System drives icons and disk labels in top panel

[PartlyBlue]

System icons per drive (not per device type) and disk labels (or even custom labels set in tc ini).

Maybe it sounds strange to do that kind of customization, but let me explain. Todays HDDs are huge, so often we divide one disk into few partitions. I have one internal disk (divided to 3 paritions), two external disks (with total 8 partitions), one dvdrw, one flash connected from time to time, one crypted volume and connected 3 network drives. You can imagine what looks like my top drive panel (two of them, for left and right panel).

Drive letter naming is not intuitive anymore (globally not only in TC) so it would be great to have such configure options:

1. Show drive letter in top drive panel (check, initially checked to be compilant with standard TC)
2. Show drive label in top drive panel (check, initially off - of course if drive has no label it woluld be convenient to show drive letter even 1. check is off).
3. Show drive icons (check, initially checked like 1.)
4. Use icons from system (it is possible to change disk icon in Windows, it would be great if TC could use them instead of build in / skin defined icons)

My top drive panel today

[hdd_icon] C [hdd_icon] D [hdd_icon] E [hdd_icon] F [hdd_icon] G [cd_icon] H [remov_icon] T [net_icon] V [net_icon] Z [hdd_icon]

My top drive panel "of tomorrow" combinations:

C System D Applications E Games F Music G H Pen8GB T Share1 V Share2 Z Safe
(1. check 2. check 3. uncheck 4. uncheck)

or

[c_icon] System [d_icon] Applications [e_icon] Games [f_icon] Music [g_icon] G [h_icon] Pen8GB [t_icon] Share1 [t_icon] Share2 [z_icon] Safe
(1. uncheck 2. check 3. check 4. check)

What do You think about it?

[MVV]

TC shows labels in tooltips so you can use labels as hints.

Also you may customize hints for drives using [DriveHints] section of wincmd.ini:

Code: Select all

[DriveHints]
C=System
D=Applications
E=Games
...
Z=Safe

Also you may use part of buttonbar to add buttons with any desired icons to go to drives (command for drive button is quite simple - cd X:). In this case you may place theese buttons at the end of bar just after button with command -2 (bar line break) to show buttons in the second row.

[PartlyBlue]

Unfortunately, it does not do the trick. Suggestions have huge drawbacks:
1) hints are shown only if button is hovered by mouse cursor
2) hint is shown with delay of 1-2 seconds (depending on system configuration, I guess)

The advantage of using the TC is transparency and speed of access to information, if something is not a permanent part of the interface in general is not useful.

Is it so difficult to read disks lavels and display them alongside / instead of drive letters?

Icons of drives would be fireworks, so it is not so important, but in the world of approx. 10-15 drives connected to system drive letters are just useless.

[ts4242]

2) hint is shown with delay of 1-2 seconds (depending on system configuration, I guess

You can configure it by adding ToolTipDelay=0 under Configuration section in Wincmd.ini

Where ToolTipDelay is delay in milliseconds (default = 500).

[PartlyBlue]

ts4242 - thank you for hint, but You're missing my point. It's not about hints, they still require hover to show.

Primary TC advantage over Windows Explorer is very fast navigation, hovering disk buttons to see is good (without delay) if you use mouse to click them.

I don't know how about You folks, but double click on Total Commander icon (to run it) is my last action by mouse, I'm using only my eyes (to see what I want) and keyboard (to do it). It is primary goal of double panelled file managers like TC, NC, MC, DC, Krusader and all the other).

Still subject is not solved by existing functionality...

[HolgerK]

What do You think about it?

Customizable Icons per drives sounds nice, but for the rest:
Waste of space and not really intuitive to mix drive letter(s) together with text labels inside a single line.

C: [icon] SYSTEM D: [icon] DATA E: ...

It would be better to arrange this in two lines:
- Upper line with drive letter and icons
- Lower line with drive descriptions.

BTW. I'm primarily using <Alt+F1>/<Alt+F2> to change drives.
You already have drive hints, right to the combo box.

Regards
Holger

[PartlyBlue]

Waste of space and not really intuitive to mix drive letter(s) together with text labels inside a single line.

That sounds reasonable, this solution is not needed for few drives (it would fit there) but it is needed when there is a lot of drives, therefore one line would not be sufficient.

BTW. I'm primarily using <Alt+F1>/<Alt+F2> to change drives.
You already have drive hints, right to the combo box.

I'm using it too, labels are visible with one disadvantage it have to be opened to see labels so you have to: do something - to see something - to do it labels as drive buttons would speed up this to see it - to do it.

Of course all of this makes sense only if TC would read icons/labels from system not form TC ini file, because in ini enforces static icons/labels (maybe it would be expected in some cases) but it should read icons/and labels dynamically (if I plug someone else Pendrive I want to see Pen's label not mine from ini assigned to this drive letter).

Is it possible to achieve this functionality from plugins? I mean is it possible to make it available in TC by plugin?

[petermad]

Of course all of this makes sense only if TC would read icons/labels from system not form TC ini file

TC already does read drive labels (but not icons) from system - if not, it is because you still have entries in the [DriveHints] section - if you do, then delete them.

[Balderstrom]

TC May read drive labels in some cases, but they aren't available where you would expect them to be:
\\My Computer\*.*

They are no where to be found. In this case Windows Explorer respects the setting, Drive Letter before (or after) Drive Label.

[CAP-Team]

It would be nice if Totalcmd would show the drive icons as showed in Explorer. Since you can make your own icons in autorun.ini there, they would also show up in Total Commander.