Submitted by frumsapus on Sun, 11/09/2008 - 14:36.
First of all, thanks for this neat program. It’s been quite a help during my thesis work for having access to multiple folders at a time.
I have used tabbyFile for a couple of weeks now and I’d like to give some feedback to maybe help you improve it. I do think that your program offers some fancy ways of mouse control, but keyboard usage still seems kind of beta-ish. I admit that I’m a keyboard maniac and I have already configured tabbyFile to suit my hotkey preferences, but I think there’s still a lot of potential for improvement.
Here comes my personal bug/wish list:
* It would be nice if the default keyboard shortcuts corresponded a little more to some de-facto standards such as Firefox’s or Windows’ hotkeys w.r.t tabbing (although I admit this is a matter of taste)
* The keyboard shortcuts displayed behind context menu items don’t always correspond to the user-defined ones: For example, I redefined the "Open DOS prompt" action to the F4 key, but in the filebrowser context menu it says F10 behind that item. As a matter of fact, pressing either F10 or F4 causes the DOS prompt to be opened!
* Closing a tab by hotkey does not update the content of the associated pane; i.e., another tab becomes active but with the content of the one that was closed! (similar to the middleclick problem reported in this thread)
* You can’t cycle through tabs backwards (e.g. in Firefox and Windows you can press Ctrl+Tab for forward cycling and Ctrl+Shift+Tab for backwards)
* No keyboard access of "open in new tab" or "open in 2nd browser window" (e.g. via pressing Ctrl+Enter on an item).
* The little triangle indicating sort order by a certain column in detail mode is not shown until sort order is toggled. It would also be nice to apply a slight background shading of the sorted column (like in MS Explorer).
* Selecting multiple files with the keyboard is limited to pressing and holding Shift and navigating with the arrow keys. However, it should also be possible to press and hold Ctrl and then toggling single files with the Spacebar.
* Hotkey for "up one layer" (Backspace) can’t be changed.
* Film Strip and Grid views do not work on my system (WinXP Home).
* The menu bar cannot be reached via Alt (I guess mainly because it is more of a toolbar rather than a menu bar).
* It would be neat if the topmost item got selected automatically in a newly opened dir, as in KDE's Konqueror (you could include an option to switch this behavior off for those not familiar with it).
* Pressing the context-menu key (on a windows keyboard) opens the context menu that normally appears when clicking in empty space, but not the one belonging to the selected file(s)...
* The full current path should be displayed in the path toolbar (has been requested before).
* A folder tree view would also be helpful (has also been mentioned I think).
* When switching to the second pane per hotkey, the focus on the selected files remains in the pane that was previously active.
* Using the hotkey to deactivate the second pane while it is in focus makes it disappear but does not switch the focus to the first pane.
* Hotkey conflicts should be checked when customizing.
* When in explorer bar or filter bar, pressing Tab always switches the focus to the left pane, even when it is not the active one. Pressing Tab again then brings the focus to the right pane, but this is cumbersome.
* Pressing Alt+Enter should display the properties of the selected item(s) (like in MS Explorer).
* A minor aesthetic aspect: There's a frame around the right pane, but not around the left one, why?
* There’s no Cancel button on the settings dialog.
* The full path of the inactive pane is not shown anywhere! This would be helpful for drag-and-dropping. Maybe you could show the full paths on top of each pane (Norton Commander style)
* I find it confusing that both panes share a single tab bar... maybe each pane should have its own tabs. For a beautiful example of tabbing and dual panes, you should check out Notepad++, which is a powerful (open source) text editor.
* When working with two panes, it would be cool to have directory comparison functions such as for archiving...
* Advanced copy/move functions such as "overwrite only newer or modified files" would be great.
* "Smooth scrolling" does not seem to be implemented (?).
* It would be nice if the type of view (list/detail/...) could be changed globally.
* The memory units "gb" and "mb" in the status bar should be capitalized.
* Auto-completion in the path bar does not work with "My Computer" and the like.
* Windows won’t shut down as long as tabbyFile is running (I know this has been reported, but it annoys me big time!).
* General Undo capability would be great (as supported by MS Explorer - for undoing moving of files etc.).
* When in the list of favorite dirs, pressing the up and down keys does move up and down, but opens the corresponding entry in a new tab on each key press...this should definitely not happen until Enter is pressed!
* When I press the two initial letters of a filename, and if there are two files that have these initial letters, tabbyFile jumps to the SECOND one (no matter what the sort order is). In fact, jumping to certain files by pressing just one initial letter does not work reliably either, especially when the sort order is not alphabetic. I don’t know exactly what tabbyFile does here but it’s weird.
* After password entry on a network drive, the folder or drive that was clicked on is not opened (only after manual re-clicking).
* Tab duplication can also lead to funky behavior, but I haven’t been able to reproduce anything in particular.
* The context menu on the quick launch toolbar should allow for creating new shortcuts without drag-n-drop.
* The shortcuts on the quick launch toolbar cannot be rearranged.
* If your mouse has no middle button, there’s no way to access the "Create new..." dialog.
* It would be great to have built-in search capabilities apart from the filtering feature. Especially, support of regular expressions would be nice (as in KDE’s Konqueror).
* One day it would be cool to have absolute folder sizes displayed (like, for example, the program WinDirStat does).
Now, this looks like a pretty long list, but I think tabbyFile has some potential and it’s worth improving. I’m hoping I could be helpful!
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Speed comes with keyboard usage. And I am a keyboard user, mouse only when necessary.
When browsing my file system using tabbyfile, I realized that:
- using only the keyboard, you enter with "enter" key in a directory.
- if that directory ahs only one item, and that this one is a directory, it is impossible to select it using either {down, up, left,right} standard keys
Unfortunately, that makes tabbyfile unusable for me, while still looking promising.
Another question, as keyboard user, when I close tabbyfile, it minimizes as an small icon in taskbar. Using keyboard, it is very difficult to get it back. The standard <Alt+tab> does not work to restore it.
Thierry
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Submitted by SpiderDave on Fri, 03/07/2008 - 04:03.
* To clarify the above close tab bug: It happens to me no matter what method I used to open or close a tab. If I close the active tab, the tab that it switches to has the wrong content (switching to another tab and back fixes it). * Checking for updates from version 1.4.1 didn't work (it said I was using the latest version). * The scrollbar in the explorer box isn't showing up for me. I think it's a conflict with WindowBlinds (disabling virtual themes fixed it).
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What you meant to say was if you right double-click a tab to spawn a new tab, then change the directory of the new tab,then middle click to close it, the first tab then has the contents of the second. Yup, just confirmed it. thanks! That will be one of the things I fix tonight! :)
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First of all, thanks for
First of all, thanks for this neat program. It’s been quite a help during my thesis work for having access to multiple folders at a time.
I have used tabbyFile for a couple of weeks now and I’d like to give some feedback to maybe help you improve it. I do think that your program offers some fancy ways of mouse control, but keyboard usage still seems kind of beta-ish. I admit that I’m a keyboard maniac and I have already configured tabbyFile to suit my hotkey preferences, but I think there’s still a lot of potential for improvement.
Here comes my personal bug/wish list:
* It would be nice if the default keyboard shortcuts corresponded a little more to some de-facto standards such as Firefox’s or Windows’ hotkeys w.r.t tabbing (although I admit this is a matter of taste)
* The keyboard shortcuts displayed behind context menu items don’t always correspond to the user-defined ones: For example, I redefined the "Open DOS prompt" action to the F4 key, but in the filebrowser context menu it says F10 behind that item. As a matter of fact, pressing either F10 or F4 causes the DOS prompt to be opened!
* Closing a tab by hotkey does not update the content of the associated pane; i.e., another tab becomes active but with the content of the one that was closed! (similar to the middleclick problem reported in this thread)
* You can’t cycle through tabs backwards (e.g. in Firefox and Windows you can press Ctrl+Tab for forward cycling and Ctrl+Shift+Tab for backwards)
* No keyboard access of "open in new tab" or "open in 2nd browser window" (e.g. via pressing Ctrl+Enter on an item).
* The little triangle indicating sort order by a certain column in detail mode is not shown until sort order is toggled. It would also be nice to apply a slight background shading of the sorted column (like in MS Explorer).
* Selecting multiple files with the keyboard is limited to pressing and holding Shift and navigating with the arrow keys. However, it should also be possible to press and hold Ctrl and then toggling single files with the Spacebar.
* Hotkey for "up one layer" (Backspace) can’t be changed.
* Film Strip and Grid views do not work on my system (WinXP Home).
* The menu bar cannot be reached via Alt (I guess mainly because it is more of a toolbar rather than a menu bar).
* It would be neat if the topmost item got selected automatically in a newly opened dir, as in KDE's Konqueror (you could include an option to switch this behavior off for those not familiar with it).
* Pressing the context-menu key (on a windows keyboard) opens the context menu that normally appears when clicking in empty space, but not the one belonging to the selected file(s)...
* The full current path should be displayed in the path toolbar (has been requested before).
* A folder tree view would also be helpful (has also been mentioned I think).
* When switching to the second pane per hotkey, the focus on the selected files remains in the pane that was previously active.
* Using the hotkey to deactivate the second pane while it is in focus makes it disappear but does not switch the focus to the first pane.
* Hotkey conflicts should be checked when customizing.
* When in explorer bar or filter bar, pressing Tab always switches the focus to the left pane, even when it is not the active one. Pressing Tab again then brings the focus to the right pane, but this is cumbersome.
* Pressing Alt+Enter should display the properties of the selected item(s) (like in MS Explorer).
* A minor aesthetic aspect: There's a frame around the right pane, but not around the left one, why?
* There’s no Cancel button on the settings dialog.
* The full path of the inactive pane is not shown anywhere! This would be helpful for drag-and-dropping. Maybe you could show the full paths on top of each pane (Norton Commander style)
* I find it confusing that both panes share a single tab bar... maybe each pane should have its own tabs. For a beautiful example of tabbing and dual panes, you should check out Notepad++, which is a powerful (open source) text editor.
* When working with two panes, it would be cool to have directory comparison functions such as for archiving...
* Advanced copy/move functions such as "overwrite only newer or modified files" would be great.
* "Smooth scrolling" does not seem to be implemented (?).
* It would be nice if the type of view (list/detail/...) could be changed globally.
* The memory units "gb" and "mb" in the status bar should be capitalized.
* Auto-completion in the path bar does not work with "My Computer" and the like.
* Windows won’t shut down as long as tabbyFile is running (I know this has been reported, but it annoys me big time!).
* General Undo capability would be great (as supported by MS Explorer - for undoing moving of files etc.).
* When in the list of favorite dirs, pressing the up and down keys does move up and down, but opens the corresponding entry in a new tab on each key press...this should definitely not happen until Enter is pressed!
* When I press the two initial letters of a filename, and if there are two files that have these initial letters, tabbyFile jumps to the SECOND one (no matter what the sort order is). In fact, jumping to certain files by pressing just one initial letter does not work reliably either, especially when the sort order is not alphabetic. I don’t know exactly what tabbyFile does here but it’s weird.
* After password entry on a network drive, the folder or drive that was clicked on is not opened (only after manual re-clicking).
* Tab duplication can also lead to funky behavior, but I haven’t been able to reproduce anything in particular.
* The context menu on the quick launch toolbar should allow for creating new shortcuts without drag-n-drop.
* The shortcuts on the quick launch toolbar cannot be rearranged.
* If your mouse has no middle button, there’s no way to access the "Create new..." dialog.
* It would be great to have built-in search capabilities apart from the filtering feature. Especially, support of regular expressions would be nice (as in KDE’s Konqueror).
* One day it would be cool to have absolute folder sizes displayed (like, for example, the program WinDirStat does).
Now, this looks like a pretty long list, but I think tabbyFile has some potential and it’s worth improving. I’m hoping I could be helpful!
I have a weird bug in browsing with groups
Page Fault
Hi ,
Your Explorer is a good alternate file explorer.
I just noticed that the page faults ( > 900,000k) increases rapidly when the program opened for so long.
bug when only one dir in one dir
Hello,
Speed comes with keyboard usage. And I am a keyboard user, mouse only when necessary.
When browsing my file system using tabbyfile, I realized that:
- using only the keyboard, you enter with "enter" key in a directory.
- if that directory ahs only one item, and that this one is a directory, it is impossible to select it using either {down, up, left,right} standard keys
Unfortunately, that makes tabbyfile unusable for me, while still looking promising.
Another question, as keyboard user, when I close tabbyfile, it minimizes as an small icon in taskbar. Using keyboard, it is very difficult to get it back. The standard <Alt+tab> does not work to restore it.
Thierry
* To clarify the above close
* To clarify the above close tab bug: It happens to me no matter what method I used to open or close a tab. If I close the active tab, the tab that it switches to has the wrong content (switching to another tab and back fixes it).
* Checking for updates from version 1.4.1 didn't work (it said I was using the latest version).
* The scrollbar in the explorer box isn't showing up for me. I think it's a conflict with WindowBlinds (disabling virtual themes fixed it).
No need to change the
No need to change the directory of the new tab.
Just middle click on a folder so that it opens in a new tab.
Then middle click on the tab that just opened and voila :)
Anyway, you confirmed it, thanks for your work!
Middle click on a folder to
Middle click on a folder to open in a new tab.
Close new tab with middle click.
Tab closes but first tab has content of second tab.
:)
What you meant to say was if
What you meant to say was if you right double-click a tab to spawn a new tab, then change the directory of the new tab,then middle click to close it, the first tab then has the contents of the second. Yup, just confirmed it. thanks! That will be one of the things I fix tonight! :)