Separate Address bars, positioned within the tabs

[aplocher]

Hello, first of all, I love XYplorer. It's a great tool that I've almost completely replaced Windows Explorer with. I'm a software engineer with a heavy focus on User Experience (UX) and I think a near perfect UX is very important. I love XY, but there are some improvements that I think can be made which would make it more aesthetically pleasing and easier on the eyes.

There has been a long debate over which is more aesthetically pleasing and makes the most sense, but I think the position that the address bar should be contained within the tab is the popular one these days. I think it's especially important with XY, because the start of the textbox is directly above the TreeView,

Both FireFox and Chrome have adopted the inner address bar UX. For some reason, IE hasn't, but they have some really great UX elements to keep the UI tight and compact. I think it's especially important for side-by-side views due to the distance your eyes have to travel between the folder and the address bar (esp for the view on the right side)

It makes sense for multiple reasons:

• I think of the tabpage as the container of that view - it's the region that my eyes stay within when working on that folder. It should be the outer-most container of the folder you're viewing and the address bar which represents a part of that folder goes inside it. It could be argued that even the TreeView could go in there, but I think that would take up too much screen real estate (the treeview is another discussion)
• With split screen view, it is confusing looking at the address bar for multiple reasons:
  a) Address bar starts above the TreeView (or with no TreeView, it starts above pane #1 on the left).
  b) While focused on the address bar it's not immediately clear which directory list you're editing. The eyes have a long distance to travel to get to the address bar from the current view. If you have a side-by-side view, it takes even longer for the right pane. It's a constant eye movement that takes way too long.
• If designed well (like Microsoft did with Windows Explorer), it can save space and be used to represent the breadcrumbs and the address all in one place. That is almost duplicate functionality that's taking twice as much real-estate as needed.

Microsoft did an amazing job with their Address bar in Vista and beyond. Microsoft has a prominent Address bar that can be easily navigated with a mouse or keyboard.
a) Mouse navigation is simple by navigating the address bar like a breadcrumb list (each piece of the breadcrumb is a button)
b) Keyboard navigation is done by clicking on the address bar, but not on a specific folder, or by using a keyboard shortcut like ALT+D

There's a lot of discussions on the web about this, but most of the strongest arguments seem to favor the inner Address bar.

I've also attached a screenshot that shows two thing:
#1) Shows how the address bar can actually appear like a part of the TreeView (especially if your display is low brightness),
#2) The distance your eye must travel for the right view

[bdeshi]

I (and I believe many others) happen to mostly only ever use the AB as a command line box; to enter filters, searchterms, scripts and whatnot. It's long length is an advantage, and it's position relative to tabs/panes hardly matter.
Navigation is sufficiently covered by tabs, hotlist, history, minitree, breadcrumbbar etc, to bother with entering locations in the addressbar often.

Therefore, I'd very much like that:
a) the main AB remain as-is, (perhaps be re-christened as, say, the Command Bar, Magicbox,... )
b) and the pane-wise breadcrumbs implement a AB mode, something like WE and the norm these days (breadcrumb+addressbar).

my two cents.


oh and by the way, welcome to the club!

[aplocher]

Thank you, I like a nice healthy discussion about UX.

I do agree that the primary con to this is that the width of the address input is cut in half (or more due to the directory tree). I will address that in a moment...

I disagree with most of the items, though, ESPECIALLY when you say the position relative to the panes isn't a concern. The UI looks nice but is scattered. The amount of time unnecessary scanning of a large screen takes may seem insignifcant, but this is a tool I'm using sometimes dozens of times a day. And on a larger screen, it may require neck movement to go between Pane #2 (in a vertical layout) and the start of the Address Bar.

Even if that's true that most people use the AB for filtering, search, etc (which it may be), it still applies to the current pane that is active, it shouldn't encompass the entire UI. If you have two vertical panes, the right pane is awfully far from the beginning of the address bar. Personally, I would much rather have a smaller Address Bar that doesn't require so much scanning of the entire screen to do a simple task.

Back to the issue of the size, the longer AB is nice, but not needed. I think that's far less important (IMO) than having everythign grouped together so each elemental function is closer to one another.

NTFS supports 255 characters in the path, but it's pretty unlikely most people will ever hit that. Even if they do occasionally go beyond the bounds of the width of the Address Bar, it's not a big deal. It will cut off part of the beginning of the text, but it probably wouldn't be a common occurrence, and it's extremely unlikely anyone would need to read every letter/character/folder in that long path. Just as an example, this is a real path on my computer:

C:\Users\aplocher\Desktop\_OLD2\_OLD\_OLD\Backup-2014-04-30

That is 59 characters and would easily fit in the split panes with the default fonts and everything in XY, my screen resolution is 1600x900 which I think is about average (maybe higher than average, but that path is longer than average too) and I typically run at full screen.

With a tool like XY, it's obviously targeting power users. I normally don't like cluttering a UX with an over-abundance of options for the user, but I think in the case of XY it would make sense to leave that up to the user. There's nothing wrong with having one AB outside the tabsets if that's what the user prefers, but I'm just suggesting that it be an option. I would MUCH rather have two ABs for my two panes, and having the panes contain everything I need in one part of my screen.

Thanks again

[bdeshi]

Right, I do agree there ought to be panewise addressbars.

[tejas]

+1 for separate address bars (+ bread crumbs), i would say almost a requirement for wider monitors.

[j_c_hallgren]

Hello, first of all, I love XYplorer.

Welcome to the XY forums and glad that you love XY!

because the start of the textbox is directly above the TreeView,

Not always! I have my AB on same line as Toolbar (via Window>Arrangement>Toolbar first) because i still have a small/old 4x3 laptop so vertical space is precious and I rarely use the AB so sharing that line makes sense to me...now it depends on how many TB icons you have and such but my AB is about the width of right pane in vertical dual pane layout and that's plenty for me.

Have you tried that arrangement as alternative yet? If not, try it for a bit and see... It would reduce the horizontal eye movement that you have, I think.

Addendum: Now that we have BC per pane, the need for separate AB's for me is almost gone...I don't see need for more than one based on my usage but others have varying needs, I know.

[aplocher]

Thank you guys for the responses.

@j_c_hallgren, I think we're talking about a couple different things. You're referring to the positioning of the Toolbar, but I'm talking more about the Tree on the left. With the left side of the Address bar positioned above the the Tree, it doesn't feel like a part of the pane you're actively working on and requires unnecessary eye movement, esp. on bigger monitors (as tejas mentioned). I just think the AB feels more natural lining up vertically with the pane (or better yet, have it contained within the pane).

I do think the breadcrumbs in the pane are nice, but I think Microsoft did a great job merging the two. If a custom control could be written (or utilized directly from Win API calls) to mimic that behavior, you get the best of both... no need for a AB and BC, nice, clean, compact, and functional:

Windows 10 Address Bar (same concept since Vista)

AddressBar1.jpg (63.7 KiB) Viewed 4150 times

Thanks!

[j_c_hallgren]

@j_c_hallgren, I think we're talking about a couple different things.

Maybe - I'll try again to clarify:

You're referring to the positioning of the Toolbar,

No - I'm referring to the alternate position of the AB on same line as (and to the right of) the TB which you may not have tried.

but I'm talking more about the Tree on the left. With the left side of the Address bar positioned above the the Tree, it doesn't feel like a part of the pane you're actively working on and requires unnecessary eye movement,

Yes, the tree is still on left BUT the left side of AB is NOT always above it when using the options that I use...my AB occupies the rightmost 1/3 of my screen only and is thus above the list pane totally.

[aplocher]

I now see what you're saying - you mean if I disable the "Address bar and toolbar are stacked" option. I think that solves part of the problem, but there's still several other issues not addressed by that (which I mention above). Definitely less eye movement, but now I still only have a single AB and I'm relying on the # of my toolbar icons to determine the AB location.

Thanks btw, I think that is an improvement over what it was before

2014-11-10_04h36_39.png (19.96 KiB) Viewed 4103 times

2014-11-10_04h36_56.png (18.72 KiB) Viewed 4103 times

[aplocher]

Not trying to beat a dead horse, but with the announcement of Microsoft Spartan, almost all browsers have made the jump to having their address bars contained within the tab (with the exception of IE which is hopefully on it's way out the door) and Safari I think. I really would love it if the address bar could be contained in the tab, and separate ones when using split-screen view:

Browsers.png (165.83 KiB) Viewed 4020 times

[aplocher]

A couple thoughts:

mockup.png (181.16 KiB) Viewed 4013 times

Mockup2.png (180.96 KiB) Viewed 4008 times

[Filehero]

.... almost all browsers have made the jump to having their address bars contained within the tab (

Well, you named it - "almost".

Here is how I run FF and IE.

FF_IE.png (12.6 KiB) Viewed 3997 times

Frankly I never got the benefit of having the AB below the tabs. Of course, I don't mind to have another option as lang as the current one keeps being available.


FH

[xyplorerköln]

I recognize this is an old thread, but I just noticed something pertinent.

I would like the option to have a tab address bar in each pane, underneath the tabs. The main address bar could be left as-is (full width, for maximal use of space), and then the user could optionally turn on the pane-specific tab address bars. The main address bar would sync with whichever pane is selected (as now), but the pane-specific tab address bars would continually show the respective selected tabs' addresses.

Why would I find this useful? Often I'm working quickly, opening new tabs and jumping back and forth between them and their panes. Sometimes I'd like to manually copy/paste the addresses from one to another, but then I find myself wasting time having to navigate around to the main address bar and, because it shows only one address at a time, having to manually select back and forth between the pane sets to get the address I want. In certain scenarios, it's just easier/faster to have both panes' addresses on-screen simultaneously.

Don, possible?

[xyplorerköln]

Don, any thoughts on this?