Opus 12 Wishlist

I noticed the other week after checking for updates that Opus 12 is in development. I have mixed, conflicting emotions. As a long time user and customer I hope you can take in to consideration the following two feature requests for Opus 12. If I have posted this is the wrong forum please redirect.

  1. Have each window tab run as a separate thread. Why? Nothing seems to be more annoying these days than clicking in a tabs folder and having to wait a few seconds for a hard drive to awake from it's slumber and spin up to speed in one of the adjacent tabs. Yes, it's only a few seconds but it sure gets annoying.

  2. FTP/SFTP/SSH improvements. If there has been one area of DO I have longed hoped to see improved for many, many, many years (I'm sure you can find requests for previous DO releases) it is for an overhaul of FTP support. Whilst it is functional it's not exactly 2016 worthy, "FTP Advanced" is really very basic FTP support. A lot of people still need to do work via FTP and (it would) form an important aspect of DO. Whilst I have paid the extra money for the "FTP Advanced" feature in previous DO releases I have over the last few years had to rely on other FTP clients because, to put it simply, they get the job done a lot quicker and easily. I hope that if there are no improvements in this area for DO12 you do not intend on charging extra for, "FTP Advanced", and it becomes part of the basic package.

Happy to discuss further details on number two, thank you for reading.

  1. Technically, tabs already run in separate threads, but multiple threads sharing a single window can end up blocking sometimes. It may be the lister toolbars, shared by all tabs, rather than the tabs themselves, but that's just a guess. Removing (or moving into a submenu) anything on the toolbar that points to drives which go to sleep may speed things up (or may not, depending on exactly what is blocking and why).

  2. This is light on specific requests so I am left guessing. "FTP Advanced" means FTPS and SFTP support; nobody is forced to pay for it if they don't want it, and it's a one-off fee, not something you keep paying for with each update. We've improved SFTP in Opus 12 by adding support for SSH keys (without having to use Pageant and the space-as-password kludge) but aside from that there aren't any major changes in that area, that I can think of at least.

  1. Example, I am in dual lister display and one is showing drive C:\ and the other D:. I click on a folder in the C:\ lister and because d:\ hard disk went to sleep I have to wait for it to wake and spin up to speed. During this time the lister for C:\ drive is unusable.

  2. Of course no one has to purchase "FTP Advanced" if they do not want to or feel it is of value. I'm saying that in 2016, "FTP Advanced", is really basic FTP support and I feel should be part of the basic DO package. There are basic freeware clients that currently do a much better job than DO. Of features missing this has been discussed many, many, many times, one previous topic that springs to mind is: Feature Request: Multi-Part FTP

I use the FTP\SFTP\SSH feature almost every day connecting to different servers and for me, and it seems a lot of people, it's a key part of dopus. It would indeed be nice to see some improvements in this area.

It might be worth considering renaming the paid "Advanced FTP" upgrade to "Basic FTP" to temper peoples expectations. How about bundling the current basic implementation of FTP into the standard opus package for free and then make a more advanced version a paid version?

Basic FTP is FTP. SFTP and FTPS are what the add-on provides. What the "Advanced FTP" module does is clearly explained before people buy it so I don't know where any higher expectations are coming from. Renaming it at this stage would just confuse people who already own the add-on or understand what it does.

Please give specific suggestions for improvements if there's anything that hasn't already been mentioned.

Separate threads to discuss for each idea is better than a wishlist thread, too. (As per Ask one question per thread.)

Thanks so much for adding the "Authentication > Use Private Key" dialog box. It even transparently supports pageant which is fantastic!

That "space-as-password" kludge was so confusing, look forward to when that is removed... Confused me when I forgot after setting it up too long ago and updating one of my FTP site configurations.