Quizo QTTabbar

[daddydave]

Also, you can drag to the folders in the tree in the left margin. Finally, copy to, or move to, or cut&paste, are fast&easy because they are buttons on your toolbar.

-Curt (June 09, 2010, 08:08 AM)

More bullseyes, basically. It's not just mouse distance, it's also that I slow down to make sure I hit the smaller grouping of pixels. FWIW I am nearsighted and wear bifocals, and I am the world's worst dart player.

None of this means there is something wrong with the interface. It's not that I never use toolbar buttons or click on tabs. I am just trying to figure out if there is some benefit of installing this, and if this is an actual improvement.

[Curt]

-in that case, maybe not.

-------------------------
One feature I have spoken about several times is the blue arrow button next to any marked activated folder, allowing to look inside the folder without opening it:

771x520 pixels:

Quizo QTTabbar

[daddydave]

Cool. I'm still going to install it, I'm going to think harder about using it the most efficiently, and I'll try to consider features as a whole instead of in isolation like I did above.

[Curt]

homepage: http://qttabbar.sourceforge.net/
downloads: http://sourceforge.n...t/projects/qttabbar/

QTTabBar 1.5.0.0 Alpha 5 Released
By ShiningMasamune, on December 30th, 2010

Greetings everyone; I hope you all had a great Christmas.  I’ve got a belated present for you all today: our hopefully-last alpha, QTTabBar 1.5 Alpha 5.  I had grand visions of releasing it on Christmas day, but alas, I ran into some trouble with the new installer.  Oh well.

Difficult as it may have been to get right, the new installer should greatly streamline the process for new users.  The bars are activated upon installation automatically, which should alleviate a lot of confusion.  MSI also provides much better logging then Inno Setup did, so installer problems will be much easier for me to diagnose.  

Also, the bars are now automatically hidden on uninstallation, which should effectively solve the problem of the unhideable menu bar.  I noticed that someone left a Thumbs Down on SourceForge because of this “bug,” ruining my perfect score! (For those unfamiliar with this problem, the bug is actually Explorer’s: the menu bar becomes unhideable if any toolbar is uninstalled while still in the “shown” state.)

Unfortunately, the new installer means that this update will be a bit rough for existing users.  Please note that Alpha 4 must be manually uninstalled and Explorer must be restarted before installing Alpha 5. I’ve tried to include some code to check for this, but apparently it doesn’t work on x64.  So I guess I’ll just post it here and hope for the best.

QTTabbar may become even better supported and further developed in 2011:

I’m still alive!
By ShiningMasamune, on October 23rd, 2010

Hey guys,

I just wanted to post and let everyone know that I’m not dead, even though I haven’t touched QTTabBar in the last few weeks.  My workload this semester has turned out to be absolutely brutal, leaving me little time for anything else.  Alpha 5 has actually been almost ready for a while now, I just need to find the time to stabilize it just a bit more so I can push it out the door.  I appreciate your patience, everyone.  The good news it that my next semester is looking like it’s going to be very light, so I will have a lot more free time to devote to this project once the current semester is out of the way.

[MilesAhead]

I'm just trying this out now.  You guys still happy with it?
Once I figured out how to lock my drives as tabs it looks like a cool way to do drag & drop file ops.  I'm starting to do apps that place explorer folders. If each has all my drives that could save me from loading up FreeCommander just for multiple tabs.

I just installed 1.5.0.0 Beta 2.  So far so good.

I just have one question.  Since I do use USB docking stations I notice when you shut them off and drives are not listed, when you bring Explorer up the next time you have to(as far as I know) manually set them up as tabs and lock them again. It would be nice if this was handled automatically once locked.  I have the option checked to restore locked tabs. The USB drives in the docks tend to keep the same drive letters so that shouldn't be an issue.

Edit: Got it now.  Just made a group and set it to open on startup. I can turn drives off and on and any present are picked up when the Explorer window opens.  Now I just hope it's stable.  I haven't seen any glitches yet.

[MilesAhead]

Cool. I'm still going to install it, I'm going to think harder about using it the most efficiently, and I'll try to consider features as a whole instead of in isolation like I did above.

-daddydave (June 09, 2010, 01:03 PM)

From what I've tried so far I like it.  I don't have it set to capture new folder opens. I prefer to have 2 or more windows open with tabs. Just seems simpler to drag & drop if you have Explorer windows side by side.  FreeCommander you can drag & drop to a tab sticking up but it opens this copy window that's a pain. I still feel more comfortable dropping on a Tab that's the active one in the opposite pane.

This tab bar thingy could be very nice as Explorer windows tend to snap up faster than FC.exe.  I still like FC's renamer though. I can't abandon it completely.

[Curt]

The rumour about my death, was exaggerated!

-Quizo

Quizo’s back!
By ShiningMasamune, on June 3rd, 2011

He’s uploaded a beta of his own 2.0 version on the original site.

On the one hand, he’s fixed a few things that I couldn’t, including the Desktop bar.  Plus the icons have a fresh coat of paint, and the options dialog (while still a little messy) appears to have been redesigned.  However, a lot of other stuff is broken.

I don’t know what this means for me.  Should our versions merge?  Would he even agree to that?  Should I just keep going and fork the project?  That Quizo released this without so much as a cursory email to me is pretty upsetting.  I have to wonder if he’s mad at me for taking over.

To top it off, this happened at the worst possible time for me; I’m leaving for a trip to France in two days to attend an academic conference.  And now here I am with my head spinning off.  I really just don’t have time to deal with this right now.  I guess all I can do for now is wait to see how things play out while I’m away, and see if I can get any kind of communication going with Quizo.

EDIT: Thanks everyone for the encouraging comments.  Quizo did send me an email and it looks like everything will work out.  I’ll post the full details when I return from my trip.  Au revoir!

-ShiningMasamune

 

Edited:
It feels embarrassing to realize that I have taken part in spreading a lie. Sorry!  
Statement: Quizo is not dead, but alive ♥

http://qttabbar.wikidot.com/

[yksyks]

And another turn back:

QTTabBar is now being developed at sourceforge.net.

-http://qttabbar.wikidot.com/

Where you can read:

Quizo is NOT continuing QTTabBar.

-http://qttabbar.sourceforge.net/

So actually Quizo is out again...

[Curt]

-which means The End of ShiningMasamune's use of the QTTabbar name - maybe QTabs will be the new name. It also means that any recent copy of QTTabbar must be completely removed before any new-coming version is "installed". However, the new guy is young, and idealistic about the project, so for some years I guess it will keep on being a fine tool.

http://qttabbar.sourceforge.net/

[MilesAhead]

Speaking of QTTabBar, I use fractal flames with black background as wallpaper.  The contrast with the Explorer white background produces a "glare effect" that's annoying.  I've tried themes with the shell dll, folder background changer apps etc.. None have been satisfactory for me(if they produce a nice result they are usually not stable. Log off = Aero gone etc..)

I got this effect using QTTabBar 1.5.0.0 Beta 2, with details view grid lines background color. btw the color I used is Cornsilk 2 (RGB 238-232-205)

The limitation is it only works for details view.  Tiles view when you open Computer to see your drives the white glare is there.



I've been lobbying on SourceForge to add another background button to allow coloring of the intermittent white lines.  But they either cannot do it and don't want to say so or just don't want to hear it.  But at least this is stable for me and reduces the "glare" quite a bit.

[Curt]

-so, MilesAhead, what "fractal flames"-program are you using?

---
It was funny to see how close our choice of colour is to one another:




click to enlarge:

Quizo QTTabbar

[MilesAhead]

I'm using Apophysis7X.

Your details view looks good.
I also found I could set background generally for apps such as editors and browsers, globally using this key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\Colors

in the right pane set
"Window" to the RGB value

But of course in their wisdom MS didn't extend that to explorer.  Would have avoided a lot of hacked systems as I think the thing most people want to change in the Explorer background color.  Bright white bites!

I tried changing some of my Explorer launching code to allow specifying a 3rd party file manager that is more configurable.  Trouble is since Explorer is already in memory and designed to be cloned it's way faster off the dime than 3rd party file manager apps when you ShellExecute it.  Throws all the timing off to the point it's not worth it.

[Curt]

For Vista you can use Folderbg from http://www.aveapps.com/folderbg.html :

[MilesAhead]

I tried those folder background apps. To get a flat color you need to use an image.  One I did that looked pretty good was a paper texture from Photofiltre.  But it won't put it in root directory of a drive, and it goes in and out. I haven't found one that's stable on my systems.

[Curt]

For Vista you can use Folderbg from http://www.aveapps.com/folderbg.html :

-Curt (September 20, 2011, 05:11 PM)

For the first time I read the ReadMe, and saw:

REQUIREMENTS

 +Windows Vista

 + Visual Studio 2005 SP1 Runtime Files: http://www.microsoft...7&displaylang=en

-Folderbg

[Curt]

For Vista you can use Folderbg from http://www.aveapps.com/folderbg.html :

-Curt (September 20, 2011, 05:11 PM)

REQUIREMENTS:
 + Visual Studio 2005 SP1 Runtime Files: http://www.microsoft...7&displaylang=en

-Folderbg

-Curt (September 21, 2011, 02:37 AM)

It is working!  

At least for now.

It may be hard to see the difference because I am using an extremely lite green, but it is easy to see difference on the characters. I now recognize that I have been missing this - I used the feature on my previous computers.

[MilesAhead]

I've heard from a bunch of people on various forums that it works on their machines.  But I've tried it on both my machines and not found it stable.

I don't really understand why they try to lock away the Explorer background color setting.  To recover from an emergency, like some dude setting the text and background color the same, all they'd need is a panic button on the ToolBar to reset those colors to default. Not exactly rocket science.

In fact in the theme settings for dialogs you can set background and text color the same.  They don't stop you from messing it up there.  No rhyme to the reason that I can see.

[Curt]

However, the new guy is young, and idealistic about the project, so for some years I guess it will keep on being a fine tool.
http://qttabbar.sourceforge.net/

-Curt (June 19, 2011, 11:05 AM)

It has been interesting to follow ShiningMasamune's work with his new version of QTTabBar on his >commit log<. Now he has finished the Options Dialog:

(click to enlarge:)

Quizo QTTabbar


I am really looking forward to the final product! 

[Curt]

It has now been 13 months without a word from the young "ShiningMasamune", and I find it safe not to say, I don't trust updates are coming, but to say, I trust updates are not coming.

One can say Quizo not made it easy for any one to understand what went on. I am now guessing he simply don't want to debate in English (https://twitter.com/QTTabBar is Japanese only). But English or not, he is updating his program!
 
http://qttabbar.wikidot.com/qttabbar is the new black AGAIN. Sadly it is also too black. New users are completely left unattended... abandoned... There is no help whatsoever of any kind. Maybe that is one of the reasons that there now is a 3½MB zip container named "Source codes and Plugin Lib". So what about it, reader, are you a coder?
 

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