admin wrote:The current plan is to leave the Sync Tools dialog as it is (KISS), and add more functionality to the sync scripting command. Time will show whether any of the additional functionality should be available also through the Sync Tools UI.
Okay then, here's my very long post...
My gripes:
1) As this feature revolves solely around selecting items at the moment, I find it misleading to call it Sync Tools. Sure, these are selection methods that can help a user keep two locations in sync but as it stands it has little to do with syncing.
2) To further show this... Of the 85 words on the dialog: 11 select; 2 selected; 2 sync. That's 15% going to select in one of its tenses. Put another way, the wording could use some work.
3) Stop overloading "OK" with semi-hidden features. Looking at this dialog no user is going to figure out that Ctrl/Shift+OK do something special, and if they do I bet they don't remember what each does.
Opening a new dialog is not as simple as a sub-menu, but refusing to actually put useful items in the dialog is even worse. This is far from KISS!
Given that I suggest:
1) Rename the feature to "Select..." or (keeping with Rename) "Select Special...".
2) We've got much larger problems if your users are too stupid to understand how to use a dialog when it appears, so replace "Select a command and click OK to execute it." with some details about what these functions do: "These functions will modify the selection in the active pane based on items in the inactive pane. They are best used for comparing two locations which have similar content."
3) Add an "Invert" check box and a radio group:
"Selection Method:
() Append
() Remove
() Replace"
I think these are pretty self-explanatory. I'm not partial to this being a radio group; it could be a list-box or even replacing "OK" with "Append," "Remove," "Replace". (Though if you go with adding buttons they should probably be named differently to hopefully give them all unique first-letter access keys.)
4) Give the item list a caption: "Select..." so it doesn't need to be repeated in each item.
5) Drop the two line display for the items, use tooltips to provide explanations. This reduces initial clutter and the amount of mouse traversing needed by the user.
6) Items (Tooltip):
----
Matching (Selects items that appear in the inactive pane.)
Selected (Clones the selection of the inactive pane.)
-
Accessed Most Recently (Selects items which were accessed more recently than their matches in the inactive pane.)
Last Modified (Selects items which were modified more recently than their matches in the inactive pane.)
Youngest (Selects items which were created more recently than their matches in the inactive pane.)
-
Bigger (Selects items which are larger in size than their matches in the inactive pane.)
----
Unique can be done via inverting Matching.
Unique & Newer may save the user a little bit of time, but it's not worth junking up the GUI when it can so easily be achieved through scripting or visiting this dialog twice.
Because of #4 this also means the user can just type the letter of the item they want, so it improves keyboard usage of the entire dialog.
I realize the "Selects items ... in the inactive pane" gets old, and perhaps it could be dropped since the explanation (#2) should make this clear, but since this text only appears when the items are hovered over I feel it's not that bad.
Sorry Don, I feel you really dropped the ball on this feature and it sticks out like a sore thumb with this clunky interface. But it should have been expected that after your vacation it might take a bit to return to full form.
Aha. Is that a common thing that USB-stick files are 1 second younger?