XYplorer Beta Club

I've explored Tracker about a year ago, and again this evening.
I love the style (usability/efficiency/design philosopy), but...

Greatest flaw: I cannot find a way to go to \\myServer\somefolder
I cannot believe this isn't possible?? (mapping is no workaround since I have too many shared folders)

Annoying: on mapped network drives, Tracker is noticeably slower than Explorer. When you click on a subfolder, Ex says "Oo.K." - Tracker says "Ooooooo.K". It's just a second, but browsing to a level 7 subfolder requires patience...

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Miscellaneous (Details)

- Size column: I love the "flexible size format", but IMO there's a blank missing between the number and the unit. | 587 KB | is much easier to comprehend than | 587KB |
"587 bytes" is too long for manic screen estate savers like me, should be "587 b".
Similarly, the Age format "15 hours" would require half the space as "15 h"
Would great if such strings were configurable in the .ini file.

- A "Special Files" feature analog to the "Special Folders" would be cool. There are some files that I would like to have under my fingertips, like the hosts file which I have a hard time finding everytime I need it...

- Double-clicking the status bar could toggle the Panel. Much faster than using the menu.

- Single-clicking to open a folder would be nice. You really get used to it...

cu, und Danke für das tool
j

cajhin wrote:Greatest flaw: I cannot find a way to go to \\myServer\somefolder
I cannot believe this isn't possible?? (mapping is no workaround since I have too many shared folders)

You mean myServer is not in the tree at all?

cajhin wrote:Annoying: on mapped network drives, Tracker is noticeably slower than Explorer. When you click on a subfolder, Ex says "Oo.K." - Tracker says "Ooooooo.K". It's just a second, but browsing to a level 7 subfolder requires patience...

Yeah, this has been reported by some users before, the majority however does not seem to have that problem. Inspite of trying hard I was never able to find out the reason. Call it a "known issue".

cajhin wrote:- Size column: I love the "flexible size format", but IMO there's a blank missing between the number and the unit. | 587 KB | is much easier to comprehend than | 587KB |
"587 bytes" is too long for manic screen estate savers like me, should be "587 b".
Similarly, the Age format "15 hours" would require half the space as "15 h"
Would great if such strings were configurable in the .ini file.

I copied the non-blank format from Win95's Explorer. Thanks for reminding me that those times are over: you'll get the blank. "b" for bytes is ok, too. For "hours" I'd rather do "hrs" because "17 h" looks like it's time for tea.
configurable in the .ini file... another day...

cajhin wrote:- A "Special Files" feature analog to the "Special Folders" would be cool. There are some files that I would like to have under my fingertips, like the hosts file which I have a hard time finding everytime I need it...

You mean "Favorite Files": that has been asked for before... I'm collecting votes...

cajhin wrote:- Double-clicking the status bar could toggle the Panel. Much faster than using the menu.

F12!?

cajhin wrote:- Single-clicking to open a folder would be nice. You really get used to it...

You shouldn't have started that habit

Donald

Ok, that was *not* a quick reply...

Another year has passed, and I just gave Tracker another try.
I love the functionality and design style even more; the new tabs are very cool; network speed has improved (still slower than Explorer but I could live with it).

For local activity, I would switch immediately, but...

as a non-paying, non-contributing customer I clamour one week of obsessive network coding!
Seriously, the whole networking stuff, sorry, sucks pretty badly (it seems I'm not alone with that). I've written a couple of Windows networked apps myself, I know that Windows Networking can be a pain - but some things work rather well and reliably, and they aren't that hard to implement.

*** The Problems First ***

[Note: 3 PC home network; Workstation + 24/7 allround server + boot-it-when-I-need-it-fileserver. All running WinXP Pro]

1. 'Go To' doesn't work.
\\server, //server, //192.168.0.1, etc. nada

2. Click on 'My Network Places'. Hangs 40s, like Explorer, but doesn't show anything afterwards, unlike Explorer (hint: I never use My Network Places because it's so slow, I always enter \\server directly. It's only useful in corporate environments IMO)

3. Mapped drives on my 'small home file server' are not shown, because it is offline -> smart. Drives for the '24/7 server' are shown.
Booting the file server -> still not shown -> Not so smart.
Restarting TV3. Nothing. Explorer shows all drives.
Deleting TV3 ini file. Nothing. (the 24/7 is still displayed, but not the file server).
Map drives manually (ugh) -> drives are already mapped -> would have to disconnect and map everything again.... everytime I boot the file server =(
Since TV3 obviously knows the mappings, there should be a way to refresh them


*** What I would really like ***

Replace the Windows default "My Network Places" with a new icon, for example, "Network".
The "My Network Places" functionality might be convenient but it's broken on most of the home networks that I know. Fixing it is much harder than defining a few network nodes manually.

Right-click on 'Network' > "Add Remote PC" > enter "IP=192.168.0.1", "Name=jukebox"
For convenience, offer to enter this into the WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts file (this will make WinXP networking much more reliable IMO).
A new icon labeled 'jukebox' appears under 'Network'.

When I click on it, the shared folders of that PC are shown, as usual.
Hint: my experience is that connecting to "jukebox" is more reliable than connecting to "192.168.0.1" - provided that the hosts file is up to date.

A _really_ neat bonus feature: before connecting to a remote PC for the first time after startup, send a ping first. If the PC is not reachable, you will know immediately, so you don't have to look at a hanging app for ages (I hate it SO much when Explorer does that to me).
I've done the 'ping test' for one of my apps a while ago, it's only a few lines of easy code.

Sorry, that was a rather long post. At least I don't post *that* often ;-)
Aah, Tracker with smooth network capabilities... that would be it.

Enjoy the weekend
(spend it wisely, for example, by doing some network research
Jörn

P.S. The "click on the image preview and drag to scroll" feature is cool. Two proposals:
- dragging down scrolls up; it would be more intuitive if it was the other way around, since I'm not flying an airplane here.
- scrolling should be limited (e.g. don't scroll down/right if the upper left corner is already visible).

admin wrote:

cajhin wrote:- Double-clicking the status bar could toggle the Panel. Much faster than using the menu.

F12!?

actually, the double-click on the statusbar is a pretty good idea I think