A Tiny Suggestion to Reduce Congestion on the Display

JDN · Post by **JDN** » 2004 Dec 13, 13:08

When working with two panes, I find it most convenient to have the following four columns (at a minimum) in each pane:

Name, Attributes, Size, Date

But even with a 19" monitor, I find that I often have to squeeze to fit everything on the screen.

Consider the following two different date formats:

MM/DD/YYYY HH:MM:SS AM vs YY/MM/DD HH:MM

The date is now displayed in the format on the left. It would be nice to have an option to display it in the format on the right. The format on the right only requires 14 chars while the one on the left requires 22 chars. The one on the right uses a 24 hours "military style" time.

This may not seem like much of a reduction, but since the date exists in both panes, it may be worth doing. I would especially like to see the year displayed at the left.

X2 is not to blame because it is not alone in the way it displays dates. Most file managers do it this same way. I have always found it awkward to scan a column of dates when the format is not YY/MM/DD since that makes it easiest to compare dates and understand what they mean. But maybe that is just my personal issue.

I suppose another option could exist to display seconds. But I would not go crazy like some apps (such as word processors) that seem to have developed huge subsystems to allow people to specify dates in hundreds of different formats. If you want to get luxurious about it, it seems to me that YY/MM/DD, DD/MM/YY and MM/DD/YY provide plenty of choice with additional option to suppress the time field or just the seconds portion of the time field.

Personally, I would be happy just to have the single option called "compact date display format".

Post by **nikos** » 2004 Dec 13, 13:21

you can change the way your dates are shown from your control panel (i think regional settings or something)

fgagnon · Post by **fgagnon** » 2004 Dec 13, 13:28

You can set what ever time & date formats you want to have xplorer2 use via the registry keys
szCustomTimeFormat
szCustomDateFormat

At their blank (default) settings, the windoze formats will be used. (*)
For a minimum width, unambiguous display of Time & Date. I use
HH:mm
and
yyyy-MM-dd
respectively.
{note: HH for hours is upercase to get 24-hour format}
{also: other numbers are specified at two digits for consistent width display using zero-fill of initial digit as required.}

(*) As nikos alluded, above,
To set date & time for whole system use "Control panel":
Regional and language options | Regional Options | [Customize]
and then set what you want for Numbers, Currency, Time, Date
on the respective 'tabs'.

PS --- REMINDER: Be sure to close all instances of xplorer2 before making registry changes; otherwise, when x2 closes, the intended new settings will be overwritten with the ones being used in the last open instance. (Unless you have opted to NOT "Save program state on exit" {In Tools | Options... | General}

[corrected spelling, expanded details, for reference.
2nd Ed, 2005-Jan-27: Added CLOSE ALL X2 instances reminder]

JDN · Post by **JDN** » 2004 Dec 13, 13:29

Nikos & FGagnon,

How utterly terrific! I had never seen those options before. That takes care of that problem.

Thank you very much.