Xenon File Manager Portable 1.5 Development Test 2 (Outdated)

It is great. I see some things tough:

• The close tab option is wrongly labeled "New Tab" on the file menu.
• Microsoft Public License??? Is that even compatible with the GPL when Dual Licensed???

Anyway, it is working greatly, and the bookmarks bug seems to be vanished.

Request: Middle click on a folder or shortcut open in a new tab.

Didn't test it a lot, I will test it a little more, but it seems fine by now.

Tabs...I freaking love it. You get like... 12 cookies.

However, there is a bug on my XP Professional machine that's causing a empty

'OK'

Dialog box to appear every time switching tabs. Thanks for adding Ctrl+T, too. And thanks for making the search box smaller.

I really like this now, but there are a couple things that I think would make this program much better. First, under the file menu, there should be an exit button. This isn't really necessary, but it would make it much similar to every other windows program. Second, I know that if you right-click on a tab twice it closes, but maybe there should be a right click menu that gives tab options, such as 'close tab' 'new tab' and 'copy tab'. I also think that the tabs could have an X on them so they can be closed without having to right-click. This is kind of a Firefox function but I really like it. Maybe have a button to create a new tab also. Finally, hitting the Esc button closes the program. I don't think this is a good idea. I know sometimes I select a folder to copy and then decide that I don't want to copy that folder and hit Esc to clear my selection. Again this is more of a windows thing, but I've gotten into the habit.

Another idea could be to right click on a folder and have to option to open it in a new tab. I know this is a lot, but I think it would make the program indispensable.

I love the tabs!

One bug:
I copied 3 pics and the "replace file?" dialogue didn't have the name of the file in it so I didn't know which one Xenon was "talking" about. Maybe that not a bug but it would be nice to have it tell me what file it means.

Two suggestions:
The folder size is always kb. What about introducing Mbs instead of 7-digit kb numers?
What about an "About" section displaying the Author ans the Version?

One question:
Why does 6-zip have 2 "extract to" paths?

I already suggested these in the last thread:
*What about a file delete button next to the past/copy/cut buttons?
* The Association editor could have a save&cancel button...

Good work on that great App. Its still a little slow but I love the portable associations!

And btw the update from the previous version went without any problems. Not that I expected any but you never know

Seems good.

The bookmarks seem to be stable (I still must try them on my pendrive). And I noticed 2 bugs:

• The icons on the menus don't have transparency
• The sidebar doesn't show the + next to the folder unless that folder has already been explored

Beside that it seems great.

Plus translation bug:

In English

Paste

is translated to Portuguese

Colark

when it should be

Colar

Hey John... looks like Xenon is coming along nicely. Well done

I have a few suggestions:

• Ditch the 'list' view (it's not that useful) and rename 'small icons' to 'list' to keep it similar to Explorer (keeps things in line with people's expectations
• Rearrange cut, copy and paste in the menu to follow the standard of Cut, Copy, Paste in all Windows apps
• Change the path font to use the same font as other fields for consistency
• As nice as Tango and Crystal are, I'd recommend using Vista Inspirate with Crystal to supplment as needed. It has a more modern look and will fit in better with the next release of the platform which uses Vista Inspirate icons. I've put together a theme for Xenon if you'd like to use it. Here's a look: Theme,Theme File Menu.
• Ditch the INI in the root directory by default and make sure that Data is empty by default and will be recreated if it doesn't exist (part of PAF requirements).
• Ditch the zebra striping. Or, at least, make it details view only and have it be gray and white. It looks odd in list, icon and tile views and doesn't really help track anything since we're not dealing with columns.
• Stick with popular open source licenses. Instead of the MSPL, stick with BSD, MIT, MPL dual with GPL etc if you're interested in people being able to make good use of your code. The Microsoft Public License isn't that useful in terms of the overall open source community due to the fact that it's really only compatible into the GPL (but not out of) and isn't compatible into most other licenses like BSD, etc.
• Rename 'Tree View' to 'Folders' to keep consistency with Windows Explorer
• Focus on bug fixes before adding features. I've noticed quite a few random bugs with Xenon. For instance, I have a 3xDVD directory in my C: drive. If I single click on it in tree view, a rename box pops up. Also in tree view, I have a "C:\ATI\SUPPORT\8-2_xp32_dd_ccc_wdm_enu_58128\" directory. If I click on C:\, ATI or SUPPORT it works fine. But if I click on the last, tree view disappears. I've noticed other random dialog boxes and random browse for boxes popping up on other directorys which makes it seem like the name is overloading a variable or not escaped properly internally.

I think that's about it for now. Let me know about the icon set. I'll give this another thorough review as it matures and if the kinks are worked out, we can see about making it a PA release

Kind Regards,
John

I would love to replace explorer with this, but the only thing is that it's kinda slow for me :|. But still, great job!

As usual it works great running under Wine. I just wish Xenon could be available as a native Linux version (I would replace Nautilus with it), its just that awesome.

But may I ask why did you dual license Xenon? What benefits you by dual-licensing and whats up with MPL being one of the 2 licenses?

File -> New Tab Ctrl+T
File -> New Tab Ctrl+F4

Both in English and Spanish...

It should be
New Tab
Close Tab

Windows 2000 Pro:

- View doesn't change when selecting another option in the view, it keeps showing details.

- When I clicked in folders TwinDistressPortable\Data folder I got something like "As feninicoes de linguagem irao tomar ligar ao reiniciar"

- when I click on some folders in tree I sometimes get choose icon set and browser associatio windows popping up.. or browse for folder window

- sometimes the tree moves back to previous selection after clicking

I'm using the current version, MD5 checked out. Maybe it's XP and up only?

Seems ok, no problems here (of course my testings are miserable).
The bookmark issue is gone (by now).

Small request on the bookmark editor:

When selecting/deleting/moving any bookmark, could it be kept selected or select the upper/down one? It is strange to have to select always a bookmark.

It's great, it's really come a long way. Can't wait until an official release is arranged.

So much better than the others I searched for :).
The only thing I can wish for is that for it to be faster...
Oh, and when are you doing a real PAF?

I could not determine a way to find the size of multiple files. In windows explorer I select all or multiple files and then Alt-Enter or right click/properties. Is there another method in Xenon to find the size of multiple selected files?

Here's my wishlist before I can break away from explorer and go to this (which I'd like to do):

• Context menu (copy/move/etc) in the tree view. Currently only works in the file list.
• Drag and drop in the tree view.
• 'Open with...' added to context menu to browse for and open with any app. Perhaps with option to add the picked app to the internal file association.
• Status bar with similar information to explorer (file description, folder size, filecount, etc).
• More consistent file dialogs for multiple file operations. Currently just a graphic pops up for each file/folder copied/moved/deleted. A single graphic with animation and/or changing text would be nicer.
• 'Yes to All' and 'No to All' options on deletes/overwrites of multiple files.
• Single click on highlighted file/folder to rename like explorer would be nice but not big priority.

Thanks, keep up the good work!

I think it's changed a bit between versions, and now with tab implementations, so I'll ask.

How do you navigate with keys? I always navigate with keys. When entering a new directory, the down key highlights in the folder pane, left key goes back, right key goes into the highlighted folder. How do I move around the folders in the folder pane without entering a directory or going back?

Testing under Windows 2000, E6300, 2GB RAM - a perfectly capable machine. There is no real reason that anything should go slowly, except for lots of disconnected network drives.

• I reckon that a "Refresh" item would be good in the context menu
• Also, it's standard under Windows to have "Yes" selected when deleting a file.
• Why load that big shredding graphic when deleting?
• &Settings -> File &Associations Editor. If you press &Save or &Cancel, it closes, but if you press the escape key, it puts up an mbQuestion, MB_YESNO message box, with the text "Would you like to save your changes?" I would expect escape to cancel, not offer the choice between Save and Cancel.
• &Settings -> Get Folder &Sizes. Upon restart, it was still showing them (ever so slowly...) but the menu item was unchecked.
• &Settings -> Show .. item. Doesn't refresh page - you need to refresh it manually.
• &Settings -> Choose Icon Set. Refreshes even if you press cancel. Also, doesn't change folder icons, etc. It only changes the toolbars.
• &Settings -> Homepage. No description in the folder selection that opens up. It should say more than "Homepage".
• &Settings -> &Homepage and Settings -> Show &Hidden Files. Same accesskey - should be different.
• &Settings -> Choose Icon Set, Settings -> Show .. Item, and Bookmarks -> Bookmark editor. No accesskey - each should be given one.
• &Help -> &Help. Should be given "F1" as its keyboard shortcut. Also forces the use of FFPE (which may produce an "Another instance of Firefox running..." message if non-portable Firefox is running, or a "Cannot find the file 'G:\PortableApps\XenonPortable\..\FirefoxPortable\FirefoxPortable.exe'..." message followed by an "Error Opening File" - "The file could not be opened" if FFPE isn't installed)
• &View -> &Style should be disabled under Win2K if not supported (as I glean from higher up in this thread).
• &View -> Show &Folders. I reckon that the Folders pane should have a title and x button, like in Explorer.
• The menu icons (16x16) are being displayed in a 13x13 space, trimming out the bottom and right
• When in G:, when leaving the &Edit and &View menus, sometimes it goes to Computer - is it reading the go up a directory button?
• Can't use the keyboard to navigate between menus and submenus - only up and down work - or to execute menu items by pressing Enter (can use accesskeys)
• In the folder contents display, the first item's text is blue, and when selected, its background color is a bright blue - why?
• Can't navigate between tabs with Ctrl+[Shift+]Tab. Tab closing is with Ctrl+F4, but that's OK. It's just that I'm used to Ctrl+W... Could you use both?

I think that that'll be enough to be getting on with...

An apology to those of you who don't like having to scroll down so far...

I just wanted to confirm that this works as follows:

Windows 95/98/Me: Incompatible, will not launch
Windows 2000: Partial functionality (no detail, icon or tile view)
Windows XP/Vista: Full feature set

Is the above correct? If so, then this won't be making it into the platform as the default file manager as the goal of the platform is to work on all Windows OSes. For the default I'll dust off the Delphi-based one I was working on at a later point (it's smaller and has broader compatibility).

If you're in details view, zebra striping is on as expected. But if you then switch the view to something else (like List), the striping stays on. Once you refresh (F5) it goes away. The solution is to do a refresh on view change in the code.

1.4.9.5 has the navigation in tile view working fine, thanks. However, in this version, the file association editor appears not to work, the error when attempting to open is:

---------------------------
AutoIt Error
---------------------------
Line -1:


Error: Subscript used with non-Array variable.
---------------------------
OK
---------------------------


P.S. You forgot Help -> About.

And, and also, just a note, when you hit backspace, there's an AutoIt error, and Xenon crashes. You'll want to have that fixed as many users are used to backspace from Explorer.

Windows Vista pt-PT w/o SP1

Language menu doesn't work.

Didn't test any further as I have no time now.

Drag & Drop, I follow.

Anywho, here's the results:

1. Launched Xenon Portable
2. First tab was to the root of my drive (F)
3. Opened new tab in F:\Documents\Music
4. Dragged music file from F:\Documents\Music and dropped on tab 'F:'
5. Small inch and a half by inch and a half window opens saying 'F:'
6. Clicked 'OK' to pointless window, cut splash window displays
7. One second later, error opens above splash window

---------------------------
AutoIt Error
---------------------------
Line 0  (File "F:\PortableApps\XenonPortable\App\xenon\Move.a3x"):



Error: Error opening the file.


---------------------------
OK   
---------------------------

I'll test it out a bit more.

Edit: I tried multiple times, mutiple different setups. They all flash the desitination in an OK box, show cut splash screen, and then pose that error. Also, the issue with the file association editor not showing icons still resides.

This version works much better. There`s a couple issues I notivced.

When dropping files onto a tab to paste them, it displays the `Cut` screen, which should be the `Paste` screen, right...

Perhaps add a more info to the About box as I mentioned above.

Highlighting some files and pressing the cut button in the toolbar doesn`t seem to work.

When opening the Tree View in Vista (And I notice this only in Vista) it displays it as blank until you refresh it, perhaps and auto refresh after opening tree view.

I think `Go to the Home drive.` should be reworded a bit since that could also be a folder when set by the user.

Edit:

Bug: When backspacing in the search area WITHIN the Xenon File Manager, it displays and error:

---------------------------
AutoIt Error
---------------------------
Line -1:

Error: Unknown function name.
---------------------------
OK
---------------------------

And closes.