[Blog Post] - An Early Look - New Toolbar system

[Mathias (Author)]

An Early Look - New Toolbar system

Comments for the blog post should be posted here in the forum topic

[GrantSP]

Hi Mathias.
Just read your post about your desire to rework the toolbar. Absolutely agree. It desperately needs a work-over.

Now about the ugly icons, have you considered using some open-source icons that already exist. There literally are thousands to choose from.
On a slightly more detailed point if you code it to use icons from an external set then you might be able to incorporate themes to suit each user's taste. These theme set icons could be easily modified and shared by everyone and you could end up with some really high class icons as standard.

[Mathias (Author)]

have you considered using some open-source icons that already exist. There literally are thousands to choose from.
On a slightly more detailed point if you code it to use icons from an external set then you might be able to incorporate themes to suit each user's taste. These theme set icons could be easily modified and shared by everyone and you could end up with some really high class icons as standard.

Good points..

I actually already uses a couple of free icons (not many 3-4 ). But there are a problem with a lot of the free icons and it is there license. Since Multi Commander is not open source not all free icons can be used. It depends on there license.

Using "Icon Packs" is something I have been thinking about. But because of the generic and plugin architecture in Multi Commander the icons are loaded from many different places. So it is not something that is easy fixed. I do however have an idea about a solution for it. But it need some more work before it can be added.

[Jungle]

I wish [some] toolbars would be rearrangeable and dockable not only horizontally but also vertically. Monitors become wider but not higher. So a toolbar buttons may take only half (or even less) of useful horizontal space, but a whole vertical position.

Maybe some other interface parts should also be redesigned (or combined with the toolbar system).

E.g. Button panel. I think it's redundant. 32 buttons, 4 states = 128 buttons. And it also can't be located vertically. I tried to move it outside MC's window and resize it: i thought buttons will be rearranged from 4x8 to e.g. 1x32, but they just became narrow and high - not what i expected.
So here is what i think:
1. File filters may be moved to the ones in the explorer panels as dropdown items with ability to edit them.
2. Drive buttons (in the button panel) are useless since they may be shown in explorer panels
3. Hotpaths may be also expanded in a way to store more paths: e.g. paths with assigned hotkeys Ctrl+<digit> would be "hot paths" and first in the list, others would be "quick paths"

So button panel may become just one of the toolbars. And toolbars would need some additional options like "Only text", "Only icon", "Text and icon". So user would be able to create own toolbars: some might look like present button panel, some like ordinary toolbar.

Optionally, custom user toolbars may be additionally represented by menus (or/and menus may be represented as toolbars).

[Mathias (Author)]

I wish [some] toolbars would be rearrangeable and dockable not only horizontally but also vertically. Monitors become wider but not higher. So a toolbar buttons may take only half (or even less) of useful horizontal space, but a whole vertical position.

That will not be support.  It is not possible the way everything is built.  But Toolbars will be able to be shown/hidden but it will not be possible to rearrange them in different order.

E.g. Button panel. I think it's redundant. 32 buttons, 4 states = 128 buttons. And it also can't be located vertically. I tried to move it outside MC's window and resize it: i thought buttons will be rearranged from 4x8 to e.g. 1x32, but they just became narrow and high - not what i expected.
So here is what i think:

If the button panel was dynamic in rearranging the buttons the behavior when showing them would be very strange, I tried that.. Did not work good. But some changes for it are coming. It will be easier to change how many rows to show. (Today you have to manually change it in the config file) and it will also be possible to disable the alternative buttons stats for the buttons.

If you want it vertical you can edit the MultiButtons.xml file manually and change cols="8" to cols="1". But you need to move buttons around if you want to keep them because they are fixed to row,col position.

1. File filters may be moved to the ones in the explorer panels as dropdown items with ability to edit them.
2. Drive buttons (in the button panel) are useless since they may be shown in explorer panels
3. Hotpaths may be also expanded in a way to store more paths: e.g. paths with assigned hotkeys Ctrl+<digit> would be "hot paths" and first in the list, others would be "quick paths"

1. Moved ? you mean changed from an edit field into a dropdown with history of previous filter ? Something like that is/was planned. But it did not work so good. I might give it another go later on.
2. There are a lot of thinks that are double. Some user prefer them there and some prefer the drive toolbar. and some user change just change the buttons to what they want there instead.
3. The idea with the hotpath is that they are assigned to hotkey Ctrl+<num> and since there only are 10 digits on the keyboard I do not think it would be good to have more there. But a whole new path/file favorite system is under design. It might replace the hotpath completely. not sure yet.

So button panel may become just one of the toolbars. And toolbars would need some additional options like "Only text", "Only icon", "Text and icon". So user would be able to create own toolbars: some might look like present button panel, some like ordinary toolbar.

I was testing that but it did not workout so good since the toolbars will be very long and even on large monitors you will run out of screen space.

Optionally, custom user toolbars may be additionally represented by menus (or/and menus may be represented as toolbars).

There will be a way to add own commands to a toolbar. More info about this is coming soon.