Because of slow screen update when dragging several files from a folder on the right to another folder in the tree on the left, I've tried to disable the display of the ghosted file icons which accompany the drag...is there a way to disable this?
Sometimes when dragging several files over, zeroing in on the proper target folder is herky-jerky at best...and I'm working on a 3Ghz machine.
Your advice is appreciated.
A modern machine should have no trouble with this at all - maybe you have a hardware problem? Do you have a decent video card? Checked that your graphics drivers are up to date, etc?
The graphics card is an 8X AGP GeForce Ultra...blazingly fast normally...in all aspects, this is a very fast box.
Is there a way to disable the icon display, or should I just suffer...
Perhaps I'm looking in the wrong area?
Thanks
No you can't disable it - but there should be no need to.
Do you get the same results in Explorer?
Another thought - this might not be related to the drag image at all. If you drag files over the tree and "accidentally" move over slow devices (like removable media, or network drives, or - especially - disconnected network drives), then you can get results like this.
Does this happen when dragging in general or is it only when moving over certain targets that you see this?
Jon's idea about removable/slow devices is probably right. However, doing transparency (and just about everything else 
) is really slow if you're using the default drives which come with Windows since they do everything in software. Make sure you're using NVidia drivers rather than Microsoft ones.
Independently that I do not have detected speed issues concerned with it, I agree with scottj, that an alternative should be offered for this Windows 95 legacy kindergarten display behaviour. It looks just too confusing for fast handling and what purpose does it serve? The files to be dealt with are highlighted anyway, and the contents of the ghost-image are not really destined for reading and checking, or are they?
There should be a single file operation token and a multiple file token, and maybe a highlight for the target folder instead.
Greetz.
Like Jon was wondering about, I don't see any reason why the display of the icons shoud be any slower in Opus than say Explorer - so is it?
However, the Windows (XP at least) has a Display Properties->Appearance->Effects->Show windows contents while dragging option that removes the icons and filename ghosts from drag operations. Unfortunately for you guys, it does not affect rendering in Opus...
Okay, guys, I found out where the "slowdown" occurs.
When you're dealing with copying lots of files (say, over 50 or so), from a network drive to the local machine, that's where the herky-jerkys come to play with this.
If you're just dealing with files between partitions or drives on the same machine, then things are nice and speedy.
ok, and what about the same operation in Win Explorer?
The same operation in Windows Explorer does not produce the herky-jerkys...it is silky smooth.
To make sure, I performed a "side-by side" comparison by copying the same set of files across the network from one location to another, using Dopus and Exlporer on the same computer...so, it would appear that this "anomaly" follows Dopus. I don't know if anybody else can duplicate it, but there it lives.
As an addendum, I thought I'd mention that the halting movements of the network drag & drop happen even when there are too many files to display, such as when Dopus simply lists the number of files in parentheses.
I don't think it's got anything to do with the graphical display; it'll be something going on with the (network) filesystem; something that I guess is normally fast enough that you don't notice but is very slow in this case.
It doesn't happen with the network shares that I've tried so I don't think it's caused just by using a network share.
Maybe using Filemon to see what is being accessed at the time is a good idea? If you can see what's causing the slowdown it'll be easier to address, even if it can't be reproduced in other environments.
Okay, Nudel, it appears I'm going to have to take back what I said earlier about the slowdown only happening on network drives...I did what you said about monitoring processes, and I tried the file copy process, from one physical drive to another in the same computer. The number of files is 229, which is shown by Dopus simply as the number 229 in parentheses in the graphic I drag across from the file side on the right, to the tree side on the left.
Now, as I move the graphic around between the different folders in the tree, the movement jerks around, and the only process in Taskmanager showing processor usage is dopus.exe, varying between 15-40 percent usage of a P4 3.73 Ghz proc. If I hold the graphic still, dopus.exe proc. usage drops to zero.
Somebody mentioned graphics driver issues...I'm using the latest WHQL certified drivers for my NVidia Geforce 6600 GT-driven card which sits in a PCI Express-16 slot.
Anyhow, while dopus.exe is using all this processor time, there is no disk activity or any other active system process causing the slowdown that I can determine.
Hope this helps.
Scottj
When I drag a few hundred files I don't get much CPU usage when moving the mouse around, except when I drag them over sub-folders in the destination (i.e. when the tooltips appear saying what the destination will be), where it uses about 50% CPU briefly (or continuously if I keep moving up and down the sub-directories).
Obviously that 50% might vary by CPU speed etc.
Also, the CPU usage seems to increase if you select (a lot) more files and decrease if you select (a lot) less.
But it sounds like when you drag anywhere you've getting much more CPU usage? Or do you just see it when dragging over the sub-folders, like I do?
There's certainly an argument for improving what I'm seeing (I can't think of a reason that having more files selected should mean more needs to be calculated when hovering over a sub-folder), but I want to make sure we're not getting side-tracked from the problem you're experiencing.
If you are seeing high CPU usage while dragging anywhere, does it happen with all types of files and between two normal directories, like C:\ and D:?
I see it when dragging over the sub-folders, just like you do. The same is true for me about the severity of it depending on how many files are selected...so at least you were able to duplicate what I'm seeing. You should also notice that this does not happen when performing the same operation with Windows Explorer.
I get the same problem with dopus 8.2.1.0 unicode version.
I select like 200-300 thumbnails and when i try to move them around cpu usage jumps to ~30% but when i hover it over folders then it jumps to 100% and i have the same mentioned effect of lagginess.
Athlon 64 3000+ 2048MB with all the latest drivers.
Edit: It doesn't matter if the view is thumbnails or list view. Effect is the same. In Windows Explorer cpu usage is normal ~5-10% when selecting same amount of files and hovering them over folders but as soon as i take it over dopus window and hover it there over folders, cpu usage jumps sky high.
Edit 2: OS is Win XP 64-bit (but somehow i think that doesn't matter in this case)