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OpenTrackerIssues

OpenTracker bugs

  1. Don't eject a multiesession cd when you unmount only one of many mounted sessions.
  2. Fix the problem with switching to icon mode. Titles end up extending off the left.
  3. The icon on the bootdisk looses the Be-logo. (/decaf)

OpenTracker feature requests

  1. OT already supports sorting folders to the front when browsing. Another idea would be to sort files according to their usage. So files, you often access/start could be sorted in front/on top of others. Maybe each file could get a number (placed in the bfs database architecture) which increases by 1 each time the file is started.
  2. Dont know whether this belongs to OT issues. A funny and great thing would be to have those mouse gestures, you have in Opera 6 in OT, too. Maybe even nicer application that uses it is Blender (3D app)!
  3. Label-like feature... which would color the ICON and maybe even the Background according to the imporatnec of the file! Colors are so underused in todays UIs.
  4. Adding support for wrapped icontitles as it is in windows, this way the icons can be evenly arranged, which is now a bit of a problem since the names are of different lenghts.
  5. Transparent (in the sense of no noticable difference to the enduser) browsing of compressed files a bit similar as it is in windows XP, so you can view it's contents with attributes straight from tracker and extract/add a file by drag en drop without having to extract and compress the archive to do this. Also the option to archive a file when you right click and then select with which compression format.
    Extra: an interesting archiveformat that can be used to replace "zip" as default archiver is "7z" http://www.7-zip.com/7z.html which compresses up to 150% of the zipfile, thus reducing bandwith when downloading glasselevator install packages.

    Question: Is this 7z any better than BZip2?
    Answer: Well I believe it is, first of all as I understand it bzip2 is a two step process which requires "tar" before you can use "bzip2", secondly when used on the famous "Canterbury Corpus" files which are used to compare compression methods, it returns these results: 555kb for tar.bz2 and 470kb for 7z.

    Question: Does 7z conserve attributes under BeOS?
    Answer: Zip does. I'll probably look into this if noone knows the answer.

  6. Better thumbnail support
  7. When you right-click browse a directory, allow the "right click" menu to open up on items inside that directory as you mouse over them.
  8. In a similar vein, it would be nice if there was an "Open this folder" option when you drag a file over a folder and use the drilldown menu to select where you want to move it. Here's an example of a situation where that would be useful:
    Imagine that you have an MP3 on your desktop - for example, "The Beatles - Taxman.mp3". You conveniently have a symlink to your MP3s directory on your desktop, so you drag Taxman over it, the drilldown menu comes up, you navigate to your Beatles folder within your MP3 folder - but wait! You realize you have folders for Sgt. Pepper and the White Album, but not for Revolver (the album Taxman was on). So, currently, you'd have to exit out of the menu, then navigate to that folder normally, create the "Revolver" directory, then (finally) put your Taxman mp3 there.

    The way around this would be to have an "Open this folder" item in the drilldown menu. I realize this would be a little disingenuous - you would be activating a menu item by dropping a file on it, essentially - unfortunately, I can't really see another way to do it. Care would need to be taken to ensure that this option is separate from the folders - perhaps by italicizing it, the way Recent Folders and Parent Folder are italicized in the "Move/Copy To" menus.

  9. Add instant-open function. Find a unique name and open it instantly in the associated app. If multiple names fit, show traditional find dialog.
  10. Allow users to open the Desktop folder in a Tracker window. Forcing users away from this functionality is limiting and old (Tracker is similar in this regard to MacOS <X and OS/2)>
  11. An option to make "open this folder and close the parent" the default action when double-clicking a folder. If this feature is enabled, then double-clicking a folder with the win/option key pressed down should have the reverse result - open the folder and don't close the parent. This would eliminate the major disadvantage that multi-window mode has over single-window mode.
  12. Accept color-drops on files to color the filename in different colors. MDR could color new mails blue and change them back to normal when read. You could mark your important files so that you easily find them and so on... It probably should be a selectable feature. (/decaf)
  13. Ability to access the BeMenu and TaskList from the right-click on desktop context menu. This is a convenience feature, which makes starting and switcing applications easier. In addition, a stand alone app that mimics the Deskbar's system icons ( mailbox, date/time, process controller, pulse, etc.) This combined with the right-click BeMenu/TaskList access would allow a user to disable Deskbar while maintaining it's funcitonality. (/mmadia)

Resolved Issues


UI Issues
There are two particularly annoying "features" in newer versions of the OpenTracker software. They are:

  • Folders can now be open in multiple windows simultaneously. This should not be possible outside of single-window browse mode as it is inconsistent with the otherwise spatial nature of the Tracker in multi-window mode. It can get especially annoying if you use workspaces heavily - it's pretty easy to have the same folder open two or three times, all in different workspaces - undesirable behaviour, IMO (in older versions, double-clicking on a folder that is already open in a different workspace would bring that Tracker window to the current workspace). At the very least, there should be an option to disable this.
  • The gradient (for lack of a better word) transparency/translucency effect that is now used when you drag multiple icons in Icon Mode. For one, I can see absolutely no UI or aesthetic advantage of this feature over the old effect - where the transparency was uniform - in fact, I think the new effect looks worse. Second, and more importantly, this effect appears to be a lot more CPU intensive than the old effect. For example, if I relatively quickly drag a bunch of icons from one part of the screen to another, the movement is not smooth at all - sometimes, doing this even makes SoundPlay's playback skip. This did not happen with the old effect. Again, one should at least be able to turn this off.



Comments

A place for point by point comments and discussion.
  1. While sorting folders by usage may be neat, I would find it more useful if folders could be listed first in all sorting views, not just NAME sorts. I use KIND sorts almost exclusively, but in many directories the folders get moved down toward the middle ot bottom of the window when this sort is used.
  2. I don't think mouse gestures should be part of Tracker. It could cause to many problems with unintentional things to happen.
  3. Icon labels would be cool.
  4. "Wrapped icon-titles as it is in windows" are a neccessity.
  5. Transparent browsing of compressed files intagrated into OT would be very nice. However, it would require intigrating OT with Zip-O-Matic or Archiver I believe.
  6. Better thumbnail support is a neccessity.
  7. "When you right-click browse a directory, allow the "right click" menu to open up on items inside that directory as you mouse over them." This currently works for me.
  8. "Open this folder" Don't quite understand this feature request.
  9. "instant-open function" Don't quite understand this feature request.
  10. I also would like to be able to view and open the Desktop folder in Tracker. However Axel has made several comments about it on the Bebits OT Talkback page.
  11. "open this folder and close the parent" I think there should be a check box in the OT Settings to set one or the other.
  12. "ability to color the filename in different colors" This could be both very useful.
  13. An ability to allow Open Tracker to turn off some features for Slower machines would be good. I find Open Tracker is slower on a 66Mhz BeBox than standart R5.03 Tracker, but I can't live with out single window browse and explorer bar. I guess a cut down version for the BeBox may be needed.... (Maybe a static build ala the old Tracker will be faster for these machines?) <memson> Comments by Disreali 11-04-2003

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