Iconize and Zones

[msalvatori]

Most of my tabs are Lock Home Zone. For these tabs, I envisioned Iconize to reflect the home folder icon, no matter where I was in the zone. This would allow me to reduce tab width to a distinct icon while retaining the knowledge of what zone that tab was in. I made it a point to customize the icon for each of those Lock Home Zone folders. Nevertheless, as I traversed a zone's subfolders, I was disappointed to learn that Iconize dynamically reflected an icon of a tab's current folder, which for the most part is a folder icon.

The personal nature of custom icons provides great potential for representing zones succinctly. Using Iconize in this fashion, I could do without any visual representation for Home, Locked and Visual Filter. To help shore up total compromise, Info Tips could be extended. Perhaps there is enough room in a tab to outline it solid, dotted and colored to represent those three states.

[admin]

You mean iconized tabs with a home zone should always show the icon of the home folder?

[j_c_hallgren]

BTW, the last thread related to this topic was at http://www.xyplorer.com/xyfc/viewtopic.php?t=2139...and my suggestion about new overlays was not replied to, as far as I know.

And I don't believe that icon should be fixed based on Home, since I expect it to keep up with current location...but as discussed in other thread, adding the Home loc to tooltip could help in this, it would seem to me.

Addendum thought: Could there be two icons showing when it has a Home? One for the Home and one for current? I know that's non-standard, but just trying to find a good solution...

[admin]

Okay, I added some info to the tooltip.

[msalvatori]

I would like the option to be able to configure a tab that is iconized "statically" at Home. That way, while glancing at the XYplorer window, I can know up front (without interacting with any of my tabs) what zone each represents. My workflow is compromised if I must hover over a tab, just to remember what zone it represents.

An Iconize option of "Fixed at Home" (I am refering to the icon only; not information relating to the current directory) would guarantee a meaningful icon that references Home (ie, I only have to customize one icon to represent the Zone). Without this, I would have to customize ALL icons within a zone, which diminishes the potential value of Iconize.

To illustrate below, the leftmost iconized tab is the only one not at Home (in this case, E:\). And unfortunately, it no longer displays a meaningful icon (E:\Pictures\Computer).

[serendipity]

Good point. like how visual filters, default tab, locked paths etc have their own identifications (overlays, underline etc), home also should have some kind of identification.
There is no way to find out whether a tab is homed or not unless you click on it to find out that home icon is active or the new tooltip method. I think either an overlay or something else would be veru useful and ideal for all of us.

[jacky]

Yeah, but I'm not sure about that one. Because here we're not talking about knowning that the tab has a Home, but using as icon the folder icon for its home location.

And while I understand it might work for you, it could not for others as it would be misleading : the Tab's icon represents the icon of the folder that tab is in, its location, not another path.

One could find it confusing that the icon shown is not the one of the tab's location, as it would be expected (especially when not iconized).

I'm not sure... maybe it could be a special behavior (only when Iconized?), but then it should be an option, and not the default one.

[TheQwerty]

While I see the point, and you could accomplish this with just a bunch of Desktop.ini files, I think this is something that would be better suited to come after the per tab and custom folder setting features that are on the road map.

Once those are in place I imagine we could have two very useful options (and they'd be easier for Don to put in place then than now).

We could then have the ability to assign an icon to a tab, or to a custom folder view (and applied to subfolders). In either case if the icon is set it would ignore the folder icons/Desktop.ini in favor of the XY setting.



That said I do agree with the main wish here. I find the iconize feature isn't that useful unless I've gone through and defined custom icons, and as it stands that's not exactly a fun task. (Perhaps XY could have something that makes this less painful than Win Exp.'s Customize This Folder?)

[admin]

Most of my tabs are Lock Home Zone. For these tabs, I envisioned Iconize to reflect the home folder icon, no matter where I was in the zone. This would allow me to reduce tab width to a distinct icon while retaining the knowledge of what zone that tab was in. I made it a point to customize the icon for each of those Lock Home Zone folders. Nevertheless, as I traversed a zone's subfolders, I was disappointed to learn that Iconize dynamically reflected an icon of a tab's current folder, which for the most part is a folder icon.

Okay, I added an improvement to the next version: If you rename your home-zoned tabs then their icon will be fixed to the one of the home folder.
The rational behind this condition is: If you rename a tab you obviously care less about the display of its exact current location, so I can also make the icon more generic.

[msalvatori]

That is a very prudent consideration you make regarding renamed tabs. I completely agree with your reasoning. Thank you for giving this immediate attention.