I am maintaining a list of ideas which I have for DOpus. Most of these are small suggestions and do not warrant the creation of their own thread, therefore I combine them in this single post. Some of these have been discussed in other threads.
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Dropdown control with arguments:
New menu type. Add a command to the menu and use a sub-item as parameter to the command.
Example: Menu with copy command which contains the favorite list creates a "copy to favorite" menu.
Important question: what are sensible arguments? (Favorites, Smart Favorites, File Collections. Anything providing a directory or file?). -
Customizable tab control:
Create lister style tabs similar to menus. Drop a tab container and put a Prefs STYLELIST inside.
This tab container should also then work with any button / list. -
Three button menus:
Fix the three button command so it can (properly) contain menus (currently possible with copy & paste, but messy). -
Favorites subfolder:
Favorites filter similar to "Favorites PATH" but then for the path in the favorites hierarchy. -
Set operators on file collections:
- intersection (a intersect b = all files in collection a AND b)
- union (a union b = all files in a OR b)
- difference (a minus b = all files in a that are not in b)
Place the result in a collection.
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File collection searching:
In advanced find, support one of the following:- Location Match coll://
- Collection Match
(Can be used as implementation of set operations)
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Custom command on lister styles:
Allow a command to be added to lister styles, so that changing to that style executes the command (for customization of everything that currently cannot be customized in lister styles). -
Copy queues:
Queueing of copy/move commands for increased performance when copying multiple files to/from the same disk but from multiple directories.
8 ) Toolbar customization:
The toolbar customization dialog currently contains only Label Color and Label State. Either extend Label State or add Label Placement
(left, above, right, below, default). Selected Label Placement wil be the default for buttons on the toolbar.
If Default is chosen, the settings as defined in preferences->Toolbar will be used (currently not there either).
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Hot paths in file display border:
Long paths hide subdirectories. Abbreviate sub directories such that all intermediate directories remain visible.
Example:
The path "C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Opera\Opera8.0\profile" is shown (on my machine) as "C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application...\profile" This hides the intermediate directories Opera and Opera8.0.
Suggested display:
"C:\Docume...\userna...\Applic...\Opera\Opera8.0\profile"
In the extreme case: "C:\D...\u...\A...\O...\O...\profile" or perhaps even "C:\D\u\A\O\O\profile"
If this still doesn't fit then leave out directories at fixed intervals (e.g. "C:\u...\O...\profile"), although this should not happen too often. -
Hot path history:
Don't change the hot path if you switch to a prefix directory of the current directory and use a visual indication to show which directory the user is in.
Example: --- suppose the user is in: "C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data".
- Visualize the active directory: "C:\Documents and Settings\username[Application Data]"
- Now suppose the user switches to the directory "C:\Documents and Settings".
Since "C:\Documents and Settings" is a prefix of "C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data" the hot path is not changed, but it will change the visualization of the active directory. So it will show:
"C:[Documents and Settings]\username\Application Data" - If a user switches to a directory which is not a prefix of the current hot path then the hot path is fully updated.
Ideas for visualization:
- Markers such as brackets and braces: (...), [...], {...}, <...>, "..."
- Color or transparency: make the inactive suffix a lighter color such as is done with non-active menu items.
- Spacing:
C:\Documents and Settings\ username\Application Data (i.e active prefix with history suffix) C:\ Documents and Settings \username\Application Data (i.e prefix active suffix) - Make buttons or tabs of the directories: (the active dir looks like a pressed button)
[C:] [Documents and Settings] [username] [Application Data] - Something else...
I think I prefer the color version (like in the menus), but this might have accessibility issues (I don't know how well color-blind people can recognize different contrast/brightness in colors).
