Total Commander GUI evolutions

[squeller]

I'm very happy with new icon sets like the one of stickynomad.

Most important to me is: Don't never never ever overload TC with bloat. This program is running so smoothly even on the oldest, crappiest clients. Skin support does often mean bloat support.

[trigger]

The great thing about TC is the simplicity. If skins support would be added, the straight forwardness would be lost. I would not use it if it would be implemented.

Peter

[MPS]

skins take up more memory, which i dont need. modernized icons would be nice thou.
fonts - i can configure myself

[petar_b]

I will support In creating a new skin-able GUI for total commander if CG would like. I used Skin in some of my applications and the only thing I takes is about 100-200 kB of code. Skins should be an optional feature and a standard skin should be implemented!

There are people who would like bigger buttons, cleaner UI, whatever, either due to convenience or due to disability (short sight, etc), bigger fonts, etc.

Older people like the functionality, but some of them tend to have UI that looks like Windows explorer.

What's wrong with tiny small skins that exist for winrar??? It's so small tool, but with a skin it becomes like born for vista, or xp..

Having skins would solve all those above mentioned problems.

Why not ? This tool is fantastic, but lots of new customers tend to have vista alike circus... so why to push them away, give them skins like : origianl, xp, vista and everyone is happy, you get new customers, and customers get perfect tool with fancy look. It's only a choice !

BTW, if I may ADD to wishlist: I want option to replace windows search (F3) button with search from TC !

[Thunderchild]

Though the thread is a little older already, the topic is still relevant.

Come on, people! You're talking like you're working on a 486 machine with 64 MB RAM!

In a modern world, why, why keep trying to make a program fit on a single disk thereby sacrificing many other features that might have been welcome by many??! As if we have only a few hundred megs on our hard drives. Why keep distributing the software on a diskette, when CDs are being used more and more? (well here I must correct myself - according to a recent interview, Christian is going to distribute new versions on a CD).

It's become (in my opinion) a bad habit of living in bliss. HDs have become so cheap, CPUs so fast that we don't care anymore. Just because the hardware isn't the limiting factor any more for the most parts, we shouldn't abandon the principle of modesty.
Look at it from a new, contemporary perspective: every calculation needs energy. Every useless calculations wastes energy. It's as simple as that. I don't need fancy, 3D-accelerated animations when I alt-tab (or an operating system that requires half a Gig of RAM for itself, for that matter).
Computers are getting faster and faster, but strangely they take the same time to boot (or even more) as they did 10 years ago.

There are people who would like bigger buttons, cleaner UI, whatever, either due to convenience or due to disability (short sight, etc), bigger fonts, etc.

In that case they would want it system-wide. And to that respect Windows hasn't really been a shining beacon anyways.

Older people like the functionality, but some of them tend to have UI that looks like Windows explorer.

Then they should use Exploder. Many advanced or defining functions of TC don't even work with an explorer-like layout, like two single keystrokes to copy a file (F5, Enter). It's a different paradigm.

Having skins would solve all those above mentioned problems.

And create new ones. From non-standard behavior (like keyboard focus or window borders) to security concerns (hello Anti-Virus-Companies, why do all those virus scanners need to be skinned). Just to name one, every once in a while there is discovered a new overflow in some graphics library making it vulnerable to manipulated images.

give them skins like : origianl, xp, vista

Again, if the user wants a skin, he would most likely want it system wide. It's my guess that a considerable number of TC users belong to a group of people that prefer efficiency and a homogeneous environment. Think of the mess both on your screen and in your memory if every one of your tools comes with an own skin engine.

The only thing I might change about TC's default look is the font - using bold sans serif may be a safe thing to do because it's available on _really_ all Windows versions, but it makes TC look like an outdated Win3 app, too.

[Shezed]

It's an old topic, but i would love skin support not that they should be built in but to allow the user to create there own custom skins

[Andem]

The great thing about TC is the simplicity. If skins support would be added, the straight forwardness would be lost. I would not use it if it would be implemented.

Peter

I like the look of it, but Skins would be a nice option. Another idea would be to change the default font style from bold to regular.

[JohnFredC]

IMO skins are not needed, but better control over colors (tree colors specifically) would be welcome.

[Herr Mann]

This topic is almost as old as the Total Commander itself.
An endless story …

the tree view, for example, looks even like the win3.1 file manager !!!

I removed the vertical lines in the Tree

totalcmd.ini (or wincmd.ini)
[colors]
TreeLineColor=-2

It looks better, but I wish the [+] would be replaced by a > like the Windows(7) Explorer

I like the look of it, but Skins would be a nice option.

I think wo don’t need a Skin support, but we need a adaptation/adjustment to the new Windows design. Precisely so that it does not look like Win 3.11

First - i called it up already – replace the Tree arrows.

And one of my favorite themes, the Icons!

Why does the TC not use the Windows Explorer Filetype Icons completely?
Why does the TC use *.icl for a couple of filestypes?
So that for example the packet/compressed Files must use the same Icon.

There are people who would like bigger buttons, cleaner UI, whatever, either due to convenience or due to disability (short sight, etc), bigger fonts, etc.

One further point is the maximum size [32*32] of the icons.
I looks terrible when I use the thumbsview …

[Sob]

... but I wish the [+] would be replaced by a > like the Windows(7) Explorer

It would work great for everyone if TC used system treeview controls, but it seems that all trees in TC are in fact custom-drawn listboxes. I guess there's probably some good reason for that.

But as with most custom-drawn things, almost nowhere it looks correct. It looks bad for you on Win7 with new theme (arrows vs. plus/minus). It looks less bad but still not completely correct on XP or Win7 with classic theme (dotted vs. solid lines, and while I'm nitpicking, the frame around +/- also should not be black ;).

So I'm for improvements too. If it doesn't mean just hardcoded arrows of course.

[ghisler(Author)]

The [+] is actually taken from the current theme(!), it's not drawn by TC itself.

[Lefteous]

2ghisler(Author)
You have to use the following parts and states in order to display the Vista style progressive disclosure elements:

Part: TVP_HOTGLYPH
States: HGLPS_CLOSED, HGLPS_OPENED

[ghisler(Author)]

I see - do you know whether they are available in all themes on Vista and 7?

[Lefteous]

2ghisler(Author)
Well if a theme doesn't support this parts and states its simply buggy

[Sob]

The [+] is actually taken from the current theme(!), it's not drawn by TC itself.

Even when Windows Classic theme is selected? Or when Themes service is stopped? Because otherwise the [+] is themed, but in these two cases it looks different from all other [+]es in system (frame color, black vs. probably clBtnShadow). Just out of curiosity, not that it bothers me too much.