XYplorer Beta Club

I recently switched back from Narrow Tree mode to Full one. I just felt that things were being squeezed a bit too much and it also helped that I have lots of room in my List pane because of only a handful of columns present. However, not having a narrow tree means that when expanding nodes the tree grows wider and since I have lots of room on the right of my XY, I was wondering if, through tweak or a menu option, it would be possible to implement auto width adjustment for the tree so that divider between panes would move according to the width of the deepest node of the tree. This option would be similar to "Autosize Columns" in View->List Style. I would be much obliged

Hummm...I don't use Narrow Tree and my tree area is only about 2 inches wide as I'm on a 14" laptop and need most of the screen for details columns which means my tree is minimal...I've never had any issues with it even when I'm down about 8+ levels....not saying that others may not share your idea, but I have to be honest and would say you may not get much "traction" on this idea.

So...Is it really that hard to drag the divider when needed?

j_c_hallgren wrote:Hummm...I don't use Narrow Tree and my tree area is only about 2 inches wide as I'm on a 14" laptop and need most of the screen for details columns which means my tree is minimal...I've never had any issues with it even when I'm down about 8+ levels....not saying that others may not share your idea, but I have to be honest and would say you may not get much "traction" on this idea.

Well, I happen to give lots of my folders long names (20+ chars) so they do tend to add up as far as width is concerned.

j_c_hallgren wrote:So...Is it really that hard to drag the divider when needed?

It's less about having to drag the divider but more about improving behaviour of the tree. This is where I like a certain feature of Vista's Windows Explorer: its sensitivity to the position of the mouse when browsing the tree. The result? Absence of horizontal scroll bar and therefore almost no need to ever move a divider. For example, say you opened up a tree and somewhere down its levels there is a folder that stretches the width of the tree pane past the divider. What does XY do? It creates a horizontal scroll bar that you can manually move to see that folder's complete name. What does Vista's WE do? It doesn't create a scroll bar. Instead, it waits for you to click on that folder until it does something. Makes sense since it can't determine whether you actually want to go into that folder, you just opened a node of a tree which that folder is part of. When you click on that folder it shifts the tree view to the left so that folder's above-level folder is lined up against the left hand edge of the tree and you get the maximum view of the folder you're after (divider can still restrict the view). What if you want to go back to the top level folder? Simply move your mouse towards it and the tree will shift to the right so that top level folder will come into view and you'll be able to select it. It's a bit tricky to describe such behaviour in words, perhaps someone else can do a better job or you can find a Vista computer to see for yourself. Granted, it's not for everybody, but I cannot help but think that making a tree more responsive to its content and your browsing habits is a step towards making it better.