Two long-standing, major issues with XY
Posted: 08 Aug 2010 18:11
Hi,
I've been an XY user for around a year now I think, and while there are a lot of really great things about XY, there are two major problems that are making me lean more towards a competing product instead.
1) General instability and unresponsiveness when working with network drives and shares. This is hard to pinpoint, but when I'm at work, I use network drives and shares often, and quite frequently get weird errors, sometimes crashes and unresponsiveness. If I enter a network path that that ends up timing out, the whole application is frozen for up to 20-30 seconds while it attempts to connect. If a directory contains a ton of items that take a long time to load, you're often also locked waiting for the list to load, whereas other products have the ability to abort the loading of the items. I sometimes get a complete crash with an error message in German. Re-activating a tab with a network path that's been unused for a day or two often causes the tab to show "location unavailable" even though it's still very much available, meaning I have to close and reopen a new tab with the same path, which then works fine.
I'm sure it's tough dealing with all the things that can happen with network drives, but the performance of network drives and other remote locations just feels very slow and clunky.
2) Type-ahead search is still not working well. I remember submitting bug reports about this a year ago, but sadly, the problem remains the same in the latest versions (9.3 and 9.4). The problem is this: When you enter a directory with a medium or above amount of files (1000 for example), you can't begin spamming your keys to perform a type-ahead search right away, you have to wait a second or two until the "internal list" has finished loading all the files. You can test this out in Windows Explorer, where you can instantly begin type-ahead searching the milli-second you enter a directory, as it seems to cache your keystrokes and then begin searching as soon as the items begin displaying. Sadly this isn't so in XY, you have to wait a second or two until you can begin type-ahead searching.
The standard directory "C:\Windows\System32" is a good example - try entering it and immediately attempt to type "quartz" (or any other search that will give a result) and see that nothing happens. Strangely, it works fine and instantly when entering the directory again. It appears that XY's cache, or "internal list" as I call it, gets cleared after a certain amount of time, or perhaps as it gets filled up with the cache of other directories' contents?
Maybe it sounds nitpicky, but I do a lot of work with files (which is why I sought an alternative file explorer in the first place), and it's just agonizing to be slowed down when navigating directories.
Those are my two main complaints. I'm a software developer myself, and I know it's not easy to making everything work perfectly, but I feel that these two things are major issues that need to be looked after. Number 2 should be fairly easy to solve, I estimate. I also hope that you don't take this as a flame, but rather as critique that can be used to make the product better. Also, I have paid money for the software after all, so I feel that it's fair that I point out flaws.
Thanks, and I hope to see XY further improved in the future.
I've been an XY user for around a year now I think, and while there are a lot of really great things about XY, there are two major problems that are making me lean more towards a competing product instead.
1) General instability and unresponsiveness when working with network drives and shares. This is hard to pinpoint, but when I'm at work, I use network drives and shares often, and quite frequently get weird errors, sometimes crashes and unresponsiveness. If I enter a network path that that ends up timing out, the whole application is frozen for up to 20-30 seconds while it attempts to connect. If a directory contains a ton of items that take a long time to load, you're often also locked waiting for the list to load, whereas other products have the ability to abort the loading of the items. I sometimes get a complete crash with an error message in German. Re-activating a tab with a network path that's been unused for a day or two often causes the tab to show "location unavailable" even though it's still very much available, meaning I have to close and reopen a new tab with the same path, which then works fine.
I'm sure it's tough dealing with all the things that can happen with network drives, but the performance of network drives and other remote locations just feels very slow and clunky.
2) Type-ahead search is still not working well. I remember submitting bug reports about this a year ago, but sadly, the problem remains the same in the latest versions (9.3 and 9.4). The problem is this: When you enter a directory with a medium or above amount of files (1000 for example), you can't begin spamming your keys to perform a type-ahead search right away, you have to wait a second or two until the "internal list" has finished loading all the files. You can test this out in Windows Explorer, where you can instantly begin type-ahead searching the milli-second you enter a directory, as it seems to cache your keystrokes and then begin searching as soon as the items begin displaying. Sadly this isn't so in XY, you have to wait a second or two until you can begin type-ahead searching.
The standard directory "C:\Windows\System32" is a good example - try entering it and immediately attempt to type "quartz" (or any other search that will give a result) and see that nothing happens. Strangely, it works fine and instantly when entering the directory again. It appears that XY's cache, or "internal list" as I call it, gets cleared after a certain amount of time, or perhaps as it gets filled up with the cache of other directories' contents?
Maybe it sounds nitpicky, but I do a lot of work with files (which is why I sought an alternative file explorer in the first place), and it's just agonizing to be slowed down when navigating directories.
Those are my two main complaints. I'm a software developer myself, and I know it's not easy to making everything work perfectly, but I feel that these two things are major issues that need to be looked after. Number 2 should be fairly easy to solve, I estimate. I also hope that you don't take this as a flame, but rather as critique that can be used to make the product better. Also, I have paid money for the software after all, so I feel that it's fair that I point out flaws.
Thanks, and I hope to see XY further improved in the future.