Feature Request: Auto Favorites, Dynamic or Smart Folders Like Directory Opus

[Jamie Gebon]

I would like to see an implementation of dynamic folders.

See Directory Opus for the concept.

https://www.gpsoft.com.au/help/opus12/index.html#!Documents/Prefs/smartfavorites1.htm
SmartFavorites

The SmartFavorites system attempts to learn which folders you most often use and display them in the Favorites menu automatically. This page lets you configure how this system works. SmartFavorites is based on a points system. A number of points are allocated to certain activities that are performed in folders, and Opus keeps track of the points that individual folders have earned. When a folder's points exceeds a configurable limit it is deemed an important folder, and will appear in the SmartFavorites list.

    Enable SmartFavorites system: You can use this option to turn SmartFavorites off if you don't want to use this function.
    Number of SmartFavorites folders: This is the maximum number of folders that will be displayed in the Favorites menu. Folders will be displayed in order based on their accrued points.
    Folder Activity Point threshold: The number of activity points that a folder must earn before it is considered important.
    Reference table size: The number of folders that Opus will track activity points for - the topmost folders from this table are the ones that will be displayed in the menu.
    Check on startup for folders that no longer exist: When this is turned on, Opus will launch a low-priority background task when it starts to check for folders in the reference table that no longer exist.
    Folder Activity Point configuration: This table lets you configure the points that are awarded to a folder for certain activities. You may want to change these if you personally consider some activities more important than others.

Also see a Total Commander board for a discussion

https://www.ghisler.ch/wiki/index.php?title=Dynamic_Favorite_Folders
I propose an 'Auto Favorites' feature. Basically, every time the user is active in a specific folder (i.e, the pane for that folder is currently active), a counter for that specific folder will advance. Once the user switches to another pane or tab, the counter stops.

The counter is persistent -- next time the user will be in the same folder again, the counter will resume from the last time.

ALSO, once the user stays in a specific folder more than X seconds, that folder's 'visit count' grows by 1 (1 more visit to this folder).

Then, using those two values (visit count + folder counter), it will be possible to assemble quite reliably a dynamic list of 'favorite folders'. With one keystroke, the user could get a list with the 'top 10' (or 20, or whatever) folders in his system.

The list will be sorted from the most to the least 'favorite' folders (from the top 10 or 20), thus applying also Fitt's law (the top folder is easiest to reach).

According to the 80/20 law, this list will be the one of the most useful and popular navigation tools that TC can offer such users -- because it will contain all of their frequent folders, automatically updated all the time.

[Jean Lalonde]

Hi Jamie,

It is funny that you are bringing this now. I currently am working on a pre-beta version with usage monitoring in order to do these kinds of things. I have not looked  at what DOpus and TC are doing in this regard but I'll do it.

For now, I'm in the first stage of collecting QAP usage and Windows most recent items (folders and documents) in a SQLite database and see what kind of usage reports and user suggestions could be extracted from this.

Thanks for your input,

Jean

[Horst]

I see a big problem in that idea.

QAP doesn't know in what folders TC or Opus stays and also not how long.

Only the file managers themselves can messure and store such statistics.

QAP is only used for some favorites and not in massive file managing.

I use a TC plugin named TwinKey which among many other options has a bookmark feature.

This allows to fast set bookmarks to any file and folder and return to them from a list. 

[Jean Lalonde]

Hi Horst,

You are correct. QAP could not monitor duration of folders usage in file manager(s). But with a combination of monitoring Windows Recent items (folders and document) and collecting info about QAP usage, some good data could be used to recommend new favorites or build a dynamic menu with most popular contents. This is a long shot, however...

Jean