2 minor issues

[WarnerYoung]

I just discovered this great program recently and like it a lot.  I'm considering upgrading to the Pro version, but I've found 2 minor issues that really bug me a lot:

1) If you turn off Full-row select in options, the focus rectangle for the current item in the inactive pane is still always drawn as a full row.  Then, when you change the directory for that pane, you'll sometimes get parts of the focus rectangle left over.  I saw this in a very old version that a friend first sent me, and I still see it in 1.3.0.2.

2) If you have directories that are marked as both Hidden and System, that won't show up correctly in the directory tree in some cases.  Here's how to reproduce: create a directory called "test1", and make it Hidden+System.  Now create a subdirectory in test1 called "test2", and make that Hidden+System, too.  In the directory tree, I can see test1 and click on it.  When I do, I can see test2 show up in the file pane.  Double-clicking this will take me inside test2, but test2 won't be shown in the directory pane.  Standard Windows Explorer handles this case correctly.

Also, Windows Explorer shows hidden or system folders in the file pane using a lighter color, to indicate the hidden/system attribute.  It would be nice if xplorer2 did this as well.

Thank you,
Warner Young

[nikos]

a. there is some slight paint problem but it is something you can tolerate considering the benefit of hilighting the entire row (it is quite useful when you are trying to compare items)

b. it looks like you've spotted a small bug there but it is down to windows, not xplorer2. It could be fixed but at great performance penalty. Since it is such an uncommon situation I am prepared to let it be. BTW my windows explorer (2000) also suffers from this bug

[WarnerYoung]

Hi Nikos,

Thanks for the quick reply.  However...

a. Yes, it's just a slight paint problem, but the problem is I don't like using the full-row highlighting.  I turned it off for a reason.  Also, the focus rectangle paints correctly when the pane is active.  It only paints incorrectly (as a full-row) when inactive.  Whether active or inactive, it should paint the same way (the same routine should be calculating and drawing the focus rect).  Also, I found another bug that may be related to this:

1) Start xplorer2 with full-row highlight and grid lines turned off.
2)Look at inactive pane and make sure the focus rect is painting full-row.  Normally, this is the top item in the file list.  This needs to be a subdirectory, not the root directory (I think).
3) Double-click on this inactive focus rect, in the filesize column (that is, not on the filename itself).

The file pane will change to the parent directory, instead of opening the item you clicked.


b. Windows Explorer in both Windows XP and Windows 98 doesn't have this bug.

Thanks,
Warner Young

[fgagnon]

@ ... bug - (& in the interest of a quick response, as nikos is likley offline until morning):
Actually that's not a bug at all, but a design feature to navigate to the parent folder using double-click in an inactive area of the pane.  ;)

[WarnerYoung]

Hi fgagnon,

Thanks for your comment.  But in that case, the bug is that the focus rectangle is drawn full-row.  This implies that you can click anywhere inside the rectangle to select or open the item, when in fact, you can't.

And I really do think it's a bug, because I recently had to fix some focus rectangle issues in an app of my own.  Nothing as big as xplorer2, but what I found was, it's best to have just 1 routine to handle a common operation like drawing focus rects.  And if you have just 1 routine to do it, it should behave the same way all the time, whether it's painting an "active" or "inactive" object.

--
Warner Young

[fgagnon]

You are right that the issue reverts back to the misleading full-row rectangle in the inactive pane. (The d-click behaves correctly: In your example it is in fact done in an inactive area -- even though one might think otherwise from the display.)

The inactive pane full row selection is an appearance issue vs. one of functional behaviour. As such it may be hard to convince nikos put a priority on cleaning it up.   [Historically, he puts minimal importance on appearance, preferring to concentrate on functionality issues. ]
But ... the more folks who complain about these nits, objectively stating the case of how it harms productivity, the sooner nikos is likely to address the issue(s).  ;)

[WarnerYoung]

Hi fgagnon,

Well, I hope my post was reasonably objective.  And as I pointed out, the fix for this *should* (in theory) be very, very simple.  Nikos obviously already has code to draw the correct focus rectangle, since it's being done for the active pane.  That means he shouldn't need to write any new code to fix this, just make a minor change.

While I'm at it, I guess I'd like to suggest an option to enable/disable this double-click behavior.  I don't think I saw anything about this in the registry.txt file, and it doesn't seem to be in the preferences dialog.  It's an interesting and potentially convenient shortcut, but in my opinion, it causes problems from the point of view of UI consistency, because double-clicking in the same area can cause 2 different actions to occur, depending on whether full-row select option was checked.

--
Warner Young

[fgagnon]

@ reasonable objective -
Yes, what I read was an objective statement that it was annoying for its inconsistency (& a little bit of how & why you would structure/reuse the code for drawing the focus rectangle if you were writing it) ... but you made no case for how it harms productivity to leave it as-is, nor how it would increase productivity if it were resolved.

@ option to disable -
That sounds like a reasonable suggestion even though it is not an option that I would bother with.  My preferred view is deails mode, full row selection.