Dual Pane - Formal Proposal Thread

[Mesh]

It's not the colour, that's easy to change. It's the whole appearance - rounded corners, shaded everything etc... It's just "eye-candy" and serves no useful purpose.

Further, I looked at XY with Windows Themes and I see what Don has done. Try it with 30+ tabs in each pane and see how long it takes to determine which is the active pane compared to a different coloured pane title bar. I use a 1920 x 1200 display - that's a lot of screen to scan!!

I understand. I don't use tabs, myself, so I don't end up in that particular situation. There were several options brought up for how to handle this - none of them were ideal across all situations. If you have any suggestions - either among what has already been brought up, or if you have any new ideas, please feel free to share.

[j_c_hallgren]

If you have any suggestions - either among what has already been brought up, or if you have any new ideas, please feel free to share.

TheQwerty had an idea that he posted at http://www.xyplorer.com/xyfc/viewtopic. ... 079#p33079 based on a colored frame border from another product, and which looks pretty decent to me...

[Mesh]

TheQwerty had an idea that he posted at http://www.xyplorer.com/xyfc/viewtopic. ... 079#p33079 based on a colored frame border from another product, and which looks pretty decent to me...

I can't say I like it, to be honest. I think it would look extremely out of place in XY - rather akin to a fine piece of art circled in crayon.

[admin]

.... I don't use tabs, myself, ...

So there's no indication of in/active pane for you at all. Is that what you call "subtle"?

[j_c_hallgren]

I can't say I like it, to be honest. I think it would look extremely out of place in XY - rather akin to a fine piece of art circled in crayon.

I would see it as a nice gold frame instead! But we all have differing ideas of what looks good, I guess.

[Mesh]

.... I don't use tabs, myself, ...

So there's no indication of in/active pane for you at all. Is that what you call "subtle"?

Perhaps I should clarify - I don't use multiple tabs at all. I can't stand a tabbed system. So only a single tab is open for me. When I have dual panes showing, there's one tab on each pane, and no more - that is enough to give me that orange highlight which shows me which tab is the active one.

[Mesh]

I would see it as a nice gold frame instead! But we all have differing ideas of what looks good, I guess.

All too true.

[graham]

DP has never had any appeal for me and I think this is because I never started with a DP system. As Mesh said he hates multiple tabs - I love them and so we all have different needs and opinions but I suspect these are largely influenced by early experiences.

As to the identification of the active pane in DP - when I first loaded the DP it was a bit baffling as to which pane was active - the tab highlight is, I think, a bit too subtle and from choice I would make the total active pane background a shade different - a very light cool-shaded orange in keeping with XY identity. When swapping panes the background shading would follow and so easy to immediately see which is active.

Now that DP is a reality then it should be accepted (even by the likes of me) and promoted to its best advantage and this means, in my book, subtlety is not a good choice. Now, if DP is the choice of the masses and new sales to happen then DP must be completely obvious and up front - yes have a DP button or menu item shouting DP out loud but don't bury this facility in a window menu even if that is the logical place for it!

[admin]

Now that DP is a reality then it should be accepted (even by the likes of me) and promoted to its best advantage and this means, in my book, subtlety is not a good choice. Now, if DP is the choice of the masses and new sales to happen then DP must be completely obvious and up front - yes have a DP button or menu item shouting DP out loud but don't bury this facility in a window menu even if that is the logical place for it!

I'm not sure yet how many DP specific menu commands we will finally have, but it might be an idea to add a new top menu "Panes" (between Window and Help?) to collect all commands that only make sense when you have 2 panes open. Does this make sense?

[Mesh]

As to the identification of the active pane in DP - when I first loaded the DP it was a bit baffling as to which pane was active - the tab highlight is, I think, a bit too subtle and from choice I would make the total active pane background a shade different - a very light cool-shaded orange in keeping with XY identity. When swapping panes the background shading would follow and so easy to immediately see which is active.

I've used systems that do this, and I absolutely can't stand it. As you shift which pane is active, the changing background colors make it seem like you're about to have an epileptic seizure.

The best way I've seen it done before was PowerDesk - where each pane has a header bar with the full path that the pane is currently set to. The header bars would change color (or gray shading, really) to indicate which was the active pane. The problem, when it comes to XY, is that because it uses tabs, adding a header bar would take up too much real estate.

However, I have an idea, which I'll draw up a mock screen for, and see how people like it.

[Mesh]

I'm not sure yet how many DP specific menu commands we will finally have, but it might be an idea to add a new top menu "Panes" (between Window and Help?) to collect all commands that only make sense when you have 2 panes open. Does this make sense?

I'm not sure how well that would work. It depends very strongly on what commands will be available. I don't know if it would be better to give it its own menu, like this, or distribute the commands where they would normally go.

If you did go this route, I must say that the menu header "Panes" doesn't quite fit right. Also, I would put it before the "Window" pull down menu, not after.

[Mesh]

Okay, what do people think of this method of highlighting the active pane - in addition to the tab highlight that is already being used, this mockup shows a 2 pixel line under the tabs.

[admin]

I'm not sure yet how many DP specific menu commands we will finally have, but it might be an idea to add a new top menu "Panes" (between Window and Help?) to collect all commands that only make sense when you have 2 panes open. Does this make sense?

I'm not sure how well that would work. It depends very strongly on what commands will be available. I don't know if it would be better to give it its own menu, like this, or distribute the commands where they would normally go.

If you did go this route, I must say that the menu header "Panes" doesn't quite fit right. Also, I would put it before the "Window" pull down menu, not after.

Another advantage would be that users who don't use DP would not have all the disabled commands in the normal menus.

Okay, "Panes" is not optimal but it should be one short word (no spaces) -- got a better one anybody?

Maybe, it's a good moment to quickly list the commands that should be there. Off my head and in wild order:
Focus other pane
Copy to (also from?) other pane
Move to (also from?) other pane
Synchronize Panes
Synchronized Scrolling (checkbox/toggle)
Apply list settings from other pane
Swap Panes (how big is the demand for this?)
Refresh both Panes

[admin]

Okay, what do people think of this method of highlighting the active pane - in addition to the tab highlight that is already being used, this mockup shows a 2 pixel line under the tabs.

Not bad. I would not have the line under the selected tab header though.

[Mesh]

Not bad. I would not have the line under the selected tab header though.

I'm not sure I follow - do you mean under the active tab itself? If so, that would yield ugly and inconsistent results when the active tab is not the leftmost one - and especially if the active tab for each pane is in different locations.

Also, if you do like this option and end up moving with it - I would highly recommend making that color editable in the Configuration menu.