Overwide frame at the left

[Ross]

Again, no need to say I love X2 blablablá. Love you 2 Nikos. Thanks to x2 my APM has increased a lot. (actions per minute, used in RTS games).
But there is a little inconvenience I'm experiencing I don't know why, here under Windows 8, but also in my notebook running Windows 7:

http://i.imgur.com/69xWN0K.png

As you can see in the image above, I use always the dual pane, tiled vertically (side-by-side), which the dir tree on the left. Everytime I start my computer, at the first time I launch x2 the left (tree) pane will be far fat, compreesing the middle pane. I mean, the frame vertical bar is too to the right. We don't need that treeframe to be that wide. So I manually resize the frame, close x2 and reopen, and everything is fine... until I reboot my PC.
This is important because in my laptop I don't have a mouse; the trackpad has failed, so I have to go all with the keyboard.

My resolution is 1920x1080 in the PC, and 1440x900 on the laptop.

[Kilmatead]

Resize it to what you want, then manually save the settings by using Actions -> Save Settings Now

The only soluble reason your settings would be reset after a reboot is if they were not written properly to the registry upon closing x2 (completely) in the first place. Many things have been known to interfere with this - from sunspots to aliens to caffeine overdoses; personally, I always keep an eye on the aliens myself, as there's just something wrong with a girl who has three eyes and four arms regardless of how appealing her bra-size may be.

[Ross]

Once again, thanks. I think it is the reason: x2 has been crashing sometimes. Windows 8.1 here if I didn't say. Still unstable imo, not saying it's x2's fault.

By the way, that dialog shown in the forum post is grayed out (unavailable) here. Why? It's already set to save the settings upon exit to the registry, but.?

Extra little thing: I can't find the exact command under 'keyboard usage' to assign a hotkey to open the main settings window. Where is it, or is there already a default combo?

[Kilmatead]

Holding <Alt> while hitting L then O will open the options window (in the English version at least - they are just the menu-accelerators; I don't think there is a direct keyboard shortcut, though with a bit of inventive thought a toolbar button could be constructed, but you'd have to have a seriously unhealthy interest in the settings window to go that far).

The "Save on exit" dropdown option is greyed out because only the Ultimate version of x2 can save to an INI file; all other versions are registry-only.

If x2 is consistently crashing on you, next time find the minidump via Help -> Crash Information and email it to Nikos so he can give you a better idea as to exactly what is causing it - even better if you can find a means of reliably reproducing the crash.

[Ross]

No, fortunately it haven't happened in a while now. There isn't a help -> crash information option, the closest is help -> report crash (or something similar, I'm using other language). If I use it, I see in the status bar: "there is no crash report file in this version of the program". I THINK it was related to a HDD hog caused by other hungry programs disputing for the I/O. Then when I was accessing folders quickly using the keyboard, with more than 4 tabs open, I saw it took a while to access the folder, then it got faded to white, then "x2 stopped working".

Interesting thing saving the settings in a .ini file, I'm now considering getting the ultimate version!

edit: still could be a good thing to have a keyboard shortcut for the settings! I understand it's not healthy to be accessing it so often but... Alt+sequences are not very fast..

[nikos]

you can assign a keyboard shortcut to ANY menu command. Customize > Keyboard menu lists all the menus as you see them in your xplorer2 window, so it is easy to find any command in there

[snakebyte]

edit: still could be a good thing to have a keyboard shortcut for the settings! I understand it's not healthy to be accessing it so often but... Alt+sequences are not very fast..

From menu select
Customize > Keyboard... > Category - Actions > Save Settings now > Press new shortcut key :

[snakebyte]

We'll I didn't see Niko's reply before posting mine

[Ross]

Thanks Nikos and snakebyte! By the way, how come I forgot the so basic function to assign hotkeys via the Customize-keyboard menu

[Ross]

NOOOOOOOW I'm 100% sure I'm not crazy. I just opened x2 and....

http://i.imgur.com/5asomOh.jpg

!!
I DID the procedure Kilmatead told me to! So, is this a freak bug?

[nikos]

I've heard about this before but I never was able to reproduce it myself. It could be some of the addons you have, not sure. Anyway instead of running xplorer2 window fully maximized, try to have it "manually" maximized using the edges so that it takes over the full screen (almost). THen hopefully the tree won't outgrow itself?

[Ross]

It is really difficult to manually reproduce. It's the kind of thing that, when you least expect, you launch x2 and there it is the ultrafat treepane. I've tried myself to reproduce the bug but no luck. Thsii is why I can't think about the effectiveness of resizing manually... maybe when I finally discover what triggers that misbehaviour. But resizing by edgedragging is painful.. and most of the time, if you do it fast (being fast at operations is the goal of x2, right?) you'll leave a very narrow stripe of area not being convered by the interface, so clicking at the edge may activate the window behind it or make us miss the upper-right-corner buttons; when regularly maximized, all it takes is a abrupt move to the upper-right edge and click just after, something that takes less than 0,1 second. If ethe window is not exactly maximized, then we'd have to aim at the button... understand me?

[nikos]

ok, if you ever discover the pattern that causes the fault, let me know!

[Ross]

It happened today after I played around with the Windows 8.1 fullscreen apps, resizing the frame, from 50-50% to 25-75%, which left the desktop on one side and a metro app filling the other 50%.
However, I tried to start over, closing x2 and the app, then launching both of them, resizing the frames.... couldn't reproduce it. But I think it's approximately one way of doing it.

[Ross]

I've found ONE way to reproduce the behaviour. This makes me think this is not exactly a bug.

• On Windows 8.1, go to desktop mode, then launch x2.
• Resize the treepane frame to a cosy position.
• Tap the Win button to bring up the start screen then launch a metro app.
• Drag down the metro app window until it's movable, then dock it to the right.
• Adjust the screen to 50-50%, leaving the desktop on the left and the metro app on the right.
• Click once on the left region to make it active. When you do, you'll see the start screen taking all the space.
• Hit Alt+D to bring the desktop to the front.
• Then, from the desktop, activate (maximise) x2's window.
• The left tree-pane frame in x2 will be automatically adjusted to a narrow size in order to fit the 50% of the screen.
• Now, close x2. Remember: all of this should be done with the metro app loaded and visible on the right.
• Using the mouse, resize the middle screen frame to end the 50-50% division, and make the desktop fill 100% of the screen again.
• Launch x2 again, now with the desktop maximized, no metro apps side-by-side.
• Then look at the tree-pane frame. This time, it will be as thin as a needle.

But then I see this is not exactly the same as the main problem. First of all, I don't recall docking metro apps around before seeing the treeframe go fat, plus, the result you get from the steps above is just the opposite. Plus, since the treeframe will stay in that thin form when we close x2, then the program saved its settings prior to the closure. They include "preserving the tree-frame width". Hence, this is not a bug.

Still a mistery the WIDE frame, not the thin one.