TC is a pearl of software, but strangely its default configuration is quite poor in my opinion. Then and again I encounter people working with the initial settings. They use only a small fraction of the benefits because they don't know what is configurable or don't want to spend their time to investigate the possibilities. Even for curious people like me it takes quite a time to streamline TC, in particular the button bar.
That's a pity. I think the customer base of TC could grow considerably if the default configuration was overhauled well. In my opinion one important point would be the introduction of configuration schemes. In particular there could be a native 'Total Commander Scheme', an emulating 'Windows File Explorer Scheme' and perhaps an emulating 'Norton Commander Scheme'. The latter two should be as compatible as possible to the competing products to make newcomers feel at home. Of course the user should be able to define his/her own schemes.
Show TC's beauty & power by default – Config Schemes
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I agree, sometimes I have a hard time convincing people to use TC, because when they download and install it, the very first thing they see is one of the ugliest presentations I have ever seen. So, many times I give them a copy of my configuration, and only then, they agree to start using it.
I know, TC shold be used only by expert users, but with just a small change, ie no bold fonts and better default icons, it would attract a lot of new customers.
I know, TC shold be used only by expert users, but with just a small change, ie no bold fonts and better default icons, it would attract a lot of new customers.
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ghisler(Author)
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My fear is that if I change the default look, I will get a lot of negative support e-mails were people want the old look back - although they could change it themselves! You know, people are getting used to something which they have used for many years...
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pdavit
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First of all TC is not ugly, it has a GUI that sets functionality higher than appeal to kids and users that have never touched a computer!
Changing the configurations does not have a big effect on the aesthetics of TC and it’s not the default settings that makes introduced users to step back but the fact that TC is a totally new approach of file managing in comparison to Explorer, it’s a whole new experience for those users.
It’s up to as to give them a quick introduction to the magic of TC pointing out its strengths and believe me they will follow. I know three friends of mine (by the way two of them females where technophobia is usually present) that know only the basic file operations with TC and after using it for some time they now find Explorer extremely hard to follow and slow.
It’s true that TC’s presentation can be improved but did you ever think what’s the catch in order to achieve that? Well, bigger file size (not so important for most users) but at the same time slower operation. If a GUI improvement can be achieved without a reduced reliability that’s fine by me. But I doubt this is feasible so I’m quite happy with TC as it is now!
IMHO, configuration schemes are not very important…
Here is a captured screenshot of my TC for those who believe it’s ugly! (http://www.angelfire.com/theforce/pdavit/capture.png)
Changing the configurations does not have a big effect on the aesthetics of TC and it’s not the default settings that makes introduced users to step back but the fact that TC is a totally new approach of file managing in comparison to Explorer, it’s a whole new experience for those users.
It’s up to as to give them a quick introduction to the magic of TC pointing out its strengths and believe me they will follow. I know three friends of mine (by the way two of them females where technophobia is usually present) that know only the basic file operations with TC and after using it for some time they now find Explorer extremely hard to follow and slow.
It’s true that TC’s presentation can be improved but did you ever think what’s the catch in order to achieve that? Well, bigger file size (not so important for most users) but at the same time slower operation. If a GUI improvement can be achieved without a reduced reliability that’s fine by me. But I doubt this is feasible so I’m quite happy with TC as it is now!
IMHO, configuration schemes are not very important…
Here is a captured screenshot of my TC for those who believe it’s ugly! (http://www.angelfire.com/theforce/pdavit/capture.png)
"My only reason for still using M$ Window$ as an OS is the existence of Total Commander!"
Christian Ghisler Rules!!!
Christian Ghisler Rules!!!
pdavit wrote: It’s true that TC’s presentation can be improved but did you ever think what’s the catch in order to achieve that? Well, bigger file size (not so important for most users) but at the same time slower operation. If a GUI improvement can be achieved without a reduced reliability that’s fine by me. But I doubt this is feasible so I’m quite happy with TC as it is now!
I think these two sentences are not in the same directionpdavit wrote: Here is a captured screenshot of my TC for those who believe it’s ugly! (http://www.angelfire.com/theforce/pdavit/capture.png)
: look at your screenshot! sure your "skinning" software will slow more that a cleaner and refactored interface in TC. I mean that adding icons to menu, and changing the default icon set to be more attractive does not mean to increase the size of TC and slow it!... your skinning software surely slow it! 
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pdavit
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The skinning software is WindowBlinds which is part of the core of WinXP. There is no such thing as no skins in WinXP. The classic look is a skin of the old classic look of Windows.
If I had another Windows version installed probably TC would have been faster as you say.
If I had another Windows version installed probably TC would have been faster as you say.
"My only reason for still using M$ Window$ as an OS is the existence of Total Commander!"
Christian Ghisler Rules!!!
Christian Ghisler Rules!!!
You are wrong, I think: skins in windows XP are not a collection of images but libraries. I personally verified that the default skin is already a lot slower and more memory consuming that the "old windows like" one.pdavit wrote:The skinning software is WindowBlinds which is part of the core of WinXP. There is no such thing as no skins in WinXP. The classic look is a skin of the old classic look of Windows.
Try it on a P2-350 and 128MB of RAM and you'll see the big difference
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First of all, Window Blinds does not use the same skinning technology that is in XP although MS consulted with Stardock (the makers of WindowBlinds) on how best to implement skins in XP.
It uses a superior technology that allows you to do more than what is normally possible with XP skinning.
Anything before WindowBlinds v3 is much slower than no skinning or default XP skinning.
WindowBlinds v3 through v3.5 performs some functions faster than XP's skinning and some things slower.
However, things are starting to get interesting in the land of Beta. Beta versions of WindowBlinds v4 are being released and it's promising to turn the prospect of skinning on its ear. It's looking like it will do everything faster than XP's skinning technology & may even be a rival for XP Classic's speed and responsiveness.
WB4 is only available through Stardock's Object Desktop currently. Final release is supposed to be in the next couple months.
And to bago, you are 100% correct regarding performance. On a rig like that XP Luna is going to be much slower than classic. Boost that RAM above 256K and you will see Luna's performance become more of an equal for Classic.
On my PC (P3-1GHz w/ 384 MB RAM) XP's Luna is much faster than Win2K's classic look on the same PC.
It uses a superior technology that allows you to do more than what is normally possible with XP skinning.
Anything before WindowBlinds v3 is much slower than no skinning or default XP skinning.
WindowBlinds v3 through v3.5 performs some functions faster than XP's skinning and some things slower.
However, things are starting to get interesting in the land of Beta. Beta versions of WindowBlinds v4 are being released and it's promising to turn the prospect of skinning on its ear. It's looking like it will do everything faster than XP's skinning technology & may even be a rival for XP Classic's speed and responsiveness.
WB4 is only available through Stardock's Object Desktop currently. Final release is supposed to be in the next couple months.
And to bago, you are 100% correct regarding performance. On a rig like that XP Luna is going to be much slower than classic. Boost that RAM above 256K and you will see Luna's performance become more of an equal for Classic.
On my PC (P3-1GHz w/ 384 MB RAM) XP's Luna is much faster than Win2K's classic look on the same PC.
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pdavit
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>bago
>Faster? How should this be possible?
As I said before even the classic look in WinXP is treated by the OS as a skin. It’s like having Media Player v9 with the old look. Even in that case Media Player uses a skin. Now, you can have an add-on skin which simply is more abstemious than the classic one and that is not only visually.
Skins are more complicated than we think sometimes. A skin that has let’s say a top bar coloured blue and a bottom bar yellow can look in the eye more hungry in terms of system resources than one that has both bars grey while practically both are equal.
I personally didn’t observe any slow-down from my skin in use (I have WindowBlinds v3.50a installed) and if you observe more closely you will see no fancy elements. It’s a pretty basic skin. Of course it didn’t improve the performance but let’s hope v4 of WindowBlinds can do what promises!
As I said before, if a GUI improvement on TC can be achieved without a reduced reliability that’s fine by me. Let’s not forget also that technology improves and a double hungry GUI on a double fast CPU can look the same as the previous generation. It seams though that Christian wants to have all users satisfied and doesn’t take the step because users of older operating systems and machines will “suffer”. I do respect that and I do back off.
>Faster? How should this be possible?
As I said before even the classic look in WinXP is treated by the OS as a skin. It’s like having Media Player v9 with the old look. Even in that case Media Player uses a skin. Now, you can have an add-on skin which simply is more abstemious than the classic one and that is not only visually.
Skins are more complicated than we think sometimes. A skin that has let’s say a top bar coloured blue and a bottom bar yellow can look in the eye more hungry in terms of system resources than one that has both bars grey while practically both are equal.
I personally didn’t observe any slow-down from my skin in use (I have WindowBlinds v3.50a installed) and if you observe more closely you will see no fancy elements. It’s a pretty basic skin. Of course it didn’t improve the performance but let’s hope v4 of WindowBlinds can do what promises!
As I said before, if a GUI improvement on TC can be achieved without a reduced reliability that’s fine by me. Let’s not forget also that technology improves and a double hungry GUI on a double fast CPU can look the same as the previous generation. It seams though that Christian wants to have all users satisfied and doesn’t take the step because users of older operating systems and machines will “suffer”. I do respect that and I do back off.
"My only reason for still using M$ Window$ as an OS is the existence of Total Commander!"
Christian Ghisler Rules!!!
Christian Ghisler Rules!!!
Totally agree with lzvk25.lzvk25 wrote:Like i said before, with only getting rid of the default bold fonts and using one of the many icon libraries already made for TC the look would improve a lot without increasing TC's size or code.
When I tried TC(it was Windows Commander then ) the very first time I gave up just because of it's interface. How stupid I were not figured out the power of TC earlier!
AFAIK some people around me don't want to use TC till now only because of its not_so_attractive presentation. It's pity, just for this reason, isn't it?Only a tiny change, as lzvk25 said, with regular fonts instead of default bold fonts and more attractive icons, or several predefined theme options, will make TC more inviting for new comers. This no_coding default change will improve the first impression of TC a lot.
BTW, Christian, IMHO it's unnecessary to worry about the complaint of old TC users, they already know how to change the presentation to fit their own taste.
Genereally it would be a bad idea to post ss' in the forum, it'd take up to much space and make loading slow. So ppl should just upload their ss' to some external server and link to it.
But as was pointed out to me in another thread, this sort of thing was done in the previous forum (although it didn't seem to affect the ss on ghisler.com, hehe).
Anyways... I'm happy with TC as it is, and I tweak it to look like I want, so it doesn't really matter what the ss on the official site looks like. Just would be a pity if ppl were put off by it!
But as was pointed out to me in another thread, this sort of thing was done in the previous forum (although it didn't seem to affect the ss on ghisler.com, hehe).
Anyways... I'm happy with TC as it is, and I tweak it to look like I want, so it doesn't really matter what the ss on the official site looks like. Just would be a pity if ppl were put off by it!
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