Color Coded Tabs

[fredscal]

thomasmahler:

About knowing in which project a tab/directory belongs... Have you noticed that the full path is displayed right above each panel (right below the tabs) ? Ok, it's not as convenient as what you propose, but doesn't it help you getting oriented?

[thomasmahler]

Any updates on this one? IMO this'd make Total Commander so much better and easier to navigate around. It's a visual cue that should be easy to implement and colors just work for the human brain. We're used to differentiate certain things using colors.

@fredscal: Yep, that's what I do. But it just twists your brain AND the problem is that I often work on multiple projects at a time, I often leave the tab to a textures folder from an older project open, cause I know that the client will come back 2 weeks from now and probably want something changed...

So, if I then have 5 tabs that all say 'textures' and I have to click on each and every one of them first to see which one's the right one... that can be pretty darn confusing really quickly. And for simplicities sake, I want the projects folders to be all organized in the same way. So I don't want a folder that's called "Pacman Textures", but just "textures" - That way, I can use my scripts to navigate around in projects and copy/paste stuff. Mucho easier.

ados Idea about assigning the color not based on the folder, but the folder tree is the way to go. So I'd say that V:/Pacman is yellow and V:/Mario is red. If I see a yellow tab named textures and a yellow tab named scenes, I immediately know what those are, just by looking at them.

This'd be my single biggest request for a new Total Commander Version. Hard Drives are getting bigger and bigger and the chance that people become more and more chaotic is really big, so being able to structure things a little more would add a lot for the users.

[ghisler(Author)]

I haven't tried that yet, I'm currently working on a custom path control working similar to the Vista path control.

[Rob Weinstein]

ados Idea about assigning the color not based on the folder, but the folder tree is the way to go. So I'd say that V:/Pacman is yellow and V:/Mario is red. If I see a yellow tab named textures and a yellow tab named scenes, I immediately know what those are, just by looking at them.

It sounds like thomasmahler organizes his projects in much the same way as I organize my FPGA projects. Of all the feature suggestions I've seen over the last few months, this would be the most useful to me on a daily basis.

-Rob

[fenix_productions]

2ghisler(Author)
Do you mean something breadcrumb like?

[ghisler(Author)]

Yes I do, I just can't remember that silly name...

[Lefteous]

silly name

Here you can read why it's called breadcrumb navigation.
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brotkr%C3%BCmelnavigation

[Stitscher]

And long thread concerning "breadcrumb".
http://ghisler.ch/board/viewtopic.php?p=120617#120617

[marekjed]

Color coded tabs, as long as they're optional and configurable, could be a great help.

For those that don't like too many colors (I'm one, I never configure more than 3 pastel colors in syntax coloring schemes, for example), perhaps a sufficient solution would be to display the text on the current tab using bold font, while all other tabs would use regular font.

Or, instead of coloring the whole tab, just draw a thin colored line along the top (like in the default XP theme).

[kalokagathon]

Color coded tabs, as long as they're optional and configurable, could be a great help.

Yes, SUPPORT++.

I might add that we need 2 ways to define colors:

- colors based on parent folder / drive (all child folders same colors, as the game programmer suggested)

- "temp" color for different random folders open temporarily (like for present session only), just to keep track of what they are. Yes, the name does that already, but sometimes I do have to look at the tab contents/path name in panel title to remember what folder it is and its (categorized) contents.

[Stitscher]

I haven't tried that yet, I'm currently working on a custom path control working similar to the Vista path control.

Have you tried it meanwhile?

Stitscher

[ghisler(Author)]

No, I'm currently working on the synchronize functions (adding support for syncrhonizing directories, which is unfortunately very complex).

[Stitscher]

Wow, very good news.
Thanks

[Lefteous]

2ghisler(Author)

I'm currently working on the synchronize functions (adding support for syncrhonizing directories, which is unfortunately very complex)

Do you mean converting to Unicode here?
I thought you already finished synchronze directories?
http://www.ghisler.ch/board/viewtopic.php?p=140007#140007

[ghisler(Author)]

2Lefteous
No, I mean synchronizing of empty directories: Copy empty directories to other panel if they do not exist there, or delete them on the right side in asymmetric mode. This is very tricky especially in the case when the user uses wildcards - in this case, a directory appears empty in the list, but it isn't really empty. Sending the delete command e.g. to RAR for the dir would also delete all the (invisible) files in it. Fortunately I could solve this problem now by storing a special flag for each directory.