Tree/List context colors

[surrender]

A small cosmetic wish:

I have 3 drives and I have set colors for each using the "Highlight folder" and "boxed branch" for easy identification. I love this feature, but what will be more cool is, if the "list background" color changes with the color of different drives (or folders) set in the tree. Preferably having the same color as "boxed branch" would be useful. It will also be useful for people who want to work with tree switched off. Ofcourse its a very trivial thing, but it could make the program more colorful (and useful too). what say??

[admin]

A small cosmetic wish:

I have 3 drives and I have set colors for each using the "Highlight folder" and "boxed branch" for easy identification. I love this feature, but what will be more cool is, if the "list background" color changes with the color of different drives (or folders) set in the tree. Preferably having the same color as "boxed branch" would be useful. It will also be useful for people who want to work with tree switched off. Ofcourse its a very trivial thing, but it could make the program more colorful (and useful too). what say??

Yes, but I see potential conflict with Color Filter, Highlight Focused Row, Grid Colors, Sorted Column Color.... I know it would be your choice, but have you thought of it?

[surrender]

Yes, I thought about it. and you are right about the conflicts with other color options (they can exist even with the present options if not configured properly). But then its upto the users to play around with different colors to suit their tastes. But what I exactly meant was "Match list background with boxed branch" kind of option (checkbox) in the colors tab. Just a suggestion.

[admin]

Yep, made a note.

[TheQwerty]

Do you still have a note of this or was it lost?

I wanted to suggest something similar, really just a way to change the list's Browse Mode background color per tab, but using boxed branch colors would work even better.

The problem I'm having is I'm working with a few directories whose contents at a certain level are indistinguishable, except by their path. So I sometimes catch myself working in the wrong folder because I changed tabs and didn't remember or something similar and I'm awful at checking the path before actually doing things.

If I could change the background color per tab or path I'd have a very large visual reminder of the folder I'm browsing and it would be a huge help in maintaining my workflow.


As for conflicts with the Color filters, there's currently no protection if I decide that the font color and text color in the list's browse mode should be the same, so I think it would be fine to allow conflicts to happen.

[admin]

If I could change the background color per tab or path I'd have a very large visual reminder of the folder I'm browsing and it would be a huge help in maintaining my workflow.

That convinced me. Done!

[TheQwerty]

If I could change the background color per tab or path I'd have a very large visual reminder of the folder I'm browsing and it would be a huge help in maintaining my workflow.

That convinced me. Done!

And it's awesome!

As always great work Don!

[admin]

If I could change the background color per tab or path I'd have a very large visual reminder of the folder I'm browsing and it would be a huge help in maintaining my workflow.

That convinced me. Done!

And it's awesome!

As always great work Don!

Tip: when you have nested boxes, the colors of the deeper boxes will only be right when the boxed paths are sorted (you can sort them in List Management).

[jacky]

Well, I thought that might be cool, turns it's it's pretty awful. Or, I don't like it one bit. Anyways it's not good when using Zebra stripping, a must-have for me, so I'll do fine without this. Plus, it does't work on search results, which would have been really cool...

Ok, you know how this could - at least for me - work much better : if those boxed colors would only be applied on the one "column", the icon before the Name. So not one actual column, but only it's "first part". That way everything still works fine (zebra, highlight, etc) plus you got that visual indicator.
And if this was working on Finding Tabs as well that maybe nice too.

Tip: when you have nested boxes, the colors of the deeper boxes will only be right when the boxed paths are sorted (you can sort them in List Management).

Well, that really sucks. in a "shouldn't this be called a bug" way. I mean, most users may not care that there's a list that may or may not be sorted at any time, they just add/remove/set their colors as they wish.

And this feature now gets HIGHLY misleading, because you can have you List in green, which would stand for the Test path, while you're definitely not there but on the Production path, and it should be red !!
If I were to like this feature, that alone would have me not use it, because it could end up giving me false info !!


BTW, it's weird, as in "uh? does it work or what?" that the List colors aren't updated once the Config window is closed and this option was changed.
Really annoying is that if I disable that feature, the List doesn't get its colors back but keeps the last background (boxed) color set, until I go to another mode and then come back!

[admin]

Well, I thought that might be cool, turns it's it's pretty awful.

Agrrrrreed!

Instant update after config: done.

Nested boxes issue: done -- no sorting nec no more!

Color only a column... ? Dunno (I like it, but won't use the feature anyway) -- other opinions???

[jacky]

Instant update after config: done.

Nested boxes issue: done -- no sorting nec no more!

Damn you're fast!

[TheQwerty]

Well I like it, but it does look a bit off in the details views with zebra stripes and the sorted column.

But I'm confused now on what is meant by just a column of color?
Changing just the background of the icons won't work for me. I use list view so I have tiny icons and I'm using TortoiseSVN's icon overlays so the icons are so busy that a hint of color behind it won't be noticed and would render this all useless. And if it's a custom color column, then it won't be accessible to me at all in the other views.


Let's rethink this though. Perhaps what is need is to not change the colors of the current list interface, but instead to add something to it.

So some suggestions of possible additions to the interface that could have the same purpose:
A colored frame around the list.

A small colored bar ("Boxed Branch Bar"), that would be shown on any of the four sides of the list (user configurable).

Changing the background of the tab might even be enough (plus this would be useful with the iconed tabs).

I'm not sure I'd like it but perhaps even just the address bar's background color would be enough.


I think this might be an instance when you were just too quick in implementing a wish Don. We needed to take these things into consideration.

[j_c_hallgren]

BTW, it's weird, as in "uh? does it work or what?" that the List colors aren't updated once the Config window is closed and this option was changed.
Really annoying is that if I disable that feature, the List doesn't get its colors back but keeps the last background (boxed) color set, until I go to another mode and then come back!

I also noticed that, after activating feature in Config, setting folder to Boxed only modifies the Tree and not the List as I'd expected...and also the reverse, in that un-Boxing the folder leaves List colorized...bug? I would suspect as such.

Let's rethink this though. Perhaps what is need is to not change the colors of the current list interface, but instead to add something to it.

So some suggestions of possible additions to the interface that could have the same purpose:
A colored frame around the list.

A small colored bar ("Boxed Branch Bar"), that would be shown on any of the four sides of the list (user configurable).

Changing the background of the tab might even be enough (plus this would be useful with the iconed tabs).

I'm not sure I'd like it but perhaps even just the address bar's background color would be enough.

I tend to visually ignore the AB, plus some users may have it hidden, so that's kinda out, IMO.

If the tab background could be color-matched, I'd think that would maybe be good choice, as they are most likely always visible.

Or having a narrow vertical colored bar, especially at left side, like prior to line #/name, that would be outside the range of any other zebra/colors in list would maybe be easier than tab backrounds, and would still be very visible...possible width about the same as split line between tree and catalog...I think I would most likely prefer this choice instead of tab background, as it's more flexible and doesn't conflict with tab hdr colors.

I agree this needs some more tweaking to get the ideal solution.

[TheQwerty]

Or having a narrow vertical colored bar, especially at left side, like prior to line #/name, that would be outside the range of any other zebra/colors in list would maybe be easier than tab backrounds, and would still be very visible...possible width about the same as split line between tree and catalog...I think I would most likely prefer this choice instead of tab background, as it's more flexible and doesn't conflict with tab hdr colors.

I agree this needs some more tweaking to get the ideal solution.

That's kind of what I was thinking with the Boxed Branch Bar.
Only I was allowing the user to put it on any edge, and I was thinking more along the lines of the width of a scrollbar or status bar.

I think that might be a very good solution though.

[j_c_hallgren]

Only I was allowing the user to put it on any edge, and I was thinking more along the lines of the width of a scrollbar or status bar.

The advantage of having it vertical might be that we could then maybe treat it as a pseudo-column being somewhat similar to other columns and adjust/set the width ourselves via standard routines, with default being some small value as suggested, as well as having a way to turn it on/off via View>Columns.