More than two panes

Help & Support
1

Any chance we can get more than two panes, like four.

I've been using FileProbe for years which allows you to set up as many panes as you like.
I have found it really useful to have four panes, two main ones and two smaller ones below. These small ones always sit showing a private Temp directory and act as working dirs, where I can drop stuff I'm playing around with temporarily (actually they're shares, so drives S: & T: so when I drop stuff they copy there by default rather than move).

Now FileProbe is no longer in development and isn't XP friendly, so I'm desparate for a new solution but am so very used to four panes.

2

Why not use 4 listers instead? With 4 listers open you could easily make a button to arrange them into 4 panes side by side with a command like this:

Set LISTERCMD=TileV

Or you might consider manually arranging 4 listers to be as you want, then go to

PREFERENCES/LAYOUTS/SAVED LAYOUTS

And save that layout with whatever name you desire. Then to switch from whatever current mode you're in to 4 panes, just load that saved layout.

3

That seems to have two problems.
Each lister has full menu, toolbars etc so I get four lots of that rather than just the one lot across the top.
Also, I get four entries in my taskbar for what is, to me, just one program.
I have seen posts asking for tabbed listers within one window, but if this feature was added, I still wouldn't get to see all four windows at once within the master window.

Cheers

4

I would also like to see more than two windows/tabs in each window. I totally agree with ddk that multiple listers is not a true replacement for this because there would be 4 (or 2) full UI's (toolbars, etc).

ddk, if tabs were used, we should be able to see all four internal windows within the master window if implemented correctly as just about every MDI I have seen allows this--even have options for cascading and horizontal and vertical tiling.

5

Kudos to JohnZ for trying to offer up a solution :slight_smile:, but as ddk and Zero pointed out it just doesn't quite cut it... And like Zero said, this would certainly be a non-issue if tabbed listing/browsing functionality were added as per this feature request. So boogy on over if you haven't been there already and voice your desire for tabs in the next release.

6

So, how much extra would you pay for a special Advanced Lister Configuraton feature - like the Advanced FTP Feature?

:slight_smile:

__
Greg

7

[quote]
greg wrote:
So, how much extra would you pay for a special Advanced Lister Configuraton feature - like the Advanced FTP Feature?

:slight_smile:

__
Greg[/quote]
Awwe you don't want to do that! hahahahaha.

I would pay $10-15 extra for an advanced lister using tabs and internal windows/MDI. hehe, modularize and buy what u need. :smiley:

Feel reluctant to respond with any price, but hey, I think it's pretty much the only feature missing. Now are you just going to add it as an option because people reply back? Well, I kinda think it might require a lot of changes, and you've been reluctant to implement it.--I'll call.

8

So what if we gave it to you for free sometime in the next few weeks?

Would you tell all your friends how great Opus is? Of course you would... :slight_smile:

9

My two cents...

Greg, in the topic started specifically about the tabbed feature I happily offered up the idea of you guys making 'tabbed lister' functionality an Advanced/Paid feature if not enough of your user base seemed to 'want' it - though the topic does indeed seem to be among the more heavily viewed on the forum by far. I personally would have no problem shelling out the price of those other features like AFTP and the like as either an optin or a flat price jump for Dopus... but I expect that those who don't care about tabs wouldn't feel the same since Dopus is already among the more costly Explorer replacements out there.

Jon, for my part I already tell as many as I can dude :slight_smile:. But feel free to unleash it on us for free sometime over the next few weeks if you'd like as well... LOL.

10

Well I'm pretty much with these guys.

I want it pretty badly so might fork out, but I'm wincing, as I agree with steje that its already pretty expensive :astonished: .
Of course it would even more palatable if you could implement the ability for a toolbar of favorites to control a SPECIFIC pane (see Separate "favourites" per lister in DUAL).

Now if you can manage it for free, well I'll show the good grace to accept it pronto.

No problem telling all my friends :smiley: :smiley:

11

Just a question for those who support the tabbed feature request. If it were to happen, how would you resolve a problem such as that one which began this thread? Meaning suppose you want to drag and drop a file that's in lister tab "A" into another lister tab?

In my mind, you couldn't because only one tab at a time would be visible. Which is the flaw of using a tabbed interface with a file manager. You could set up multiple tabbed listers, or maybe GP software could perhaps enable multiple tab viewing but then we'd be right back to effectively using individual listers again.

To me individual listers are far more flexible. On the other hand however it would certainly be VERY useful if I could set one lister up with toolbars, etc, and yet have all the other visible listers without toolbars (etc).

12

Well you would (hypothetically) just drop onto the tab itself, I would have thought.

13

Hi John (and Jon), great question dude... and the answer is that it would be up to GPS to implement Tabbed Listers in much the same way as most any other app worth it's salt has done by offering the same sort of Window management used in most GUI oriented OS's...

Just as you might 'cascade' or 'tile' windows whose footprints are present on the Windows taskbar, most apps with a tabbed UI offer the same functionality along with the sensible ability to manually drag the borders of each window around and/or to move each entire window around within the main UI. Here's a screenshot of Opera showing it's take on this functionality. Note, that with Opera you happen to get the address (path) and combo navigation bar along with each window instance. I 'believe' Mozilla works in the same way... Here's a screenshot of UltraEdit's implementation as well.

I personally think of the basic idea of a tabbed UI as being an application specific taskbar and window management implementation within the app itself. Here's a quick hacked together screenshot of what I imagine Dopus might basically work like with a tabbed interface, but that's just me and MS Paint for ya...

14

What Jon said about just dropping files onto the 'tab' of the destination folder in order to copy or move them to the folder opened in that tab is a fine idea in the case each lister window is 'maximized' and is just the sort of thing I'd expect the makers of such a great program like Dopus to come up with as a file management oriented twist on the basics of a tabbed interface...

15

[quote]
ddk wrote:
Now if you can manage it for free, well I'll show the good grace to accept it pronto.[/quote]
:smiley:

[quote]
JohnZeman wrote:
Just a question for those who support the tabbed feature request. If it were to happen, how would you resolve a problem such as that one which began this thread? Meaning suppose you want to drag and drop a file that's in lister tab "A" into another lister tab?[/quote]

Exactly what steje has said:

[quote]
steje wrote:
...implement Tabbed Listers in much the same way as most any other app worth it's salt has done by offering the same sort of Window management used in most GUI oriented OS's...[/quote]
If tabs were not implemented in this manner, it would be a step back. As I have said, the advanced lister config would need to be implemented with internal windows and a standard MDI for it to be completely worthwhile. Also, I would still like the option of being able to have another instance of DO open (like now).

Thanks a lot steje for making and posting screenshots of how it should be implemented.

[quote]
jon wrote:
Well you would (hypothetically) just drop onto the tab itself, I would have thought.[/quote]
great idea.

And another thing that I think this interface would benefit would be the use of lister styles. I don't know about others, but for me, switching lister styles (from dual/commander to single) results in a loss of the right lister folder that drives me crazy. By having a tab/MDI interface, switching styles would automatically position/switch/move the internal windows just like they do now with the one's not being used in the background/minimized and NOT LOST.

Lastly, I currently have a toolbar positioned vertically between my two listers. It would be nice if I would still be able to do this with an MDI interface, but if it couldn't happen, I wouldn't mind at all. I would much more prefer tabs--just a thought.

Now if this was offered for free, I would gladly accept and I would definately tell everybody how great a program it is. Of course, that wouldn't be any different from how it is now. Or if it wasn't offered for free, I would tell everybody to never touch this software lol, j/k :smiley:

16

[quote]
And another thing that I think this interface would benefit would be the use of lister styles. I don't know about others, but for me, switching lister styles (from dual/commander to single) results in a loss of the right lister folder that drives me crazy. By having a tab/MDI interface, switching styles would automatically position/switch/move the internal windows just like they do now with the one's not being used in the background/minimized and NOT LOST.[/quote]

Not sure what you're talking about here.

All the lister styles are configurable. You can modify/delete the default styles or add your own.

Preferences - Layout - Lister Styles

17

tanis, I emailed support a while back about it, but wasn't sure how to implement it and might take a lot of work.

Basically the issue is that if I am running in commander style with each lister being in a different folder (source on right), once I switch to a single lister style (for instance to view more thumbnails) and I switch back to commander, the left lister (that was the destination) is "replaced" with the source that was on the left (not a big issue), but the main problem is that the destination on the right goes to the default directory, but I wanted my old destination directory to be kept.

18

Hey there Zero man, we may have strayed off topic a bit here but...

a) When you open a dual-pane lister with the regular Set DUAL=Toggle,Vert/Horiz oriented buttons in the default toolbar I imagine that the folder specified in Preferences->Layout->Default Folders->Second file display: will always be used as the dual-pane listers starting folder... and that's just the way it is.

b) What's more, if I navigate to 2 different folders in a dual-pane lister and then go back to single-pane mode and open a CLI prompt... doing a Go {destpath} does nothing. So I guess when you go from dual-pane to single-pane lister config the DESTINATION path variable gets trashed.

What you might be able to do though is create a new customized Dual-Pane lister toggle button like so:[code]LMB: Single-Pane Lister mode
runmode hide
setx mydest {destpath}
Set DUAL=Off

RMB: Dual-Pane Lister mode
Go %mydest% OPENINDUAL=vert
Go SWAP [/code]If I understood you correctly, this should even get the 'source' folder back over to the right side lister pane for you... it's just that you'd have to discipline yourself to using this button with left and right mouse clicks rather than a single click 'true' toggle button depending on whether you wanted to go single or dual mode. Also, it requires you download and install the SETX.EXE resource kit utility from MS. If this will work for you, just google SETX.EXE and fire it up.

19

steje, thanks a lot, it works well. Unfortunately it does need setx.exe, but oh well.

20

Yeah well, I hope it's useful to you but I know what you mean... with as much power at your fingertips as you get with Opus it seems like you're hacking it when you need to bring in external apps to get stuff done :slight_smile:.

Gosh GP, when ARE you guys going to include the kitchen sink with the product? Sheesh....

LOL