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[gpvillamil]

There seem to be two separate (and non-overlapping) ways of customizing views.

1) Right-clicking on a View Scheme in the tree leads you to an "Edit View Scheme..." dialog where you can customize panes in a view, and a series of filter.

2) Right-clicking in the list pane itself allows you to "Customize Current View..." which refers to the columns displayed and their sort order.

For most users, it is not clear what the difference is between "Customize" and "Edit", esp when both refer to "View".

Please unify your definition of "View", and put all the commands related to them in one place... At the very least, in the Edit View Scheme dialog put in a button labelled "columns and sorting" which takes you to Customize View... and vice versa.

Or consider renaming "Edit View Scheme" to "Define Pane Layout" and "Customize View..." to "Define Columns and Sorting" as an alternative.

[Matt]

That bothers me too.

Maybe one dialog with tabs would be cleaner.

Any other ideas?

[gpvillamil]

That bothers me too.

Maybe one dialog with tabs would be cleaner.

Any other ideas?

Well, MC doesn't use tabs anywhere else in the interface, so that might not be a good idea. (Another thing you should take care of is consistency...)

Perhaps one carefully-worded dialog would be better. (Also please refer to panes as "panes" and not "items"...)

[Jaguu]

Well, it might be the beginning of a tab-oriented area in MC.
Suggested the same many moons ago.

And if you plan to change that, you colud also make a tab to select the categories you want to display and maybe options to define  our own categories...

[Matt]

Also please refer to panes as "panes" and not "items"...

Remember it applies to the tree as well as the panes.

Thanks everyone.  Keep the ideas rolling.

[glynor]

I agree fully that this feels clumsy and unintuitive.  I think it's also better to have all this type of "view" data (since some of it is anyway) stored in the library on a view scheme - by view scheme basis.

I think the best way to do it would be to add a Step #4, #5, and #6 to the Edit View Scheme dialog (since you've got the multiple step thing going in there anyway).  They wouldn't need to be that big, because you could use Presets as the main way to apply settings, and hide the complex dialogs under buttons ... For example:

Step 4 would define the Columns and Step 5 would define Sorting.  They wouldn't actually have the GUI to edit the individual columns, they would just be Combo-Box type things where you could select a Preset (just like the preset system you have in the "Customize View" dialogs).  One for Columns and one for Sorting.  Step 6 could handle the List Style settings and be pretty much as is (though maybe you could hide the thumbnail options under a command button too).

Then you could hide the main "Define Preset" dialogs, either as a choice inside those Combo-boxes or a command button inside the Step's "frame".  It wouldn't even be that hard to make the changes, since you would just be using pieces of the existing UI and associating it with the View Schemes explicitly.  It would add some complexity to the Edit View Scheme dialog, but not so much, and would keep the general layout in that window (which I think is functional and fine).

As far as renaming "View Schemes" I think there is no need, and it will only serve to confuse your v9 and v10 users.  Plus, for those of us (the silent majority?) who actually use the tree view, switching it to something column related could be confusing.

[glynor]

Well, MC doesn't use tabs anywhere else in the interface, so that might not be a good idea. (Another thing you should take care of is consistency...)

Gotta agree here too.  The only other option I think would be to use the Options Dialog "tree-style" system, but as I mentioned above, I don't think it's necessary to hide anything under tabs.