XYplorer Beta Club

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grindax wrote:It would be great if XYplorer supported Windows 7 Libraries, Homegroup, and Favorites, so that they could be browsed and worked with just like in Windows Explorer.

See my reply here: http://www.xyplorer.com/xyfc/viewtopic. ... 588#p37588

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grindax wrote:It would be great if XYplorer supported Windows 7 Libraries, Homegroup, and Favorites,

Hi and welcome to the XY forums!

I think that once Don gets Win 7 installed in near future (as I recall he said he'd do), he may be able to better work with some of the newer features available with it and thus possibly implement some changes if he sees fit to do so...

But also know that Virtual Folders are on roadmap and will be somewhat similar to what I understand Win 7 Libraries are.

j_c_hallgren wrote:

grindax wrote:It would be great if XYplorer supported Windows 7 Libraries, Homegroup, and Favorites,

Hi and welcome to the XY forums!

I think that once Don gets Win 7 installed in near future (as I recall he said he'd do), he may be able to better work with some of the newer features available with it and thus possibly implement some changes if he sees fit to do so...

But also know that Virtual Folders are on roadmap and will be somewhat similar to what I understand Win 7 Libraries are.

Yep, actually MS stole that idea from me and called it Libraries.

Fun and giggles aside, Libraries are actually a really cool feature. They are a great way of consolidating and unifying folders and files. What's even nicer is that they are not just virtual folders, they are backed by their physical location so files can be saved in Libraries and are then transparently put in the correct location in the file structure.

Thinking ahead, Windows 7 is already available and its GA is less than a month away. Once people get hold of it, they'll want to use this feature. Will XY support them natively? Will I need to somehow import them into XY? Will navigation be possible using files' metadata? Will there be an integration with Windows Indexing? I hope that XYplorer will be able to answer "Yes" to all of those

Short version: I basically agree with zer0 (just the Libraries part though), hoping you'll support them as a tree node (suggestion: replacing the My Documents entry, since it will appear below anyway)

Long(ish) version:
Libraries are kind of neat. Amongst all the visual gimmicks this is one of the more basic and functional features Win7 offers.
I kind of hope you reconsider implementing Virtual Folders since it will probably be a lot of work and can (now) be done with just implementing the API to a basically equal feature already provided by Win7.

There are a couple of pro/cons for this though:
PRO: Libraries don't just work in XYplorer (as virtual folders would) but also in the open/save/... dialogs used by all applications that call the Windows API (which is most of them). Also in all applications that support them through the API in case they need more functionality than just those dialogs.
PRO: You only need to spend much less time providing the feature you wanted to provide by just integrating the API for Libraries and use the time saved on something else (hopefully fixing long standing problems like the copy/move dialog on Vista/Server2k8/Win7)
CON: Using the feature would obviously require the user to be running Win7

I would personally consider it a big disadvantage to have to maintain virtual folders and libraries at the same time!

There is of course one more possibility (possibly the best version but also the most work intensive I presume): implementing virtual folders for all platforms but allowing them to use the native Win7 Libraries (if available) and act as a wrapper in those cases. This could also be done in two stages: first implement the wrapper for Win7 to quickly allow that feature with little work and only implement your own virtual folders if users request it (and it becomes clear weather or not most users switch from XP to Win7 who didn't switch to Vista cause it sucks )

Well, those are my 2 cents, let's see how it turns out

Creat wrote:... Libraries are kind of neat. Amongst all the visual gimmicks this is one of the more basic and functional features Win7 offers. ...

Yes, I know. Heard lots of good things about them. I also think that it's trivial to support them, so I don't know what could stop me.

My reply at http://www.xyplorer.com/xyfc/viewtopic. ... 588#p37588 was just meant in a general manner. I would be stupid not to support Win 7 libraries.

But it will have to wait until I have Win 7 here, of course. Which should be soon.

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Independently of the above: XY's VFO's have their PROs as well, e.g. being portable. Of course the use of a portable virtual folder might be not immediately clear (unless you take the contained files along) but there are lots of good uses...
Also, XYplorer's VFOs will be much more than that, especially they will interact with Tags and Comments in a way and speed the world has never seen before.

I did not have the time yet to dig into the W7 Libraries concept. Now I searched a little and found this: "My Documents has been put on steroids with the Library feature. Configure multiple directories for each category and all those files in multiple directories appear in one Explorer window."

That's it? Well, that's nothing compared to XY's VFOs. I just hope I got it wrong or I might think twice about buying Win7.

OK, seriously, what is meant by "category" in the above quote?

admin wrote:OK, seriously, what is meant by "category" in the above quote?

In that case "Category" means name, because they are showing how it can replace the "My ..." folders, which were separated by category.

Essentially instead of the single "My Music" folder you can create a Library named "Music" and have it point to multiple locations where you have your music saved.

In addition you can give the Library a custom icon and define 1 of its locations to be the default save location.
Then when you save a file (via the standard dialog) you can save it to the Library and it will go to that default location.


There's a C# sample for working with libraries available in the Windows API Code Pack, but that probably won't be too useful unless you start linking against .NET.

TheQwerty wrote:

admin wrote:OK, seriously, what is meant by "category" in the above quote?

In that case "Category" means name, because they are showing how it can replace the "My ..." folders, which were separated by category.

Essentially instead of the single "My Music" folder you can create a Library named "Music" and have it point to multiple locations where you have your music saved.

In addition you can give the Library a custom icon and define 1 of its locations to be the default save location.
Then when you save a file (via the standard dialog) you can save it to the Library and it will go to that default location.


There's a C# sample for working with libraries available in the Windows API Code Pack, but that probably won't be too useful unless you start linking against .NET.

Thanks, the confirms my fears.

In the meantime I found some good explanation here:
http://www.sevenforums.com/news/7124-li ... -hood.html

I personally cannot imagine how that concept could suit my work style and data organization in a way that justifies the buzz. The only (and unrevolutionary) purpose I can see is browsing distributed media files in one location -- so it's more or less a saved search for certain file types over multiple directories. Yawn. XY's Catalog can do that ever since (and with much more power) by one-click loading search templates.

admin wrote:I personally cannot imagine how that concept could suit my work style and data organization in a way that justifies the buzz.

I haven't actually used it, but the idea I most like is the default save location.
Then you can define your "Music" library to be:
"\\fileserver\Music" (Your tagged, organized, and backed up collection on the network.)
"M:\New Music" (Untagged stuff.)
And define "M:\New Music" as the default save location.
Then when you rip/download something new you can save it to the library and it will automatically end up in the "New Music" folder, but say you want to play or browse everything, then you can just open "Music" and it will include both.


Or as a computer admin create a library "Desktops":
"C:\Users\admin\Desktop" *Default Save Location.
"C:\Users\All Users\Desktop"
"C:\Users\Guest\Desktop"
"C:\Users\blah\Desktop"
Then you can browse what is on every user's desktop but when you save files to the library it only goes to your own.


I don't think it's really the concept that is growing all the buzz but rather that MS has finally made it easier to define "My Documents" to meet YOUR needs instead of having to jump in line and adhere to their structure.

TheQwerty wrote:I don't think it's really the concept that is growing all the buzz but rather that MS has finally made it easier to define "My Documents" to meet YOUR needs instead of having to jump in line and adhere to their structure.

Remains to be seen whether people really find it "easier" in the end, because while being an improvement it is also a complication of things. Hopefully the training with libraries will educate lots of users into a level of thinking that opens their minds for advanced file managers...

My prediction: MS will have to answer lots of mails born out of library induced user confusion. Not my problem.

I'am using Win7 for about a week now, and after reading this topic I finally decided to look after the MS Libraries...

To say at the beginning, I never used the "MyPictures", "MyMusic", "My..."-folders of MS in the past. I've created my own way of organizing files in my own very tidy directory-structure... (one major thing that bothers me with the MyDocuments was that lots of applications save there data in it which I do not want to have in my lists, other reasons are file-synchronisation and backups)

Because of my very tidy directory-structure every predefined Library gets filled with only one folder - except the stuff which is spread over multiple physical harddisks...
So, do I really need a Library for holding one entry?

While having 3 entries in my "Videos"-Library, the only useful thing the library gives me is a search in all three locations at once...
Instead of searching via WE, I prefer a search via my Eye (or even better with XY's spot-feature) in a alphabetical ordered list, which is way more intuitive for a limited amount of entries.
(...OK, a search would make sense in a music-library for example, but with all music stored in one location, every normal search can do it too )

So what I was expecting from the Libraries were a combined list from all entries of all Libraries.
(which would make it able to sort via filename, and all entries beginning with an "a" from all locations are grouped together)
But here comes the next failure from MS! You can fold and unfold them in one window.
So you have three lists in one window, but not in one list, so I have to check three locations for a named item, which results to the same amount of work.
My effort from MS-Libraries = 0

(see picture below for a better imagination of MS Libraries) Another "nice" bug is that after you selected "Add to Library -> Your Favorite Library" from the context-menu the Library is shown in WE. Repeating this action gets you a second, third, ... window with the Library... checking for open-windows with the same location looks like a hard thing for MS (normal WE behavior is to select the already opened window)

As Don said before grouping things together in one list can be archived through a saved search.
I described how to set up junctions and stuff to get a search containing specified folders from across harddisks in this topic: http://www.xyplorer.com/xyfc/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=3794

In conclusion: MS Library wouldn't give me a lot. OK there is the one thing with the default save-directory, as my "searched" virtual folders are only for viewing...
But when I use different locations for one purpose than there is a sense behind these locations so a general "default" wouldn't make any sense

Since months I put important thinks as locked tabs to my second pane, which makes it my "Libraries"-Pane, normally it's about 1/3 the with of the first pane.
So everybody not used to use dual-pane can do so too without any disadvantages

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