Can you think of a way to add tabs to the circle?

[cozumelsea]

Is it possible to transform the circle in to a kind of a top view file cabinet? where there is a tab option on each circle so you can collapse the files or icons in to a tab that will then be controllable, you could extract it from the circle or minimize it back to "behind" the circle?
this way you can have as many tabs as you want around the circle, they can be color coded, and in 3d so as to have a few layers of tabs.

[jgpaiva]

You know that you can add folders to Circle Dock? I think it'd pretty much acomplish what you're thinking.

[cozumelsea]

Yea I know that, but I was thinking visually, it looks clattered and un proportional with all the icons around the dock.
if you had a way of "storing" the files in small tabs it would be possible to use the dock as an alternative to the desktop, so its not only a kind of a table with shortcuts but the actual directory manger, it would look like the FF tab toolbar only as if you took it and folded it to fit around the dock.
that way its not just icons that open in regular windows but the icon is transformed into a tab that once opened has the icons "in it" like a drawer. so i can take all of my files (images and documents) that has to do with project XYZ and put them together in this "drawer" that will be actually a tab around the dock.
am I making sense? should I send a drawing?

[Lashiec]

Oh, you mean something like Stacks in Mac OS X, and how it looks when you expand it?

[cozumelsea]

Ill try and make a drawing in ps

[cozumelsea]

Here is a quick drawing I made in photoshop (sorry for the quality) I hope this clear the idea.

[jgpaiva]

  It's a funny drawing
Yeah, I get the concept. It's a bit different from making folders of icons, and it might look nice.
Let's see what Eric (the developer of CD) will say

[cozumelsea]

Hey That's great, I also thought that if he likes the Idea later on it can become 3D like the desktop cube idea, and it can actually look like a circular cabinet, and you can either have a top view or a side/front view, and than allt he concept of drawers can be developed.
Thanks for asking the developer.

[cozumelsea]

  I apologize for the BAD drawing but I was at work and had no time to make it nice... and no I'm not 4 years old...

[VideoInPicture]

It is feasible to program Circle Dock to function in tabbed mode but I'm not ready to alter the code to do that yet because the rendering of a background arc may be a problem and you would have to keep all the items in each of the tabs rendered and hidden except for the one you are looking at. This is slightly different from the way Circle Dock works right now. I'll take a look at the feasibility of this after Alpha 9 when performance should be better.

As for becoming 3D, I think that would be cool to look at but incredibly hard to program to make it functional!

[cozumelsea]

At least you think its a good idea and a cool one too...
I guess I'll go and learn what rendering means and then see if I can do it myself...
any tips where to start?

[VideoInPicture]

If you want tabs, it would mean that you should create a new tab object class that inherits the perpixelalphaform class like what the objects in TransparentObject.cs do. You would then create these new tab objects and set the parent of them to the centre object. You would have to alter the code in PositionCurrentLevel(...) in MainForm.cs to position the tabs on the dock since each element of the dock is a separate object.

You would have to add in a function that handles the event of when one of the tabs is clicked to hide the other tabs. You will also need to create arrays to hold references to your tab objects and their sub-items like what I use MainDockObjects for in MainForm.cs.

Looking back at this, it may not be all that trivial because you would have to make a lot of alterations.

[Dormouse]

You could just see tabs as different looking folders; or as buttons that trigger a menu with contents varying according to the tab.

[VideoInPicture]

You could just see tabs as different looking folders; or as buttons that trigger a menu with contents varying according to the tab.

-Dormouse (September 10, 2008, 11:30 AM)

Yes, you can view tabs as a version of folders but I think that there will still be the need of code to assign what content each tab has and there would be a desire to keep every item in the tabs rendered so that they can be called up quickly instead of the lag that is created by opening up a dock folder since it has to create each new item.

I would prefer to try this after Alpha 9 since it will have better performance due to multi-threading and the creation time lag may not be as much of an issue.

Side Note: Alpha 8 is definitively going to be released this coming Sunday (Sept. 14th, 2008). I have made a note on the Circle Dock website and I'm going to be e-mail the translators tonight with Alpha 8 to see if they can update their translations.

[Mugwamp]

Something like this would be cool though.  No need to render a background...

http://images.apple....p_stacks20071016.jpg

[folderhide]

Hi! great app!! the most useful part i find about it is the ability to drag the dock as soon as is pops up on the edge (the MMB I use a lot for other things, and don't like to use hotkeys for docks). Even though it still lacks some features, there's future for this. Customization is also great, being realtime; and dragging icons to change them is just awesome.

I currently use objectdock (yeah... yeah... i know... I tried every other dock and this one was the best for my system), and with the use of the stacks docklet, my desktop is now clean. I used the standalonestack for a while too, but the integration of the docklet in the dock is way better (and saw the post about using it with CD, also).

I can see where this post is going. If CD improved in the "stack" management somehow or the "folder" use, it just would be great. The problem with the current use of the folders (personal point of view) is that although you arrange your own folders and shortcuts inside them, you can easily loose track of where you're at in the, let's say, dock tree (folder inside folder).

How about, instead of tabs, you could implement your own stacks, coded inside the app, by changing (I really don't know at how much extent) the code so that instead of going into a folder with its ring of shortcuts, you click a folder and show an extra ring with the folder contents?

Can you think of a way to add tabs to the circle?

(hope the link works)

You can already have many rings of shortcuts... why not use the same principle when clicking a folder?

just my two cents....

Best regards everyone!!!.


edit by jgpaiva: downloaded image and attached to post. for more info on attachments, check here

[VideoInPicture]

Tabs/Stacks/Extensions are on the to do list after Alpha 9 - Performance/Animation.