Various Mysteries

[admin]

The main part of what I meant is, that I feel, the icons are too different from each other in terms of general design concept. I can not really feel any continuity in design, which makes it easier to feel confused, but for sure it feels less professional. My idea on improvement in this area would be to reuse the same design, as is used already on the website, also for the toolbar button icons, namely the colored circles/discs with the black/grey simplified items in the center. This ensures a continuity in design concept (even with the website), it is colorful and a little playful, and still leaves enough room for individualizing each button icon. But maybe someone else has a better idea...

Yes, continuity in design is a nice thing to have and feels more professional, but it is very difficult to achieve with an open ever-growing set of functions/icons. Work in progress so to say... However, the scheme of the website icons will not work for the toolbar: too many icons, too small size. It would reduce usability, but usability is more important than continuity in design.

[autocart]

Forgive me, but I don't have the time to reply to it in a detailed way.

That's ok. I don't fully understand why you posted the initial question to the audience, though, in the first place then.

No, it's alright as it is. I had a question and I got answers. Thanks for that! I read everything and digest it. I just don't have the time to get into a discussion or try to explain why I do what I do. I might "reply" later in form of actions...

ok, i understand now, thx for the clarification

[admin]

With .NET the initial myth was that a language based on .NET cannot be strong.

What if I moved XY to .NET?

[Marco]

What if I moved XY to .NET?

Is it an ironic whistle?

[admin]

No, it's the whistle you make when you ask a (probably) forbidden question. But I want answers. The plan is to become the number one file manager in the world. And I think I might need a new tool for this.

[Marco]

Well, for many users XY is a tool which works excellently on low end machines. .NET is bloaty. Sure, your executable becomes smaller but at the expense of having on the host machine the required (heavy) framework. Speaking of which, what if it's not available on the pc you want to run XY on?

[admin]

Yeah sure, that would add a dependency. But XP is going away, especially among my typical customers, and Vista and later come with the needed framework. Also computers are getting faster so the heaviness is decreasing.

[TheQwerty]

I'll just leave this here: http://www.xyplorer.com/xyfc/viewtopic. ... 178#p43178

[admin]

I'll just leave this here: http://www.xyplorer.com/xyfc/viewtopic. ... 178#p43178

That NEVER had no Lifetime License.

[nerdweed]

With Win XP going away and .NET being part of default Windows installations, it can be a good move. Windows and .NET are tightly integrated from Vista onwards and it should only get better.

I trust the framework to be running integrally as part of Windows and that shouldn't make XY bloat.

[Filehero]

What if I moved XY to .NET?

This would be a smart and welcomed move, at least for me.
Yes, the runtime seems to be bigger and there's the myth of slowliness, but frankly in 2013 these are phantom arguments. XP soon is the past - and more and more mobile phones are faster/better/more performant than the low footprint machines Don had/has in mind all the time when optimizing XY (despite him being an addicted code optimizor).

I for one would love to see a real plugin api being introduced to XY as a side effect. Then I really would have reason to learn C#.

Yes, I say: go for it!


Cheers,
Filehero

[Enternal]

Well VB6 is very small and portable. But it too comes with VB6 runtime and .NET is no exception. If you don't want dependency, then you probably want to go with programming languages like C++, Delphi (although the company support is very lacking. don't do it), or the likes. So... .NET is fine I think since Vista and above comes with it by default. I don't know about business and enterprises though... They might have custom settings that does not have .NET.

Also, if you do go for .NET, perhaps go for something low like version 2.0 or 3? Go as low as you can but high enough to get you the features that you want?

I don't know haha. I'm just surprised that you even talked about .NET since you were very strongly against it before but it's true you might need a new tool now. That's why I asked before whether you considered writing XYCopy in a different language so that if you ever decide to convert, you have less work. Going at your pace of adding features, it seems to get harder and harder and harder lol.

[TheQwerty]

Also, if you do go for .NET, perhaps go for something low like version 2.0 or 3? Go as low as you can but high enough to get you the features that you want?

I'd actually suggest giving a lot of consideration to only testing with Microsoft's framework and instead building against Mono, or at least being very diligent in ensuring it compiles with either and runs fine on the Mono runtime.

Not only does that make it easier to go cross-platform but I suspect that it will out-live Microsoft's own implementations.

[admin]

I don't know haha. I'm just surprised that you even talked about .NET since you were very strongly against it before but it's true you might need a new tool now. That's why I asked before whether you considered writing XYCopy in a different language so that if you ever decide to convert, you have less work. Going at your pace of adding features, it seems to get harder and harder and harder lol.

XYCopy will not be necessary anymore since XY will be fully multithreaded.

This transformation (or metamorphosis from Caterpillar to Butterfly) must be the worst nightmare for the competition. The guy who wrote something like XYplorer with a language like Visual Basic turns to a modern language. Oh my god. I almost pity them...

[autocart]

Only thing, please be careful that you don't end up like FreeCommander XE. Its in "beta" status since 2009 I think. It has some new featrues added, but still does not have all the features implemented that the 2009 version has. What I mean is, make sure you have enough energy for the whole transfer and dont underestimate it. XY is too important and too precious for it to get stuck in/as a construction site.

I am sure you are well aware of this and you know what you are doing! I just had to write it once, please forgive me.