INTERACT FORUM
More => Old Versions => Media Center 12 (Development Ended) => Topic started by: JONCAT on February 13, 2008, 07:13:47 pm
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The ability to run two instances of Media Center, combined with the ability to customize a Send To list of external applications, and some various recent posts here made me consider the possibility of using solely MC to navigate through my PC, access files, move & copy files, and open files with specific applications (i.e. NEVER leave MC, cling to it for dear life, etc.)
I thought maybe the "recursive" option would give me the ability to view folders in Tile mode when selecting via tree, but as I suspected given the definition of recursivity...that's not what happens.
I opened a .pdf file in Documents the other day and it was opened by Acrobat reader; I suspect other doc types work similarly.
Speed Commander was installed the other day, a variant of Total Commander, and this is what led to this experiement (in progress).
I haven't tried using the Disk Location mode; I wonder if that would allow me to view folders as Tiles (single folder) with the option of recursive as well.
DC
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But MC is very slow compared to explorer etc. right? or am i missing something here?
I usually deal with networked drives and find MC to slow to use as explorer.
Is it possible to have folder shortcuts open with MC instead of explorer?
Or leave MC running in the background and have View Scheme shorcuts on the desktop?
It would be sweet for my HTPC, but not so much for my workstation.
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But MC is very slow compared to explorer etc. right? or am i missing something here?
MC should be pretty fast to list files in the "My Computer" area. It's nicely threaded so doing large, recursive views of a folder won't block the UI.
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I think Planet Earth's almost ready for the MC OS. I myself am sick of biting Bill Gates' bathtub bubbles--er, using the Windows OS.
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MC is fast to open/explore the tree, but would it be possible to simple map the tree to Tiles view?
If I select My Computer, I would see Tiles of the sub-folders. It would nice to see all the sub-folders and files in that folder then be able to explore the sub-folders in Tile view, ultimately replacing windows explorer.
The recursive mode can take awhile, even with a fast cpu and snappy machine, and you lose the folder structure. If this is something something easy to implement, I can't see it being anything but a real bonus for MC.
DC
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I must admit, the recursive view (all inclusive) seems to take longer than you want it to. Not sure if anything can be done about this, it isn't exactly a heavily-used feature, so there's no sense loading it at startup. All the same, some sort of "time passing/we're working on it" graphic would help for this and other features where it does take some time to get feedback.
By comparison, however, Bill Gates' windows explorer takes an eternity if it navigates into a folder with as many items as an MC library has. Difference being, most folders don't have that many items.
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But MC is very slow compared to explorer etc. right? or am i missing something here?
I usually deal with networked drives and find MC to slow to use as explorer.
Is it possible to have folder shortcuts open with MC instead of explorer?
Or leave MC running in the background and have View Scheme shorcuts on the desktop?
It would be sweet for my HTPC, but not so much for my workstation.
Recursive views don't bog down the UI which is nice, but they can take a bit. That's why I thought having the option to display/map the tree selection as Tiles would be helpful. I could have one tab (or one instance of MC) displaying Tiles: My Computer>Drive letters>folders.
I just thought maybe MC was set up this way and explored. Imagine having 5 tabs open for various drives & folders and the tree expanded; you'd have a lot of "mobility".
DC
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The hard part with doing what you want is MC does not really have support for folders. Its essentially a files viewer. And the idea is to use panes as a more powerful way of viewing than the limited hierarchical model most file browsers have.
You can use folders in panes or via the tree (which is the main use i have for it) but thats different to using it mainly for browsing, as you prolly are very used to win explorer now for a long time.
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Check out xyplorer.com if you want a superb replacement for Windows explorer.