It would be useful to have a couple of unobtrusive collection boxes, rather like virtual folders. Let's say there are 3, coloured red, green, and blue (when populated), showing as 3 small squares somewhere.
You can drag files and folders onto them, which collects them in them, but that doesn't actually move the files and folders - so in a sense they are analagous to clipboards you can drag things into. Perhaps they have a number in for the number of items, and glow a normal colour when something is in them and a little-discernable colour when empty.
Then when ready you can drag the box somewhere such as a folder, and its contents are dragged to that destination, which is like pasting them to that destination (dragging with Shift would enforce move, with Ctrl would enforce copy), or right-click the folder and launch a program, or perhaps drag the box onto another such box. Or click one to view its contents as the results (maybe bypassing the current search which you can then revert to) or drag it onto a new tab position to view it etc. Right-click menu on a box would allow actions like emptying it or viewing in a new tab. Perhaps a search function could be used to represent a box in a search query.
David
Virtual Collection Boxes
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void
- Developer
- Posts: 19901
- Joined: Fri Oct 16, 2009 11:31 pm
Re: Virtual Collection Boxes
A "work" pane is on my TODO list.
Drag files/folders to the pane, then move/copy/run/etc..
A "mark" system is on my TODO list.
You would mark files with a certain colored/shaped icon (blue-square, green-triangle, orange-circle, etc..)
There would be a mark column to show the icon and a way to search for marks.
Thank you for the suggestions.
Drag files/folders to the pane, then move/copy/run/etc..
A "mark" system is on my TODO list.
You would mark files with a certain colored/shaped icon (blue-square, green-triangle, orange-circle, etc..)
There would be a mark column to show the icon and a way to search for marks.
Thank you for the suggestions.
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meteorquake
- Posts: 628
- Joined: Thu Dec 15, 2016 9:44 pm
Re: Virtual Collection Boxes
That's fantastic! I would use it a lot. My current thoughts on this would be that -
With marks there's a choice between having a single narrow column that shows a single variable colour mark of choice, or several columns with fixed colours thus allowing multiple colours to be used against a file. My general view is that several fixed-colour columns is more useful than one variable one since it provides multiple marks when needed, however having both types would give the ideal situation that users would have a choice over what they wanted as there are also merits to a single variable colour. Such columns could presumably be shown or hidden just like any other.
In that respect coloured collection boxes are somewhat similar to the idea of fixed colour column marks, and I think these coloured markers against each file in a marking column could be similar to what I expressed above in that you could drag a coloured column-type marker somewhere and it would drag all those files, or right-click a coloured marker to action all the files so marked with something. I think you could drag-drop a selection on a colour mark column and the selection would have all its items marked with that colour. I think if you dropped it on a variable colour item they could adopt that colour, but any other variable colour you'd need to right-click and apply a colour. Perhaps also a right-click that inverts the chosen colour mark in the active list, perhaps with a warning popup if there were marks outside that list.
I can see a work pane could have named collection boxes appearing like folders, as many as you like to create and name, that has its own merits. Perhaps they could be called virtual folders but that name might be useful for alias folders there that are actually real folders under an alias name which actually move items when they are dragged in, as opposed to collecting items without moving them.
Given the similarity of the code required for many of these operations, it's quite possible all these methods could be provided with the user choosing whatever style they want...
David
With marks there's a choice between having a single narrow column that shows a single variable colour mark of choice, or several columns with fixed colours thus allowing multiple colours to be used against a file. My general view is that several fixed-colour columns is more useful than one variable one since it provides multiple marks when needed, however having both types would give the ideal situation that users would have a choice over what they wanted as there are also merits to a single variable colour. Such columns could presumably be shown or hidden just like any other.
In that respect coloured collection boxes are somewhat similar to the idea of fixed colour column marks, and I think these coloured markers against each file in a marking column could be similar to what I expressed above in that you could drag a coloured column-type marker somewhere and it would drag all those files, or right-click a coloured marker to action all the files so marked with something. I think you could drag-drop a selection on a colour mark column and the selection would have all its items marked with that colour. I think if you dropped it on a variable colour item they could adopt that colour, but any other variable colour you'd need to right-click and apply a colour. Perhaps also a right-click that inverts the chosen colour mark in the active list, perhaps with a warning popup if there were marks outside that list.
I can see a work pane could have named collection boxes appearing like folders, as many as you like to create and name, that has its own merits. Perhaps they could be called virtual folders but that name might be useful for alias folders there that are actually real folders under an alias name which actually move items when they are dragged in, as opposed to collecting items without moving them.
Given the similarity of the code required for many of these operations, it's quite possible all these methods could be provided with the user choosing whatever style they want...
David
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crimzind
- Posts: 24
- Joined: Sat Oct 14, 2023 4:48 am
Re: Virtual Collection Boxes
Just want to echo a request for something of this nature.
I do all sorts of weird projects where I'm working on various files across drives and directories, and I'll use Everything to find a bunch of things, drag into a piece of software to do a batch task on, but there's no easy way to... mark files as "done" or to be focused on. To "collect"/group things without actually moving files around.
Recently, I've been tinkering with Whisper to transcribe all sorts of media, and sometimes things crash, and then having to hunt down which files finished, which ones were queued, etc... ugh. Yeah. I would desperately love some Everything-integrated feature for some sort of persistent collections/groups/virtual-folders/bins/tags/markers/whatever to help with keeping track of these sorts of things.
I do all sorts of weird projects where I'm working on various files across drives and directories, and I'll use Everything to find a bunch of things, drag into a piece of software to do a batch task on, but there's no easy way to... mark files as "done" or to be focused on. To "collect"/group things without actually moving files around.
Recently, I've been tinkering with Whisper to transcribe all sorts of media, and sometimes things crash, and then having to hunt down which files finished, which ones were queued, etc... ugh. Yeah. I would desperately love some Everything-integrated feature for some sort of persistent collections/groups/virtual-folders/bins/tags/markers/whatever to help with keeping track of these sorts of things.