Topics

1

Support and Feedback / Unwanted clutter in tree view

« on: September 03, 2015, 08:28:12 »

Attached is one of my tree views. When I insert a USB stick I usually use the tree view to determine its drive letter and to view its content. However the tree view is so cluttered I sometimes find myself going back to explorer just so I can find the new drive letter. All the items it the MC tree view are legitimate drives or devices masquerading as drives except for "Favorites" and "Windows Registry". I really wonder why these items are in the tree view. (Obviously I would prefer not). Even more problematic are the H,I,J,L,M drives. These drives are not really there (and do not appear in the file explorer). I mentioned these before, thinking this was just a choice you made in MC to display potential drives, but since I don't see other users complaining of this I'm wondering if this is just a setup problem on my windows 10 system. Is there a way to delete these drives from my system entirely? I realize that this means I would never be able to use these drive letters - which is a problem, but it would not be as bad as coping with all this clutter in the tree view (as well as the 5 extra drive buttons that shouldn't be there). The optical drive (R) is also problematic. As in this screen capture, it is often shown both in the alphabetical listing and again in the later section. In this example it is even shown twice in the lower list and in fact I've occasionally seen the R drive listed as many as a dozen times! All the while, file explorer doesn't even show the R drive once (as it shouldn't since there is no disk inserted into the optical drive). The K drive is a flash drive that actually is inserted into the computer, but sometimes it appears in the alphabetical listing and sometimes (as in this capture) appears below, and sometimes it even in both places. Also adding to the confusion the K or N drives may appear  in the upper (alphabetical) section in the left pane tree but in the lower spot in the right pane tree.

Sorry if I sound overly critical ... I realize you can't make choices that appeal to all users. But just the same I thought you might want to know about the problems I have run into.
~Paul

2

Support and Feedback / Where do you get the icon to place in front of the file name?

« on: September 02, 2015, 14:01:08 »

The first attachment shows one of my folders as displayed by the windows 10 file explorer.
In all cases, the icon that the file explorer puts in front of each file is the same as the icon that appears if I right click on the file and select "properties".
For example right clicking on the first file ("01 Turing.mp3") yields the properties window shown in the 2nd attachment.

The last attachment shows the same folder as displayed by MC. Note that the icons placed in front of each file is the same as what the file explorer uses for all files except the .mp3 files and the .ico file.

In the case of the ico file, MC is a bit smarter about the icon. File explorer merely shows the icon of the application associated with the ico extension whereas MC actually uses the contents of the file for the icon. Personally I wouldn't care that much about either choice, although MC's icon choice is probably better.

However in the case of the mp3 file, MC uses some other icon that does not seem appropriate at all. The icon that appears does not belong to the application that is associated with mp3 files (foobar2000) nor is it the icon that shows up in the property window. This is distressing, since I use mp3 files A LOT.

By the way, I used an application called "MP3ext" to modify the icons for mp3 files and perhaps that is related to the problem. Evidently it modifies the icons in a way that is acceptable to the property window as well as to the windows file explorer ... but it seems to throw MC for a loop. I probably could get rid of the inconsistency by removing MP3ext ... but on the other hand the icon themes used by MP3ext are really nice!

~Paul

3

Feature Requests and Suggestions / It would be nice to be able to remove buttons from the File Commands toolbar

« on: August 25, 2015, 09:17:13 »

Because the Command Line toolbar is so customizable I don't think it would add much to give the File Commands toolbar the same flexibility, but on the other hand it would be very nice to be able to at least remove buttons from the File Commands toolbar. (Forgive me if there is already a way to do this ... but I coudn't find it). In particular I would like to remove the last one ("Select File Coloring Profiles"). In fact it seems surprising to me that you even have that button there. It's in the menus and that would seem sufficient since one is unlikely to visit this menu after the initial setup is complete. So to me it just adds to the clutter. I feel the same about the button next to it (toggle visibility of system/hidden files). Personally I never want to hide any files. Doing that always ends up confusing me. There is also one other icon I would like to remove since I have replaced it with one of my own buttons on the command line toolbar.

If there is a way to replace the button icons, that would serve the same purpose. I could just replace the icon with a blank icon which would make the icon invisible, thus reducing the clutter factor.

~Paul

4

Support and Feedback / how do I run an external program on all selected files?

« on: August 22, 2015, 20:51:31 »

I usually delete without using the recycle bin, so I've told MC to default to not using the recycle bin. I usually use the delete button in the file commands toolbar and I'm happy with the way that works. However, I occasionally want to delete to the recycle bin and I decided to add a button to the command line bar for that purpose. Using a google search, I found an external program called "binit.exe" which will delete a file to the recycle bin (without a prompt which is what I consider appropriate for a delete which is easily reversed). So I added the user command C:\util\binit.exe "${sourcefocuspath}" and named it "Delete to recycle bin". Then I created a new button in the command line bar using this command and chose an appropriate looking icon. I'm pleased to say that when I select a file and click this new button it behaves exactly has I predicted and hoped!. Unfortunately if I select more than one file, when I click on the button, only the last selected file gets deleted. (I suspect this is no surprise to those of you who understand user commands which I obviously don't.) Anyway, can anyone give me a suggestion for how to modify the button so that it deletes all the selected files?

Thanks.
~Paul

5

Support and Feedback / Color of selected files in the inactive panel.

« on: August 18, 2015, 13:28:02 »

The color setup for MC is about as complicated as any application I have used, but since I am picky about the colors for the applications I use most I appreciate the flexibility to control the colors so precisely. After much fiddling, I've gotten the colors to look exactly like I wanted, except for one small problem. I've chosen purple as the color of the files that have been selected. When the panel containing the selected files becomes inactive the color changes from purple to some other color. That behavior seems entirely appropriate, but the problem is: "how is that color chosen?". Right now the color chosen for that is so faint that I can hardly even read it. I would like to change it to a subtle color to make it obvious that it no longer is active - but not so subtle that I can't even read it (as in the current situation).

Since the color selections are so varied, I have attached a screen capture showing the color setting dialogs. I have marked this up to show the colors that I have entered for the respective choices. And BTW I used the alternating background colors selections because I liked how obvious it made it to tell at a glance which panel was the active one and which one was inactive.

And finally one other related question. Although the purple color is bright enough to make the selected files stand out, I was thinking of ways to make them even more obvious. One way I thought to try was to use a bold face font for the selected files. I noticed that I could select bold face for just about every file type, but the selected files themselves couldn't be set to bold. That seems strange to me, since of all the file names on the panel, the selected files are the ones where bold face would seem the most appropriate, yet these are the only files that may not be set to bold. Am I missing something there?

Thanks
~Paul

6

Support and Feedback / Question on Quick Launch Customization

« on: August 18, 2015, 13:06:13 »

I added a quick launch button for my program editor by entering "D:\EditPlus\editplus.exe" in the Program path field of the quick launch customization panel. Then I found I could drag and drop files onto the button and the editor would open as expected with the dropped file. But I wanted to tell it to open the currently selected file when I clicked on the quick launch button. First I tried putting the string "%1" in the parameter field. Although I don't quite know why, this has worked when I needed to call an external program from dozens of different applications, but it didn't work this time. I also tried putting the string "${sourcefocuspath}" in there, but that didn't work either. The "<" button next to the parameter field seemed to suggest I might need quotation marks around the field, but that didn't help. I suppose I'm doing something pretty obviously wrong, but I can't seem to figure out what.
Thanks
~Paul

7

Support and Feedback / Hiding removeable drives with no media

« on: August 14, 2015, 20:43:32 »

My computer evidently can have up to six removable usb disks and they all show up with drive letters in MultiCommander.
This is slightly distracting when I'm displaying the root level directory since the list of drives is longer than necessary.
Worse however is the drive button bar which I find quite useful. However there are so many drives, that the last couple of network drives do not appear because there is not enough room on the button bar.

Is there a way to display only drives that actually have files on them?

I tried adding these keys to the registry, but it didn't seem to change MultiCommander's behaviour.

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced]
"HideDrivesWithNoMedia"=dword:00000001
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced]
"HideDrivesWithNoMedia"=-

Thanks
~Paul

8

Feature Requests and Suggestions / Disable FTP file log

« on: August 14, 2015, 12:26:45 »

The few ftp sites I use are so reliable that the ftp log that pops up when I open an ftp site is both uninteresting and annoying. It takes up a lot of space that could be used in the file listing. I usually end up closing the log window to reclaim this space right after opening the ftp site. It gets tiresome to have to do this every time. Perhaps an option to disable this window could be justified.

~Paul

9

Support and Feedback / display extension right after file name

« on: August 14, 2015, 12:07:32 »

I saw in a screenshot posted to the forum the extensions where displayed with the file name (i.e. file123.txt). However I am not able to figure out how this was done. The only way I have been able to see the extension is to have it appear in its own column. Can anyone explain to me how the person who posted that screen shot managed to do this?

Thanks
~Paul

10

Support and Feedback / How do I enable Rules Based coloring?

« on: August 11, 2015, 15:08:16 »

When I select the File Coloring Rules Editor, it won't let me use it.
At the bottom of this editor I see the message:
"Your color setting in Explorer panel does not allow for Rules based coloring.
To see this color rules in use you must enable that option."

Ok, so I would like to enable this option. But what option? And I can't find a panel called the Explorer Panel.

Thanks in advance for your help.
~Paul