Touch!

nrshapiro · Post by **nrshapiro** » 01 Feb 2007 00:05

I'd love to see a touch feature (the ability to right click on a group of files, and change their time/date stamp to the current time.

It's very useful for developers, possibly others.

Post by **j_c_hallgren** » 01 Feb 2007 00:21

XY can do it already! Maybe you've not familiar with how to do it...

Select a group of files in list, go to Properties tab in Info Panel, click on the actual date/time value you wish to set, and you'll see it opens up for edit with a green plus and red "X"...

I agree it's not intuitively obvious but it does the job...plus, you can set attributes in a similar way.

See http://88.191.26.34/XYwiki/index.php/Pa ... e-stamping

nrshapiro · Post by **nrshapiro** » 01 Feb 2007 01:14

Thanks! I would have never thought to click on those fields. In fact, I was a bit hung up with properties menu rather than the properties panel, mainly because that's how other utilities I had used worked in the past. I also looked in the properties dialog, but it was the regular windows dialog, and the date fields were static text.

Thanks again.

For intuitiveness, it might be good to add a tooltip when you hover or cross the field, or an icon next to the field. And adding something about "Touch" to the help file would be a good way to clue people in!

But at least now I know how to do it!

Post by **j_c_hallgren** » 01 Feb 2007 01:39

nrshapiro wrote:For intuitiveness, it might be good to add a tooltip when you hover or cross the field, or an icon next to the field.

Yes, since presently hovering over field causes a tooltip with the current value, which doesn't really help any...having it say, maybe "Click on value to edit" or similar? And/or having a very small icon beside value that would invoke edit mode on that field...which would make it more obvious that something can be modified on the field...I'd still leave clicking on value intact to invoke for existing users who know the 'secret'...

BTW, I just updated that area of wiki to add "touch" in text so it can be found via search.

lukescammell · Post by **lukescammell** » 01 Feb 2007 11:51

This doesn't work for me. (kinda)

If I have nothing selected in the list and I select a few files, the properties tab remains blank.

Also, if I select a file and then drag select another bunch of files (not including the one I initially selected), the properties panel remains with the details of the first (and no longer) selected file, presumably as it's still focussed. However, if I go ahead and change one of the date, it will update all the currently selected files, but NOT the first selected file the the properties bar is still displaying!

While this does kinda work, I'd say it's a little incomplete and confusing currently and needs some extra work to make it behave as expected.

jacky · Post by **jacky** » 01 Feb 2007 19:01

This has to do with how XY works here I think.

lukescammell wrote:If I have nothing selected in the list and I select a few files, the properties tab remains blank.

That would be because the Properties tab shows info about the item both selected AND focused. I'm guessing you do your selection by mouse, hence without affecting the focus. So the focused item is not selected, hence not shown on Properties tab.

lukescammell wrote:Also, if I select a file and then drag select another bunch of files (not including the one I initially selected), the properties panel remains with the details of the first (and no longer) selected file, presumably as it's still focussed. However, if I go ahead and change one of the date, it will update all the currently selected files, but NOT the first selected file the the properties bar is still displaying!

Same here pretty much. Since you had a file both selected and focused Proeprties tab was filled. Now when you make your selection, you select some other files, the originally selected one not being part of the selection, but because there is a selection, XY let the Properties tab filled.

I can see why it would look confusing at first, but I used to think it's a nice thing since it allows one to quickly change the timestamps of a (bunch of) item(s) to another item's timestamp easilly.

Although maybe most of times one would want to set the exact same one, not something based on, so having that item part of the selection woudln't matter.
Then, and to keep the behavior clear, maybe it should be changed (or fixed) so that the Properties tab is emplied/cleared not only when there are no selection, but also if the focused item is not part of the selection (This happening I think only when having an item both selected&focused, and "drawing" a selection using mouse and not including the focused item).

lukescammell · Post by **lukescammell** » 07 Feb 2007 16:08

I was using a mouse for selecting in that example, but I do it using both mouse and keyboard interchangeably. Of course, if you do use the keyboard then you get the behaviour I expected...