Can't SHIFT-select and then CTRL-SHIFT-select

Chris Wood · Post by **Chris Wood** » 17 Jun 2004 02:01

It is hard to select to separated groups of file in a file list because after using SHIFT-click to select the first group, you can't then use CTRL-SHIFT to select the next group, as you can in most programs (eg. Explorer, of course).

Post by **admin** » 17 Jun 2004 17:31

Cool! I have to admit i did not even know this technique. I've just built it in, and you'll have it with the next BETA.

Chris Wood · Post by **Chris Wood** » 19 Jun 2004 06:25

Brilliant! Thankyou. Every new beta, TrackerV3 is getting closer to an Explorer replacement that I'd embrace wholeheartedly (though I doubt it's possible for it to ever be as fast as Explorer, since Explorer is part of the OS).

Post by **admin** » 19 Jun 2004 10:47

Chris Wood wrote:...though I doubt it's possible for it to ever be as fast as Explorer, since Explorer is part of the OS

What? TrackerV3 is clearly faster than Explorer! What part you think is slower?

Chris Wood · Post by **Chris Wood** » 21 Jun 2004 08:34

Explorer opens at least 2 times faster (under Windows Me, anyway).

TrackerV3 is probably about the same speed as Explorer at displaying folder contents, but it seems slower because it displays the folders, then sorts them, and displays them again. Hmm, that sounds like a bug!

And of course Explorer can be opened with a hotkey

Post by **admin** » 21 Jun 2004 10:20

Chris Wood wrote:Explorer opens at least 2 times faster (under Windows Me, anyway).

Well, i started TrackerV3 only once and never closed it again (under XP you don't have to close programs when you shut off the computer), so where's the problem?

Chris Wood wrote: TrackerV3 is probably about the same speed as Explorer at displaying folder contents, but it seems slower because it displays the folders, then sorts them, and displays them again. Hmm, that sounds like a bug!

It's true that Explorer displays large folders in sorted order faster *apparently*, but when you then scroll down to the end of the list you'll note the work it still has to do because it wasn't done before: scrolling is slow. It's a question of strategy.
The display-sort-display effect in TrackerV3 is not a bug but gives you a true feedback of what is actually going on when folder contents are displayed: you first get an unordered list from the file system (FAT, NTFS...), and only when the list is completely read you can order it and then redisplay it.
I decided to show this mechanics to give a visual feedback that something's happening instead of just showing an hourglass and an empty list.
However, now that you brought up the issue, i got an idea to improve my strategy! It's obviously only necessary with long lists, so in future it will be like this:
Larger folders (say, > 128 items): display-sort-display
Smaller folders: sort-display
Good idea?

Chris Wood wrote:And of course Explorer can be opened with a hotkey

See above: don't close it!

Chris Wood · Post by **Chris Wood** » 21 Jun 2004 12:50

admin wrote:However, now that you brought up the issue, i got an idea to improve my strategy! It's obviously only necessary with long lists, so in future it will be like this:
Larger folders (say, > 128 items): display-sort-display
Smaller folders: sort-display
Good idea?

Yep, that'd be cool

Post by **admin** » 21 Jun 2004 14:12

I just made it, it's really cool! Thanks for a good inspiration!