I am frequently using Directory Opus to access a file server on the other end of the globe; latency is in the 300ms-400ms range. Navigating using the folder tree seems substantially slower than using the list view.
When I use the little triangle to expand a directory with many subdirectories, the subdirectories take around minute to appear. Sometimes subdirectories appear one by one in the tree view, with a new folder appearing every few seconds. I am guessing it is doing a network round trip for every directory. Is there a way to prevent this from happening?
Is there a way to not use explorer? The reason I bought Opus was that explorer is a piece of .... that doesn't work on a WAN. Or do I just have to get used to the commander-style interface?
Opus doesn't literally use Explorer to generate the tree. It uses the same Shell namespace API that Explorer uses, which I think is what Steje meant.
What performance do you get if you open a Command Prompt and ask for a directory listing of the network folder? e.g. run dir \computer\share\path and see how long it takes.
If that takes a long time then it seems like an issue that Opus cannot solve by itself. The workstation may have a "fast network folder reading" mode which improves directory listing performance. However, turning that on may cause problems connecting to non-Windows file servers if they use old versions of Samba. The "fast mode" is off by default in XP and Vista (read more about it here, here and here). (Update: The "fast mode" switch was apparently left out as it could cause bad file servers to crash. )
If the dir is reasonably quick then the delays in Explorer and Opus may be due to extra work being done, e.g. to find out if each folder has sub-folders and needs a + icon. (That may be done on a background thread already. I'm not sure and just guessing at possible reasons for a network round-trip per folder.)
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