out of control scrolling

[vyzer]

Been testing XYplorer for the past 3 weeks and there is one "feature" that is driving me crazy.

I'm a photographer and mainly use the program for sorting photos into folders. A weekend of work may result in several thousand photos.

I use two monitors. On my main monitor I'll have all the unsorted photos. On the smaller second monitor, I have XYplorer set on 240 x 240 thumbnails. This gives me 3 visible rows of 5 folders. Typically, a sort may involve 100 - 150 folders.

My action is to choose the photos from the 1st monitor and drag & drop them into the appropriate folder on the second monitor. I can do this very rapidly.

Now here's the problem: As I drag the photos - if I "hit" the second monitor in the top two thirds of the first row of folders or the bottom two thirds of last row of folders, the screen scrolls up or down at warp speed. Can't see how it could be useful for anything (except getting to the top or bottom of the directory really really fast).

This necessitates dragging the photos to the middle row and moving up or down to the correct folder (but only slightly cause if I got too far up or down the screen takes off). This has slowed me down considerably. What used to take me about an hour now takes from 1.5 to 2 hours.

I used to use windows explorer to do this but I now have windows 7 and the latest version of explorer is pretty useless for my needs - hence the hunt for a replacement. XY is almost perfect except for this scrolling problem. I cannot find any configuration setting that effects this.

All help and suggestions is greatly appreciated!

Thanx!!

[SkyFrontier]

Hi and welcome, Vyzer!
Few suggestions/observations:
-are you trying to use XYplorer as you probably use WinExplorer, right? I mean - did you know you could enable two panes (menu Panes > Dual Pane, keyboard shortcut F10)? Then, you probably may want to also enable Horizontal Panes (menu Panes > Dual Pane, keyboard shortcut CTRL+F10).

-Tools > Customize List > Sticky Selection will certainly help you. With that mode enabled, you can scroll your pictures and select/unselect then without fear of losing your selection. Don't mind in holding any keys and release then accidentally, having to start all the selection process again. Just be sure that, as soon as you move your selected files to the destination folder (I use the pane 2/bottom for that), you will need to check that XY hasn't auto-selected any file for next selection. Just click on the selected file to unselect it and start your new batch of files.

-regarding your dual monitor setup, I can't reproduce it as my video cards need to be replaced, and the one I'm using doesn't support dual monitors. Sorry for that but keep an eye over here now and then - soon you may got the perfect answer, probably a solution provided directly from Donald Lessau, XYplorer's author (site admin).

Good luck - XY can be of a valuable help for you!

[vyzer]

Thanks SkyFrontier! I'm ALWAYS looking for new ways to make things more effiecient -- I have played with a lot of the features XY to see if I could put them to good use.

Hadn't noticed the sticky selection before - that can certainly come in handy. I didn't mention that I actually use ACDSee on my main monitor (for various reasons - it has a lot of features that I need that is not in XY). I can actually use 2 instances of ACDSee to accomplish what I do but there are some related issues with that too. As I said - XY is almost perfect for my needs except that the scrolling issue is driving me batty!

[admin]

I use two monitors. On my main monitor I'll have all the unsorted photos. On the smaller second monitor, I have XYplorer set on 240 x 240 thumbnails. This gives me 3 visible rows of 5 folders. Typically, a sort may involve 100 - 150 folders.

My action is to choose the photos from the 1st monitor and drag & drop them into the appropriate folder on the second monitor. I can do this very rapidly.

Now here's the problem: As I drag the photos - if I "hit" the second monitor in the top two thirds of the first row of folders or the bottom two thirds of last row of folders, the screen scrolls up or down at warp speed. Can't see how it could be useful for anything (except getting to the top or bottom of the directory really really fast).

Hi,

I think this is standard behavior for drag an drop, isn't it. I internally call it "Hot Scroll" -- not sure what's the official term for it. Without it you could not drop to items outside the current view port.

However, you are right that it sets on far too early! I never really checked this feature on large thumbnails, and I agree it's nonsense to trigger the hot scroll on the top two thirds of the first row of folders if that row is 240 pixels high. I will change the hot scroll area to an absolute pixel value somewhere around (top/bottom) 16 pixels for thumbnail views.

[j_c_hallgren]

I will change the hot scroll area to an absolute pixel value somewhere around (top/bottom) 16 pixels for thumbnail views.

Not affecting me with this, but just a wondering thought: Could the hot scroll area be divided in two parts? Where the area closest to outer bounds be scrolled at a higher speed than when in the other area?
So you could slow scroll to move up a bit or warp scroll to move up a lot.

[vyzer]

Thanks so much for giving this issue attention!

Hot scrolling is a great feature. There are actually 2 issues here - the large trigger area and the speed that it scrolls. It's the rapid speed which makes its use questionable (for me at least). Try as I may, I can't move my hand fast enough to control the scroll to just move up or down one line or even one screen. Best I could do is about 2 screens. Is there any way make the spped configurable with a setting?

[admin]

Thanks so much for giving this issue attention!

Hot scrolling is a great feature. There are actually 2 issues here - the large trigger area and the speed that it scrolls. It's the rapid speed which makes its use questionable (for me at least). Try as I may, I can't move my hand fast enough to control the scroll to just move up or down one line or even one screen. Best I could do is about 2 screens. Is there any way make the spped configurable with a setting?

I think I've handled it nicely. Here's a preview of tomorrow's change log:

Code: Select all

    * List: The vertical Hot Scroll Zone (the zone where dragging-over 
      scrolls the list up or down) is now at most 8 pixels high on top 
      and bottom of the list. Further, in a list with a smaller number 
      of visible rows the scrolling is now slowed down somewhat.
      BTW, remember that Hot Scrolling in XY only happens in the left 
      third of the list.

[vyzer]

Just want to follow up and say that the changes that were made are perfect for me. I'm now able to use the program with zero complaints and a lot of praise!

Thanks again!!!

[j_c_hallgren]

Just want to follow up and say that the changes that were made are perfect for me. I'm now able to use the program with zero complaints and a lot of praise!

Thanks again!!!

You've now seen how fast things can happen here under the right conditions...hope that helps you decide that XY is the FM for you and worth purchasing...

[vyzer]

But of course!! Have purchased the program a few days ago and am totally satisfied!

[admin]

But of course!! Have purchased the program a few days ago and am totally satisfied!

As a photographer you will also like that one of the next versions will support multi-line captions in thumbnails view.