Some issues on my list

[Diego Neubek]

Hi Milos,

first of all I have to express my admiration for the really great work you did: v3 is simply fantastic and I immediately swapped it for my v2 pro installation!

Here my findings for the current beta after several weeks of using the alpha and now the beta which are rock solid for me (not really much to critize):

• In Windows Dark Mode one has also dark explorer.exe context menues.  In OneCommander the context menu is always bright.
• Using 'Change Alias' for shortcuts in the favorites is not persistent.  After restart OneCommander uses the real folder names again and forgets the alias.
• Not all changes to files are reflected in the file view automatically.  One notable example is using git (or svn) for local versioning of files.  If a file was checked in, the overlay icon changes.  In explorer.exe this is always reflected immediately.  With OneCommander I have to press F5 to refresh the view.  I remember, that there was something like a background watch service in v2 that was capable of doing this.  But often it tended to consume quite a lot of CPU (around 5% or 6% on a rather powerful workstation) so I eventually turned this feature off.  Do not know, whether it is possible to make OneCommander as smart as explorer.exe here.

In v2 the following did not work, but I currently cannot check it in v3:

• Copy and paste did not work using RDP connections to remote workstations in the direction: copy on remote computer, paste was not done in OneCommander.  Starting explorer.exe I could execute the paste locally.

And I have some sort of suggestion for improvement (at least in my eyes):

• OneCommander has variable width Miller-columns.  This is good for displaying the whole path and looks somehow smart.  But in deep folder structure one ends up with very narrow columns showing pratically nothing usable.  Would it be possible to have an option to turn the variable sized columns off and instead have a fixed, configurable width together with a horizontal scroll bar?  This is how the Workspace Manager in NEXTSTEP displayed the Miller-Columns.  In my eyes it is advantageous for faster navigating through deep folder structures.  If I go upwards several layers in OneCommander and click on a folder there, the view changes dramatically and the chosen folder moves to the right significantly so that the mouse needs to follow for further clicking.  This is not easy to manage in a fast way.

Best regards,

Diego

[hugh...@gmail.com]

Hi Diego

For the Miller columns, have you experimented with the last two "Panel Sizes" settings on the Settings > Columns tab? The first one sets a minimum width for the current folder's parent folder column, and the second one sets a minimum width for all the other columns. I've found that they work well together, and although I regularly use folders a long way down the tree so there's a forest of folder columns I don't have any problems navigating through the Miller columns.

Cheers
Hugh Gunz

[Diego Neubek]

Hi Hugh,

I definitely changed the columns settings:-).  And I see what you mean: keep the current folder column width in horizontal layout (that is what I use with the second pane closed by drawing the devider to the right window border) small.  Then the columns are more of even width and going up in the structure does not have so radical effects.  The selected column moves to the right but the effect is less dramatic and the mouse does not have to travel that far to get back to it.

BTW: I have another point for the problem list that I forgot:

• If I connect my (password protected; do not know whether this makes a difference) USB hard disk drive, it is mounted like a fixed disk and the eject function does not appear like for normal USB sticks/ drives.  To eject the disk, the devices taskbar icon cannot be used because OneCommander blocks the disk drive.  To eject the disk, I have to quit OneCommander (in the taskbar), eject the drive with the taskbar devices icon, and restart OneCommander.  Works, but is inconvenient.
  

BR, Diego

[Diego Neubek]

Correction: it is vertical layout...

[Milos Paripovic]

Hi,

Thanks for the feedback!

At this time OC can only call context menu, and it doesn't draw it, so it cannot control how it looks. I would like to be able to have it in the same style as the rest of the program so after the release I will try to make a custom one so that I can control how it looks.

Good catch of the alias issue. List is only saved when item is added/removed/reordered, and I will fix the save on alias change in next version

In the next update I will make the file icon refresh whenever the file is updated. I don't have any software that changes overlay icons and cannot verify if it works so in a few days when I publish new version please test it and let me know if it is fixed. 

The RDP copy/paste should work through context menu, but I will add Ctrl+V also, please check again in new update.

I cannot promise the fixed column width and scrollbar but I will experiment with columns after the official release. I am not 100% happy how the columns work now so I will explore additional ways, but I will try to stay away from horizontal scrollbar as I never liked it how they worked in my short ventures into Mac Finder, but I will try to make it work with deep folder structures and horizontal layout (I call browsers with over/under layout a Horizontal Layout, and the one with fixed vertical pane a Vertical Layout, but will probably have to rename this to avoid confusion). Did you experiment with columns alignment in settings to see if one works better for you?

Yes, the OC has drive monitored for changes so it locks the drive from ejecting, and only shows Eject button on drives that system shows are "Removable". I will try to fix that for the next update, so that eject from system tray is intercepted and monitoring stopped. Please check in the next version if it works as I don't have those kind of USB disks to be able to verify.

I will try to release the update in the next 4-5 days.

Cheers

[Milos Paripovic]

PS:

Diego, I have pushed version 422 which fixes RDP copy/paste, and should stop drives for ejecting from system tray (doesn't work with SD cards as OC cannot intercept these events). It also refreshes file icons when file is changed and should also save aliases. Let me know how this changes work for you

[Diego Neubek]

Hi Milos,

thanks for the quick reply and the immediate fixes!

Please, if you cannot change the appearance of the context menu, ignore my complaint.  I would prefer sticking to the current approach with just one context menu: some OC specific actions on top and the rest beneath.  The v2 approach with two context menues I never really considered to be convincing since some actions were redundant on both and for certain object specific actions one needs the standard explorer context menu (e.g. for the Git command, see below).

For the column topic: I now use smaller column widths on the right.  That makes column movement less drastic.  Still this is somewhat inconvenient if one clicks fast and the column wanders (for this reason I turned off animation).  But I agree: the fixed width and scrollbar approach also has its drawbacks.  For me, fast navigation through folder structures is important, because that is the prime feature of a file manager and where explorer.exe sucks.  And for this mouse movements, need to be avoided.  That is, btw, why the NEXTSTEP scrollbar was on the left and not on the right.  And for that reason I did not like the v2 one-click button on the right.  Visually matchin the one-click button on the right and matching text on the left I found difficult and lead to increased mouse movement (at least for me).

I just mounted my USB hard disk and tested it with v422: unmounting via explorer devices taskbar icon works!  Even though the drive is encrypted and the mount process needs admin rights.

For overlay icons: I heavily use the Git client for Windows in combination with TortoiseGit explorer integration for being able to version files with each of my projects having its own local Git repository in the project folder.  TourtoiseSVN also uses overlay icons.

BR, Diego

[Diego Neubek]

Hi Milos,

I just mounted a VeraCrypt volume for the first time with v3.  These are dismounted in the application itself.  No taskbar option to eject.  Neither in OC or the context menu.  Process explorer lists only OC as claiming the drive.

BR, Diego

[Diego Neubek]

Sorry, I am in a flow and have another observation.  In horizontal mode there is an overlay of command icons and folder name.  This is not really a bug and as far as I remember, v2 had a similar issue:

BR, Diego

[Milos Paripovic]

Did you try floating columns to the left in settings if there is less movement that way. It will behave as finder until the space is filled. 

How is the git working in new version for you? If you want to use overlay icons in Dark theme you need to turn off custom icons in settings.

It has been a long time since I have used VeraCrypt... you just click Dismount or was there a "safe way" to eject? I am not sure what I can do there. OC needs a handle to the drive in order to get changes when file is created/modified/deleted, and if there is no system event to eject, it will just keep monitoring the drive.

I see the overlay of the buttons over the folder name... I'll see what I can do about that for the next version.

[Diego Neubek]

Hi Milos,

sorry for the big delay in answering...

I do not understand what you mean with "floating columns".  Anyway, I ended up deleting my settings and returned to the default column settings and just lowered the values for the "animate expanding time" to make the latter faster.  The only drawback then is, that switching back to a considerably higher level in the folder structure needs some waiting time (until columns are rearranged) plus some mouse movement but for me it is the best compromise.  I guess, my error was not to think about what I was doing in a trial and error fashion changing the settings.  I even confused horizontal and vertical mode.  To sum it up: the problem was sitting in front of the keyboard :-).

Regarding the overlay icons in connection with the Tortoise Git client I do not see a change.  If I save a checked in file the overlay icon changes to "changed" status immediately but it does not change after checkin.  I guess this is a problem of the Tortoise Git explorer integration which just sends this "event" to explorer.exe internally but cannot be detected by OC.

Concerning VeraCrypt: I do not use it often also.  So in fact it is not critical.  But since VeraCrypt is a standalone application, I do not understand why it can make explorer.exe not to block its unmount operation while OC cannot handle it.  Process explorer show these handles for a VeraCrypt volumen mount as drive H:

Otherwise I am totally happy with OC in Beta 451!!!

BR, Diego

[Milos Paripovic]

I added scrollbar option in this update (hidden behind F8 - see the latest post here). You can align columns to the left in Settings>Columns

I'll have to check what Tortoise is doing there. OC refreshes file view and updates icon when there is the change in file and cannot know if other programs are doing with it unless they change it's date or size. For now F5 to refresh is the only way.

[Diego Neubek]

Just installed Beta 467.  Hitting F8 looks cool!