There will be varying points of view about this, but in my opinion... The folder tree should be part of the tab panel, not outside of it.
I want some tabs to display the tree and some tabs not to. It makes better sense to attach the tree to the tab, instead of the other way around.
Currently, selecting a tab and hiding (or showing) the tree is a two step process. In my proposal, selecting a tab would hide or display the tree based on the settings for that tab.
I could set up a couple of generic tabs with trees, then the remainder tabs could be focused on specific folders from which I would rarely navigate.
A much more efficient use of screen real estate and interaction resource (clicks, etc), even for my 1900x1280 environment.
Not really. In my opinion, the DOpus styles approach is really inflexible.. too "Draconian" if you will. I want the folder tab itself to control tree visibility.
For instance, the only way to keep the divider at 50% is to use a style. This means I have to anticipate all future configurations and save all of them as styles before I need them. That's a lot of styles!
For example, you might say: "If you need to toggle the tree for a particular tab, select the View menu entry for that." Sounds good on the face of it, but I toggle the tree visibility, the divider moves, messing up my layout!
So if I need the divider to remain where it was (so that my "untree" panel keeps 50% -or whatever- width), I have to make a style. Then of course I have to do the same thing for the other side, too...
...ending up with too many styles: remembering to save, having to invent a naming convention for them, then having to peer through them to find the one I want on the "spur of the moment". Just think: showing/hiding the tree on either side means there have to be four styles just to keep the two panels at their preset widths. Crazy!
This is off topic, though, because regardless of the styles/divider issue, I really think the tree visibility should be partnered with each specific folder tab, not the panel, which is what my initial post requested.