XYplorer Beta Club

nas8e9 wrote:

admin wrote:

kiku wrote:

admin wrote:Using generic icons makes a difference, right? So it's the icons.

Yes, definitely the icons and the anti-virus (I cannot change any configuration here):
Use generic icons on, anti-virus on: fast
Use generic icons off, anti-virus on: 1-2 second freeze
Use generic icons on, anti-virus off: super-fast
Use generic icons off, anti-virus off: fast

Windows Explorer displays the icons after listing all the files, so no delay is noticed

XY does the generic icons first as well, but I don't force-refresh the painting (to save a little time and avoid the flicker) so you normally don't see it. The important difference is (probably) that Explorer gets the icons in a background thread. I could do that as well, but I don't give it that importance.

Why is it slow: To get the specific icon the shell has to access (= open) the file, that's where the virus scanner sets in. The devil knows why this does not affect Explorer. Maybe it is excluded (trusted) by default?

Not sure it's a complete answer, but does Windows Explorer's thumbnail cache also include file icons? That would complicate testing, of course (deleting the cache requires logoff or restart).

Also, does XYplorer cache file icons?

The shell caches icons for each process in the process's system image list (tick Configuration | Advanced | Cache specific icons to use this cache for specific icons), and XY caches them as well per file type (= generic icons) to avoid asking the shell.

admin wrote:The shell caches icons for each process in the process's system image list (tick Configuration | Advanced | Cache specific icons to use this cache for specific icons), and XY caches them as well per file type (= generic icons) to avoid asking the shell.

So in terms of being helped by the Windows thumbnail cache, it's a level playing field?

OT, but does your revised signature mean you're taking August off from XYplorer?

nas8e9 wrote:

admin wrote:The shell caches icons for each process in the process's system image list (tick Configuration | Advanced | Cache specific icons to use this cache for specific icons), and XY caches them as well per file type (= generic icons) to avoid asking the shell.

So in terms of being helped by the Windows thumbnail cache, it's a level playing field?

OT, but does your revised signature mean you're taking August off from XYplorer?

I don't know whether the thumbnail cache has icons.

Yes, I try.

admin wrote:

kiku wrote:Windows Explorer displays the icons after listing all the files, so no delay is noticed

XY does the generic icons first as well, but I don't force-refresh the painting (to save a little time and avoid the flicker) so you normally don't see it. The important difference is (probably) that Explorer gets the icons in a background thread. I could do that as well, but I don't give it that importance.

Why is it slow: To get the specific icon the shell has to access (= open) the file, that's where the virus scanner sets in. The devil knows why this does not affect Explorer. Maybe it is excluded (trusted) by default?

I ran into this today while using the mouse-wheel to scroll a large folder containing both executables and other files, this was slow as molasses in XY.

I tried doing it in DO and I could keep scrolling and the icons followed whenever I stopped. I guess there is really no way to help this other than getting the icons in a background thread.

Edit: Oh and sorry we keep pestering you on your vacation!

Sorry to bump this old thread but it's the most appropriate one I've found.

I keep all my installation programs in one folder (well, one per drive), and as I tend to try out a lot of stuff and keep things for years, this folder gets pretty big (300+ .exes and 300+ .zips is normal). When I try to view a folder like this in XY, it hangs for up to a minute without even showing any content. When it does finally come back to life, scrolling down when the .exes are in view is painfully slow.

I think it's improved a bit with recent versions (caching?) but it's still far from ideal. Explorer works flawlessly without pauses, showing generic icons at first and filling them in as and when it can.

I appreciate this may be a difficult problem to fix, especially if the only answer is some background process, but at present I have to remember to avoid accidentally navigating to these folders and use Explorer instead when I need access to anything in them.

Could a cache folder be used off the XYplorer working directory with icon data?

Which version are you using?

9.90

Zigo wrote:9.90

Strange, 9.90 fixed exactly this. I don't manage to get the slightest delay even in huge folders with lots of EXEs.

It was at work where I've been having the problem. Just tried it at home, and I have to admit it's a big improvement on what it used to be.

Dunno why my work PC struggles then, it's an i7! I'll do some more testing

Zigo wrote:It was at work where I've been having the problem. Just tried it at home, and I have to admit it's a big improvement on what it used to be.

Dunno why my work PC struggles then, it's an i7! I'll do some more testing

My work PC is still slow, even when it's looked at a folder full of exes fairly recently (e.g. in the last couple of days or even a few hours), and I leave the computer on 24/7.

I think it might be McAfee that's causing a problem, it seems to have similar annoying effects on various other software!

I am sorry to report that the latest release is still close to unusable on folders with many executables on my system.

Has the icon retrieval code been moved to a separate thread?

Jibz wrote:I am sorry to report that the latest release is still close to unusable on folders with many executables on my system.

Has the icon retrieval code been moved to a separate thread?

It hasn't, and at the moment the developer is absent to work on XYcopy 2.0. There are a few things that would benefit from being taken out-of-process (XYplorer can't do multi-threading, unfortunately); I'd guess that icon retrieval would top this list *if* the developer would go that way. At the moment, it isn't listed on the roadmap.

Looking back in this thread, I don't know whether you've tried enabling Configuration > Advanced > Cache specific icons, and Use generic icons for super-fast browsing? Also, have you excluded XYplorer.exe and XYcopy.exe from your security software's on-access scanner?

nas8e9 wrote:It hasn't, and at the moment the developer is absent to work on XYcopy 2.0. There are a few things that would benefit from being taken out-of-process (XYplorer can't do multi-threading, unfortunately); I'd guess that icon retrieval would top this list *if* the developer would go that way. At the moment, it isn't listed on the roadmap.

I may be dense here, but why on earth can't XYplorer use threads?

nas8e9 wrote:Looking back in this thread, I don't know whether you've tried enabling Configuration > Advanced > Cache specific icons, and Use generic icons for super-fast browsing? Also, have you excluded XYplorer.exe and XYcopy.exe from your security software's on-access scanner?

Thanks for the suggestions, but I am not interested in using generic icons, and excluding XYplorer does not stop the security software reacting to access to other executables to retrieve their icons (luckily -- imagine if excluding XY meant any executable you ran from it was not checked!).

I realize my computer is slow, which is why I am having lockups of 1-2 seconds on every single executable XY gets the icon from, but I think this should be a priority, because even on faster machines this waiting must introduce some level of 'sluggishness' that needn't be there.

Jibz wrote:

nas8e9 wrote:It hasn't, and at the moment the developer is absent to work on XYcopy 2.0. There are a few things that would benefit from being taken out-of-process (XYplorer can't do multi-threading, unfortunately); I'd guess that icon retrieval would top this list *if* the developer would go that way. At the moment, it isn't listed on the roadmap.

I may be dense here, but why on earth can't XYplorer use threads?

It's a limitation imposed by the programming language used to develop XYplorer. I don't think the developer would start developing something in Visual Basic 6 any more, but moving to a modern language with *working* multi-threading support (VB6 lacks the "working" part) would mean starting from scratch. I don't think that likely right now, even though VB6 is also holding back development of a 64-bit version.

Jibz wrote:

nas8e9 wrote:Looking back in this thread, I don't know whether you've tried enabling Configuration > Advanced > Cache specific icons, and Use generic icons for super-fast browsing? Also, have you excluded XYplorer.exe and XYcopy.exe from your security software's on-access scanner?

Thanks for the suggestions, but I am not interested in using generic icons, and excluding XYplorer does not stop the security software reacting to access to other executables to retrieve their icons (luckily -- imagine if excluding XY meant any executable you ran from it was not checked!).

I realize my computer is slow, which is why I am having lockups of 1-2 seconds on every single executable XY gets the icon from, but I think this should be a priority, because even on faster machines this waiting must introduce some level of 'sluggishness' that needn't be there.

The odd thing is that, per the changelog for 9.90 and the developer's comment further up in this thread, this should be considerably improved. Other than the compromises I listed earlier, I'm not aware of other things you could try. Perhaps others?

While XYplorer's icon retrieval is better than it used to be -- before, I couldn't even get into a folder until it finished getting icons -- it still falls short of Explorer's standard. Having said that, I did notice that once icons are retrieved I do not encounter the same slow down when I return to the same location (within a session).