XYplorer Beta Club

We know that XYplorer is a powerful file management bit of software providing it's configured and used correctly. What makes it powerful is the amount of customisation that can be done so you can almost get it to the point when it fits you like a new pair of shoes.

The Config window is the best place to tick boxes, type in values and generally make XY like your third leg. However, the terminology of lot of those options may not be clear to lots of people, which is why they may hesitate to tick the box even if it will make their XY experience better.

Therefore, I'm wishing for Don to introduce tooltips for options in config menus. I think hover-over tooltips would be a bit too much but getting them to appear on right-click of a mouse over the respective tickbox or accompanying text and get a jargon-free explanation of what that option does.

Would be great to have something like this...and of course others' opinions too!

The precedent is there for stuff like this, but not within the field of file management that I could find

Very well. That would be around 100 texts to be written and maintained, in addition to the help file, the change log, the website, the forum, the xywiki (jacky does it, luckily!), the xyblog (jc does it luckily!), and the heaps of support emails I have to answer everyday.

The forth coming new Help system should by its very nature ameliorate in large measure any perceived difficulty with Configuration.

Well, there are some Config opts that already have simple tooltips, so adding to them over time would be most sensible...and once written, these shouldn't need to change that much...plus basic text to use may already in Help file entry.

ivan, are there any specific items that might most benefit from this for you as a relatively new user? If you had to pick top 10-15, which would they be? This might give Don a list to begin with, when he has a spare moment, if any.

j_c_hallgren wrote:ivan, are there any specific items that might most benefit from this for you as a relatively new user? If you had to pick top 10-15, which would they be? This might give Don a list to begin with, when he has a spare moment, if any.

I'll think about that while I'm not quite yet very mature in the world that is XY!

Yes, the help file may be great but I'm not sure how many people open it and Config window side by side. We all know the tediousness of putting something together with a manual in one hand a a screwdriver in the other. 2-4 sentences would be plenty per tooltip.

Don: I know you have your hands full, but the more you open up to the community and maybe have some place where we can contribute stuff like that (Wiki-style) and then you can review and integrate into XY the better

Several weeks ago a demo sample of the Help was posted as a PDF. Granted, weighting in at 167 pages it is somewhat intimidating.

But go through it a couple of times with software that allows commenting and annotation and there won't be much you don't know about xyplorer.

aurumdigitus wrote:But go through it a couple of times with software that allows commenting and annotation and there won't be much you don't know about xyplorer.

While going at it with one hand holding the manual and the other on the mouse is an approach that works, I doubt it's something that can be classified as a shortcut to getting the info