zabkat support forum

Can anyone explain these colors for the panes, i.e. why do the left and right panes have different color schemes:

Right pane active: white
Left pane active: white except for the Name column which is light gray.

Right pane inactive: darker gray
Left pane inactive: darker gray except for the Name column which is light gray.

v 2.5.0.2

Win 7 Pro 64 bit

The Customise -> Colour Coding rule set is a per-pane setting - in other words, it's not automatically applied to both panes unless the user intentionally sets it for both. It would appear that you have (at some time in the past) set a rule for the Name column, except you only activated it on the left side.

Either activate the left-pane and un-select the Activate Colour Coding checkbox in the above menu dialog (to turn it off altogether), or activate the right pane and select the checkbox, to create a balance.

The colours selected by the user do not automatically "adapt" to the background colour (Tools -> Options -> (Window tab) Inactive Background), so one must be somewhat careful - what works for a "brighter" background colour may not look very nice when applied over an inactive (usually darker) background.

this column coloring is caused by "Hilight primary sort column" option (see TOOLS > OPTIONS menu, WINDOW page)

Ah, yes - that too. I always found those effects confusing, so disabled it years ago. Checking the headers seemed more logical at the time.

nikos wrote:this column coloring is caused by "Hilight primary sort column" option (see TOOLS > OPTIONS menu, WINDOW page)

Thanks. It's definitely that and not the other thing. Part of the confusion is due to some of my folders having saved settings while others don't. Also I don't know if this is possible but maybe some of my saved folder settings don't specify a sort column so I would be seeing a customized column set but not sorting order.

All saved folder settings do normally specify a column by default ("x2SortInfo=" in the desktop.ini) - however, it is possible to have fun screwing things up by removing the current sorting column, then saving the folder settings again - in that case there will be no default column highlighted at all, though it's still done nominally by "Name", just without the highlight (or any "little arrow pointer thingy" in the bar as expected).

I'd like to have the same background colour (grey) for the name column and the rest of the columns for the inactive pane. Where do I find the settings for that?

only if you turn off the "hilite sort column" mode

nikos wrote:only if you turn off the "hilite sort column" mode

That's it. Thanks, should've found that.

nikos wrote:this column coloring is caused by "Hilight primary sort column" option (see TOOLS > OPTIONS menu, WINDOW page)

I would like to have an ability to choose the color of the primary sort column like you can choose the inactive pane's color. Under the current system, if you have the inactive pane set to any mild neutral color, it ends up similar to the active pane's primary sort column so then it's unclear which pane is active. Your other choice is to choose a more distinctive color for the inactive pane but that makes it look like it must be active.

I realize this has been baffling me for years. It seems I can NEVER figure out which pane is active, when Highlight Primary Sort is turned on, except by arrowing up or down to get a file or folder highlighted. I probably do this many dozen times a day!

In the meantime the best workaround is to not use Highlight Primary Sort Column. Then the active/inactive distinction is clear.

another way to clearly see which pane is active is TOOLS > OPTIONS, advanced page, Hilite active pane's titlebar...

nikos wrote:another way to clearly see which pane is active is TOOLS > OPTIONS, advanced page, Hilite active pane's titlebar...

Thanks. This is even better. The dark blue is obvious but not intrusive and it's more intuitive to have the titlebar highlighted because the important thing is that the pane is active rather than the items in it. Otherwise colors within the pane are showing three different pieces of information: which file/folder is active, which pane is active, and the sort column.