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Directory Opus 9
tranglos:
Thanks, Darwin. The viewer seems to be working fine, though of course I don't know what to expect as correct behavior. The only thing that's bugging me is that for some document types (when the viewer is embedding an ActiveX control, I guess), the viewer window cannot be closed by hitting Esc.
Plus, I can only open one viewer pane at a time. When trying to view another document, the existing viewer window is reused. I'm not happy about this, since in TC I often work with multiple viewers open.
Also, the viewer in TC lets me switch between viewing modes live (ANSI, OEM, Unicode, UTF-8, Hex, etc), with a single keypress. The reason this is important is that sometimes I want to view html files rendered, but other times (more often) I want to view the source. Or try various encodings, to see which one works. I can't find a comparable feature in DOpus viewer (except View As Hex).
In general, DOpus doesn't seem too friendly to keyboard-only navigation. In fact, this was what caused me to uninstall DOpus when I first tried it some months ago). Navigation in DOpus is pretty much the same as in Windows Explorer. Note what happens, for instance, when you press Enter on a folder. The subfolder opens, with the first folder focused but not selected. If you press Enter now, nothing happens. If you press down arrow, DOpus will select the *second* subfolder, probably not what you want. To descend into the first subfolder, you have to press up arrow first. This could be easily fixed in the program, apparently the author just didn't care and users aren't bothered by this. I'm also missing the ".." entry in folder list for going up in a folder tree. Yes, I can see the up arrow above the list, but it's too tiny for fast clicking. I use Backspace instead, but Enter in TC is much nicer: press Enter once to go into a subfolder, press Enter again to go up.
Small things, admittedly, but they slow me down and in general this is how I tell a program is not for me.
(On edit: I've found "Automatically select first file in folder", which helps a little.)
Then again, if a program has been in development for years, is at version 9+ and has a huge user base, I guess I'm not a target user. I get that a lot recently, e.g. with UltraEdit, which has like a million registered users, who apparently don't mind all the usability annoyances, big and small, I have found in 30 minutes of playing with it. Sometimes I want to start a movement to donate a copy of Alan Cooper's "About Face" or Joel Spolsky's "User Interface Design for Programmers" to all our favorite shareware authors, because many of them should really read those, for our benefit :)
marek
superboyac:
marek, I have the same complaints as you do. On my end, I was very particular about TC's excellent mouse navigation features. I wrote several long threads about the subtleties of why it was good in the DOpus forums, but it seemed like nobody else was interested.
It's difficult to convince people to make these little changes that are seemingly insignificant, but actually make the user experience so much better. It's even hard to describe because it's borderline miniscule...like in your example above, you're explaining pressing the down arrow and enter, etc...most people are probably thinking "So, what's the big deal?" It's frustrating.
Darwin:
This won't help you, really, Marek and Superboyac, but you can cycle through the viewer filters via the context menu when you initiate it from the viewer itself.
I just counted the number of file managers that I have installed with licences... 11 (12 if you include NT 4's File Manager with Winability FMStepUp and Wincorner's FMView 2 installed - this is a KILLING setup, actually). I keep finding little things about all of them that I love. Have to be honest, though, DOpus reigns supreme for me WRT GUI, ease of use, etc. This could be familiarity more than anything else, but there it is...
Darwin:
[OT]As an aside... I love TC! However, I do find it counter-intuitive NOT to have a context menu at all. This, no doubt, is something that I just need to get used to. That said, I love the keyboard navigation features.
I'm in the minority, it seems, in finding TC's GUI quite attractive, though its masked on my system at the moment because I've installed TC Ultra Prime on top of it.[/OT]
superboyac:
Darwin, you're crazy! 12 file managers?! Wow. If you actually use them all, I'm even more impressed!
As for TC, it does have a context menu...you have to press and hold the right mouse button. I actually prefer TC's mouse controls over DOpus. It's one of the few features I can tweak just right on DOpus, otherwise, Dopus is definitely the best of the bunch.
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