XYplorer Beta Club

Imagine if i am working with 3 tabs (I see tabs as folders) and i want to go back and forth (using back and fore buttons) deeper or higher into each tab. Now, the history (from the back and fore button) for each tab is not strictly of its own but interlaced and mixed with other histories of other tabs. I would like to know if it is possible to have history for every tab which one can access using back and fore buttons?? I know history is already limited to 32 right now and having it for every tab would be much beyond that. Just wondering..

As a fellow user, I agree it's an interesting concept...however, I can already (in 20 seconds) see some areas that would make it difficult, if not impossible...

First, how would it be handled for the new List Mgmt function? That would require a whole lot of work..
Second, since tabs can easily come and go, that would seem to present some issues also...history for a tab could be gone almost before it's used.
Third, what about Go->History and similar? I can see problems there too.

So I think there are enough issues that I, as user, can see that would make this difficult...but let's get the "guru of code" to answer also!

The limit of 32 is just because of limited vertical screen space for menus. Otherwise you could have 32,000 history items wihout a problem

History per tab? Don't know. Seems a bit schizo. A shared history has its uses, too.

Only admin can say if its easy or not. But having a common/shared history for all (like we have now) and a separate history for tabs is nicer i thought. Tab history can be short-lived and dies when you close a tab, while the common history stays (if you wish to keep it). And yes, having tab history in 'List Management' or 'Go' might not be suitable. But anyway, will wait and see if others need it too.

surrender wrote:But anyway, will wait and see if others need it too.

I agree with Surrender's suggestion. It may have sense for locked tabs. I.e. you have one tab for music and another for programmes; or one for fixed drive C: and another for connected mobile. I suppose that the histories of every tab will be absolutely different: you would never use entries from the first tab when using the second and visa versa.
BTW Opera have the history for every page separately.
But once again IMHO it have sense only for locked tabs and this feature should be optional (via configuration menu).

Don,
Maybe its just me, but I would find history for every tab very useful apart from the global history we have now. Could you please reconsider this??

I agree with surrender; I too would find a history for every tab very useful. I often finding myself hitting the back button expecting it to go where I was last on this tab, but instead it takes me somewhere totally unrelated because it's a global history list.

surrender wrote:Don,
Maybe its just me, but I would find history for every tab very useful apart from the global history we have now. Could you please reconsider this??

I will (reconsider it).

admin wrote:

surrender wrote:Don,
Maybe its just me, but I would find history for every tab very useful apart from the global history we have now. Could you please reconsider this??

I will (reconsider it).

Thanks.

I'll cast my vote for having a separate history for each tab (PLEASE!)

I very frequently will move around in a tab, and when I hit the "Back" button I expect to go back to the previous directory for that tab, and end up finding myself somewhere else...

Thanks for reconsidering, Don!

andy

Talking coding: here's an interesting way to do it (apart from simply having a separate data array for each tab): simply store the tab ID with each history item. That would allow 2 things:
(a) move around in each tab's own history, and/or
(b) move around in global history while always selecting the original tab (kind of a combined "location & tab history")
And it would save memory compared to having a separate data array for each tab.
Good idea?

I'm just thinking in public... there are other things to do before I come back to this.

Very interesting idea!

The single data array could be very convenient, and, as you say, provide a great deal of flexibility (likely enabling other things we haven't thought of yet)!

The only downside that I can see immediately (also thinking in public) is that it might be a bit slower to process (which should be insignificant), and that it's not quite as clean to remove entries for a tab when that tab goes away... Though even if the tab goes away, you'll likely want to keep those entries in the "global" history anyway... So that's probably a non-issue! (and I suppose there could be an option to remove those entries if desired...)

Again, just thinking out loud here...

Thanks!

andy

How are we planning on displaying the tab-specific history vs. the global history (which I won't use if we get tab-specific history)? Ideally in Justin's world, the back/forward buttons on the toolbar would contain only the history for the active tab. I figure I'll be able to use my mouse's back/forward buttons to navigate through the active tab's history (right?), but we'll probably need something visual, too.

I originally though we could have a cascading History menu in the tab header's right-click menu, but then I remembered that VB5 has this great feature where some menus like to show up on the primary monitor even though the app is on the secondary one. That feature really drives me crazy!!!!!

Ah, so *that* is what's happening with those menus! I've noticed that "feature" and had no idea why it was happening... (and I agree -- it's very frustrating!!!) Since I keep most of my file navigation stuff (including my XY windows) on my second monitor, this is very relevant to me... I'm guessing there's no patch for vb5 to fix this, eh?

I agree with Justin that, IMHO, regardless of how the data is stored internally, the back/fwd toolbar buttons should apply only to the current tab, and that ideally the back/fwd mouse buttons will apply to the current tab's history as well.

I really like the way it works in FireFox -- the history is tab-specific, but opening the history window allows me to see and use any and pages that have been visited, regardless of which window, and they're organized by day and then by site. Perhaps a similar method where they're organized by drive or network path? (though the time/day stuff most likely isn't as useful in this case!)

avsfan wrote:I'm guessing there's no patch for vb5 to fix this, eh?

Nope. IIRC, VB6 fixed the problem, but XY has been kept on VB5 for it's speed.