"Recent Folders" bar, with contents able to act as drop target

Stilez · Post by **Stilez** » 12 Jun 2017 12:05

I'm thinking here of situations where one goes back and froth from contents to navigation or between navigation panes.
One nice option is a "Recent Folders" item in the navigation tree, because folders recently accessed are very likely to be the folders that you might want to open or drop files into, again. However this approach has disadvantages - it clutters the tree, it can scroll out of view, and it's catered for by other XYPlorer capabilities.

What I'd like to suggest instead is a toolbar that automatically updates with recent folders, with pin/unpin capability and allowing drop (not drag). This has a few advantages. Like "recent folders" it autoupdates, so it always shows the recent folders, but unlike the navigation tree:

Contents are always visible, regardless of where you are in the tree or what's shown or hidden
You don't have to "search" for recent folders or drop targets in a scrollable pane, they will largely keep a static position when in use
Folders shown in a toolbar can be larger than in the nav pane, making them easy to "hit" on a large screen
You can drag files to them without changing, moving, or scrolling the nav tree
"Drop to subfolder" can be handled intuitively by detecting dragging with a long hover >0.5 sec over the icon and showing a subfolder selector popup (instead of quickly dropping), and handle right-context-menu drag and drop menu the same as normal to provide the full range of drag and drop options.

Right click options for the folders might include - pin/unpin, an option to never show the folder on the toolbar (i.e., even if you recently use it, don't put it there). One issue to watch for is 2 folders with same same in different paths (such as an original and copy), so the user doesn't mix them up. Perhaps when a button is dragged over or dropped to, the full path appears below it and that's what is dropped to?

The automatic nature of this, and the fact it's not going to scroll or move as you use the nav tree, would make this a really nice enhancement and make file drag/drop activity and switching between recent folders, much easier.