TLB suggestions/bugs

After using TLB for few months i can freely say that it`s by far one of the best apps i ever used and Yuri has been one of the kindest developers. Many things i wanted, i found in TLB, yet i`d like to suggest few more i think would be usefull in general.

First i`d like to start with the My Computer menu.

I made a virtual menu leading to My Computer. However i found few things that could use improvement and bugfixes.

First, USB and External drives don`t remember their settings and icons. For exaple, i keep setting my external USB HD and USB DVD burner to "Don`t expand" and i change their icons. But each time i mount them, none of the settings are saved.

Then, each time i unmount a drive, instead of the icon dissapearing from the virtual menu, it`s stays there and displays the "unaviable drive" icon. It would be nice if it dissapeared, like it appeared, upon mounting/unmounting a drive.

Also it would be great if we could rename drives in My Computer virual menu. I know i can use TweakUI to remove drive letters, but i need them sometimes, yet i hate seeing "My Drive (C:\)" in the menu, instead od renaming it to my choice (or in my case, just removing the drive letter)

This has been mentioned before, but removing unused icons from the save files would be great and would help reduce the size of the saved file.

Another thing i found was that "Load on startup" doesn`t always work.

For example, i have a virtual menu for a drive where i keep all of my documents and i only want to have my Programs and Pictures folder expanding. I`ve set that and it works fine (the other folders i`ve set not to expand do just as designed). I`ve set this Virtual Menu to "Load on tartup" and it does that (there is no lag when i open it for the first time.

However, even though Programs and Pictures folders are set to expand and have "Load on startup" selected, each time i open them after i restart/turn on my computer, i get the annoying "loading" even though i don`t have many files in them and it was few mins after the computer turned on.

The last thing i`d like to see fixed is about the MediaPlugin. i`m using it for controlling iTunes and each time i close iTunes i get the "One or more applications is using iTunes scripting interface...." and i would like to see that avoided. I`m sure this is the fault of the Media plugin cause when i change it to WinAmp or close TLB, iTunes closes normally.

Also i`d like to repeat my request for a quick player change option i mentioned in this thread http://forum.tsoftcentral.com/viewtopic....highlight= since i think it would be a great option, especially for pple who use more than one player, like iTunes and WinAmp like i do.

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Thanks in advance Yuri

First, USB and External drives don`t remember their settings and icons. For exaple, i keep setting my external USB HD and USB DVD burner to "Don`t expand" and i change their icons. But each time i mount them, none of the settings are saved.

Then, each time i unmount a drive, instead of the icon dissapearing from the virtual menu, it`s stays there and displays the "unaviable drive" icon. It would be nice if it dissapeared, like it appeared, upon mounting/unmounting a drive.

Thank you for bug report. In the next version this bug will be fixed.

Also it would be great if we could rename drives in My Computer virual menu. I know i can use TweakUI to remove drive letters, but i need them sometimes, yet i hate seeing "My Drive (C:\)" in the menu, instead od renaming it to my choice (or in my case, just removing the drive letter)

OK, I'll try to add this feature in one of the next versions.

Another thing i found was that "Load on startup" doesn`t always work.

Where the Programs and Pictures folders are located? If these folders are inside other Virtual Folder then you must turn on the option "Load on startup" for all parent virtual folders.

Other thing that can cause the "loading" message: on startup performance is very low becaue of loading many services and programs TLB load menu using low priority thread so maybe you are too fast. Try to wait some time while Windows stop read something from disk and check you "Load on startup" folders.

Here are some more things i`d like to see and also a bug that re-appeared.

One of the things that was the most annoying in 3.2 was that it wasn`t sorting folders correctly. It would mix them even thought the folder was set to "sort by type" it would mix the folders and the files. 3.2.1 fixed this but 3.2.2 re-introduced this bug, although somewhat differently. Now it mixes the folders but it mixed them alphabetically and doesn`t mix them file files. I attached a screenshot of whatis going on. What i`d like to see is sorting by type the way it`s done in windows. It would first sort them by type and then alphabetically.



Then there is one thing i`d really like to see in TLB 3.3.
I have a virtual menu with all of my files, sorted by folders. Most of them i`ve set to "do not expand" but some like "Pictures" and "Programs" i want to be able to browse. However i only want to see the 1st level of those folders (so i could see folders of programs inside the "Programs" folder).

For the "Pictures" foder it was easy cause i have only 5 subfolders in it and i`ve manually set them to "do no expand". That way i have my TLB menu this way:

My Files TBL button
-Documents
-Music
-Movies
-Icons
-Books
-Pictures
............. - Family photos
............. - Wallpapers
............. - Screenshots
Programs
............. (and this is where i run into a problem)

In my "Programs" folder i keep all of the apps i use, each inside a folder with app's name. I have a lot (60+) folders in there and it would be very, very annoying and time consuming to go through them and set each one to "do not expand". What i suggest is an option to set the number of levels a "folder" would expand. So one could have a folder expand to all levels, or convenietnly expand the number of sublevel at his will.

That way i could have the following structure:


My Files TBL button
-Documents
-Music
-Movies
-Icons
-Books
-Pictures
............. - Family photos
............. - Wallpapers
............. - Screenshots
Programs
............. - TLB
............. - WinAmp
............. - WMP
............. - and so on, without having to set each of those sub folders to not expand.



I also mentioned this few times before but i`d really like to see this in the Media plugin since it would be much easier to change players for people like me who use more than one player. I tried some tricks i found on the boards but none of them worked very well.



I would also like to ask if and how we can set the margins for the items in the menu. I tried changing the setting for "left/right margin of icon view menu' in the "Margins" part of TLB settings, but it didn`t seem to work.



Thanks again for listening to us Yuri.



System and app specs:

TLB 3.2.2 beta
Media plugin 4.2.0.0
XP Pro Service Pack 1
Shell 6.0.2800.1106
IE 6.0.2800.1106

P4 2.66Ghz
512mb DDR 333
Ati Mobility R9000 w 64DDR

What a magnificent example of how to submit a topic on this forum. All the detail needed is there, and illustrated too...

Well done Unbeliever. =D>

thanks

i`ll be even happier if Yuri adds this to TLB :wink:

Unbeliever, thank you for your suggestions. I'll release most of them in the next version.

Thank you Yuri.

You trully are one of the best developers i`ve ever seen!

Unbeliever
Please can you test this version
I've fixed the sorting by file type. Now it must be more correctly. If something wrong let me know.

[EDIT]
INSTALLATION:
1) close all TLB toolbars
2) Log off/Log on
3) Replace tlb.dll in the TLB installation folder

Also the bug with removed drives must be fixed too.

Yuri, you are incredible!

As you said, both of those bugs are fixed and everything is working as it should

INCREDIBLE!

UPDATE on the removable drives bug.

even thought the bug with removable drives not dissapearing when ejected has been fixed i noticed something else.

Everything worked fine but after a while (today) i noticed that drive labels for removable drives are not updating anymore. Since i have an external DVD and HD and only 1 USB free i have to switch them from time to time and the label sticks if i unmount one and plug the other unless i right click and choose refresh. It also ussualy stick to the name of the drive that was mounted first.

Another thing is, when i first installed 3.2.2.1 update Yuri posted i set the folders i have on my external drive not to expand so i had this structure:

Drive
......Folder 1
......Folder 2
......Folder 3

However, now i tried to set the drive itself not to expand so i would have just a Drive shortcut but it doesn`t remember it when i unmount the drive so it still returns to the "old" settings as follows:

Drive
......Folder 1
......Folder 2
......Folder 3

It also doesn`t remember the settings for my external DVD so it always sets it so all folders are expandable. The weird thing is that all these bugs weren`t displaying when i installed the update and they started displaying today. Also i didn`t install anything since i updated TLB so i doubt that could be a problem.

Unbeliever wrote:

The last thing i`d like to see fixed is about the MediaPlugin. i`m using it for controlling iTunes and each time i close iTunes i get the "One or more applications is using iTunes scripting interface...." and i would like to see that avoided. I`m sure this is the fault of the Media plugin cause when i change it to WinAmp or close TLB, iTunes closes normally.

This is still present. I use the ratings mediaplugin for iTunes which is great. I know you can press the X on the plugin to shutdown itunes, but is there any way to stop this scripting interface warning appearing when iTunes is shutdown itself.

Unbeliever has illustrated the problem in his initial post.

Thanks. David.