as the window dimensions increase: just like the Function text area. -
In multiple places in the documentation (and the software I believe), the names given to things assume a left/right Dual Vertical display lister layout:
A left/right dual display layout was the original and only orientation for dual display mode I believe, but new users may not know this. For example, the folder aliases
defaultright
andlastright
do not make sense when in a horizontal layout. Perhaps their names should be genericised to something likedefault2
? At the very least, hopefully it is noted in the documentation that left/right refers to top/bottom when horizontal.
System information
- Directory Opus v12.23.1 Beta x64 Build 7710
- Microsoft Windows 10 v20H2 OS Build 19042.804
Thanks
I've attached my .ocb configuration file should it be useful.
Thanks for reading and have a great day!