XYplorer Beta Club

When active tab changed, the treeview structure is the same.
A more pleasant use is to have a separate treeview for each tab because for me, the interest of having tabs is mainly to have fully separated views.

I also would like to see this.

I wouldn't bet on this wish being fulfilled; it would mean rewriting large parts of core code, and since I personally do not need this feature...

Kind of workaround: you can always open as many TV3 instances as you want and use the taskbar as tab strip. That way you have many many independent trees.

I know it's unlikely to come, I just wanted to add my vote to adding it

I often browse in many directories at the same time (which I usualy to with multiple instances, but I don't really like that solution since it is harder to drag&drop and such). Anyway, I usualy close the parts of the tree that I don't need, which is the part that poses the problem.

best would be of course to add a mode with a tree for each tab, but that's probably even more work than just rewriting the code... (I'm sure there are people who like it the way it is, which probably decreses the chance of the change happening even further)

However, just wanted to let you know there are more people who would like it, though I can really live with it the way it is

bye
Creat

I think I'd like this if it was made, actually I'm sure I would , but truth is I used to really want that, but I'm getting used to it, besides the boxed color in the treeview made it really easier to have an idea of where I am quickly so I can live without....

I'm not sure I get the point of replacing the "master tree" with a limited "tab tree" for each tab -- after all, clicking on a tab in the right window automatically takes the user to that part of the "master tree" in the left window anyway. Restricting the left-window view to a more limited "tab tree" would also have a major downside for me: having the "master tree" always visible makes it easy to quickly access folders for which no tab has been established because I haven't gotten around to it or don't need it.

I therefore vote in favor in maintaining a full tree in the left window.

sklain wrote:I therefore vote in favor in maintaining a full tree in the left window.

Agreed. I also cannot see the advantage of separate tree views for each tab.

A possible improvement would be to maintain the focused folder vertically centred (if possible) in the tree pane. I find it easier to see if it doesn't jump from top to bottom.

sklain: You didn't get my idea...

I'd like to have the same tree that there is now, it should just be a different one for each tab (so if I switch tabs I get the other tree in the same place, not like beside each other or anything like that)

so that I can have for example a tab where I browse my MP3 disk, so I can expand folders there. When I now browse my Visual Studio Projects or something I don't need to have those folders open, and they only irritate me. That's the idea behind it.

It's still supposed to be the same (full) tree, it should just restore the open/closed folder-configuration if you wish (simplest way to implement would be to have just one tree per tab, and only the one from the active tab gets displayed. It would be possible to just manipulate one tree so that it has the same effect but that highly depends on how the tree-control is implemented)

bye
Creat

Gandolf wrote:

sklain wrote:I therefore vote in favor in maintaining a full tree in the left window.

Agreed. I also cannot see the advantage of separate tree views for each tab.

Me neither. I rather see the disadvantages sklain mentioned.

Gandolf wrote:A possible improvement would be to maintain the focused folder vertically centred (if possible) in the tree pane. I find it easier to see if it doesn't jump from top to bottom.

... or to store the vertical position of the focused folder per tab. That would be the farest I'd be willing to go with per-tab trees.

Yes folks, I'm not convinced yet.

admin wrote:

Gandolf wrote:

sklain wrote:I therefore vote in favor in maintaining a full tree in the left window.

Agreed. I also cannot see the advantage of separate tree views for each tab.

Me neither. I rather see the disadvantages sklain mentioned.

If I have 4 tabs open, and each is open to a different drive/folder, the treeview can get very long and messy, making it difficult to find a particular folder. If each tab maintains it's own treeview, I can keep all the nodes collapsed (except the current folder, obviously), making it much, much easier to find another folder I may want to copy files into or drill down into.

It seems to me sklain's disadvantages assumed the treeview would be a limited subset of the computer's drives/folders...if that were the case, I wouldn't want this either. But I think this was not Oswald's intent.

If each tab maintained it's own treeview, my "MP3" tab would have all the nodes collapsed except my mp3 directory...my "Documents" tab would have all the nodes collapsed except my documents directory...my "Pictures" tab would have all the nodes collapsed except my pictures directory, etc. To me this would make life a lot cleaner and easier.

sklain's disadvantages, as I understood it:

(a) often I use one tab for a bunch of folders somehow pertaining to one project a current task of mine. These folders are not necessarily children of the same parent, but pertain to different branches within a larger main branch. To navigate between them I use the tree, not tabs. By the oswald-way I would lose all but one of those folders in the tree when going away and back to the tab.

(b) tree-to-tree-dragging between locations: you need more than one location expanded, and you don't want to re-expand a location that has been expanded before.

(c) for comparative reasons, I often scroll the tree up and down, just to look at folder structures or names.

(d) the tree is my visual history of this session's work places; since we have per-node coloring it's even better.

and

(e) I cannot see the big disadvantage of a common tree. If the tree at some point gets too big or complex for you, simply press Ctrl+F4 to rebuild it to a minimal state.

don

admin wrote:... or to store the vertical position of the focused folder per tab.

Actually, I think that would be better than centring the focused folder, the tree would then look the same on returning to the tab.

But looking at the other side of the issue, the tree does begin to look messy after clicking on a tab or two. I understand why, as Creat mentioned several messages ago (I think the 4th message in this thread)

Anyway, I usualy close the parts of the tree that I don't need, which is the part that poses the problem.

As the tree gets longer and the view gets more complex with the addition of sub-folders, I do the same.

So here's a suggestion that might satisfy both schools of thought (always nice to have your cake and eat it too): what if only the tab-relevant part of the tree appeared against a white background (as as present) whereas the rest of the tree were against a slightly shaded background (light grey, light blue, whatever). That would trick our perception of the tree, making it easier to ignore the messy rest while optically focusing attention on just the tab-relevant portion, while nevertheless retaining the overall tree for easy access.

Would this be desirable and feasible?

sklain wrote:So here's a suggestion that might satisfy both schools of thought (always nice to have your cake and eat it too): what if only the tab-relevant part of the tree appeared against a white background (as as present) whereas the rest of the tree were against a slightly shaded background (light grey, light blue, whatever). That would trick our perception of the tree, making it easier to ignore the messy rest while optically focusing attention on just the tab-relevant portion, while nevertheless retaining the overall tree for easy access.

Would this be desirable and feasible?

Since nobody else seems to have an opinion, here's mine: although I personally don't have orientation problems with large trees, I find the idea interesting at first sight. However, what is "tab-relevant"? Can only be the current folder. So what you suggest is to always highlight the current folder resp. current branch. Is that really desirable? I think the tree is made for navigation mainly, ie for moving from the current to a new location. Now, lowlighting all potential new locations is somewhat anti-dynamic. Or?

Well I personnaly don't think hightling the current folder, or even having it being the only one "opened" in the treeview, would really be a good idea.
To me it would probably be more confusing than anything else, since the treeview would then never "look the same" according to where you are.

I think now with boxed branch per folder we can have some "visual help" to know where we are easilly, so the only per tab setting that could be interresting, but I think it's already been said it wouldn't be done, would be to have remembered which folder in the treeview were opened (expanded) and which were not.
(actually, I'd like to have the panel status being a per-tab thing too... )