| My suggestions to authors of the programs: | |||||||||||
| 1) A complete help and full functional demo | |||||||||||
| This is my experience gain through "blood and sweat". Only with the above shall someone who is interested enough | |||||||||||
| to try the program will find out all its powers. Evaluator/user who tries won't have big tolerance over the difficulty | |||||||||||
| in finding out what the program can do and how it is suppose to be operated | |||||||||||
| 2) Fav list and Recent list should be separated into 2 different menu. | |||||||||||
| In this case "Direct folder" is doing exactly what I am suggesting, unfortunately its method of bringing up Fav or History | |||||||||||
| list is not so easy when compare to "QuickFolder" or "Folder Express" | |||||||||||
| My suggestion: | |||||||||||
| e.g. Right-click file list area for FAV list | |||||||||||
| Right-click win title line for Recent list | |||||||||||
| The point is do not force user to aim for a button or small icon in order to bring up Fav list. | |||||||||||
| 3) Add extension / panel to OPEN/SAVE AS dialog. | |||||||||||
| "SpeedFolder" is the top scorer in this area. However, what it provides is still far from a smart use of the panel | |||||||||||
| Basically I find it excellent idea to fill the panel with FAV, but what about a mean to switch that between FAV and | |||||||||||
| Recent list? If this panel is used in this way, than accelerate key is critically important. The look, size and position | |||||||||||
| of this panel should be user customizable. | |||||||||||
| "Direct folder" tries to add panel on top of dialog in order to display full path spec of current folder (and file info) | |||||||||||
| But the panel is not prompt to go with the dialog when drag. Also, the panel is too space consuming, it is a very bad | |||||||||||
| idea to have all drives shown in the panel for their free space and do not allow user to mod the panel. | |||||||||||
| While having a panel is a winning point of DF, but it is also the critical factor that make me uneasy to use the program | |||||||||||
| If one toggle off the info panel, many function that rely on it will be absent. | |||||||||||
| 4) About Right-Click | |||||||||||
| For non-keyboard expert user, chances is mouse is always being held. Right-click file list area seems to be the best | |||||||||||
| access mehod for the FAV list, IMHO. Why not a double right-click to bring up pure FAV list without all the | |||||||||||
| ordinary right-click menu options like "New", "Properties" and so on. | |||||||||||
| 5) Auto-focusing | |||||||||||
| Few of the programs offer auto switch focus to "File name" or "File list" field when a dialog is up. | |||||||||||
| However, none of them does that correctly. | |||||||||||
| If "OPEN" dialog is up, focus is best set at "File list" field | |||||||||||
| If "SAVE AS" dialog is up, focus is best at "File name" field. | |||||||||||
| Yes we might want to overwrite an existing file when "Save as" but that should be rare compare to Save as | |||||||||||
| a new file name. No program offer diff focusing choices for diff kind of dialog being used. | |||||||||||
| 6) Application driven | |||||||||||
| Fav list per appl which is triggered by diff method, otherwise the ordinary (common) FAV list will be up (which is for ALL) | |||||||||||
| (In this case, I don't like the idea of strictly FAV per appl + common section for ALL, very messy) | |||||||||||
| Def folder per appl | |||||||||||
| Def view mode per appl | |||||||||||
| Def sorting per appl (including order of sorting, ascending or descending) | |||||||||||
| Even diff Places bar per appl (am I too much) | |||||||||||
| 7) 3rd party storage browser (like total commander and opus) should be supported. There is only 1 program does this. | |||||||||||
| The point is, if one cares to buy a program to have very prompt access to folders, I doubt he/she will still stick | |||||||||||
| to windows explorer without looking for better alternative. However, majority of the authors cares only to support | |||||||||||
| windows explorer. I am not saying it is stupid to do so, but rarely appreciated, because, I dare to bet most of | |||||||||||
| their users are equiped with a better alternative - a 3rd party browser. | |||||||||||
| 8) Few of the program are keen to show off by telling the free space on drive(s), but none try to tell anything about the folder | |||||||||||
| being opened. E.g. what are the total size of files under current folder. How many files/sub-folders are there | |||||||||||
| under current folder. | |||||||||||