blog: all about layouts

[nikos]

here's the comment area for today's blog post found at
http://zabkat.com/blog/window-layouts.htm

[Remoirex]

This is what I need.
Thanx

[Thracx]

Good article. Layouts are an essential took, thanks nikos!


I've been using saved Layouts for different tasks for many years and can hardly imagine how difficult it would be without them.

Default layout is sparse and lightweight, useful for ad-hoc tasks and general browsing. Media layout has custom columns for music files and a preview pane for album art. Image layout changes my normally preferred dual-pane columns into dual-pane rows, because the preview pane is the important piece of real estate here (and this is possibly the only view where a pane is not in details mode and the panes aren't equa-sized!). And then here's layouts for file management or development projects, which mostly serve the purpose to save various combinations of saved folders and appropriate column sets for the given task.

[Kalinka]

Hi there!

I'm encountering the same kind of issue as the user there: when I open x2, it loads the Default layout instead of the one I want.
I saw the recommended solution was to customize the Default layout to my taste and forget about my usual layout, so I'd like to try that before other options... but first, to assess the time it would take me to transfer my stuff over / make sure I don't forget anything, I would like to know: what exactly is included in a layout?

• the panes displayed, their size, their position
• the columns displayed and their width
• the tabs that get reloaded when you open x2 ("browsed folders")
• the toolbars
• and none of the other things I see in the Customize menu - column sets, user commands, folder groups, custom groups, and most importantly, color coding - : all of those are not layout-specific, right?

Did I forget anything?

[nikos]

I believe all your answers can be found in the blog article mentioned further up
layouts include everything nowadays (if you have the latest version)
if you need to save tabs with individual settings each (if they are different) then use the advanced option:
"each folder tab can have different view settings"

/S: command line switch to start xplorer2 with a different layout

[Kalinka]

I did come here from the blog article.
Ok. Coming from 1.8.1.4, I guess I just need to save and re-load the column set and to re-create my toolbars, then.
Thank you.

[johngalt]

here's the comment area for today's blog post found at
http://zabkat.com/blog/window-layouts.htm

Yet another feature that I haven't made use of very much. But knowing how it works, and using Xplorer² as I do, I think I'll start making use of different layouts for different purposes.

Thanks for making the blog about it and getting me thinking about how to use them.

[FrizzleFry]

as nikos mentioned, you can use /S:<layout name> to load x2 with one of the alternate layouts

just edit whatever shortcut you use to start x2 and add the /S option

I do not remember the reason I started using an alternate layout (rather than the default) as my main layout but I have been doing that for years

[Kalinka]

Thanks, FrizzleFry.

[Manyx]

In Windows, I have this shortcut in "start":

(...)Xplorer2\xplorer2_64.exe /M /S:RF1

RF1 is my favorite layout