[REQUEST] New column: "Icon"

Elektro · 2016-03-25 23:05

Hi

I think that it could be a great thing to implement an additional "Icon" column that will be used to display the associated file-icon of each file in the files table.

This way, we could differentiate better the file-types that are inside the table (instead of resizing a large column containing a string), and best results by sorting the items by this imaginary "Icon" column, which, would have or not (it depends) the same sorting results as the Extension column does.

In my point of view, it could be icons in 16x16px at poor/medium quality to avoid making too expensive the loading of big amount of files in the table, it would be an optional column that the end-user will decide to use or not, so really does not matter too much the overall algorithm expensiveness.

Thanks for read.

Last edited by Elektro (2016-03-26 00:33)

Andrew · 2016-03-26 19:30

Even at 16x16px, a potential issue (depending on the implementation) could be slowdown in case there are lots of files. Also, I'm struggling to think of common instances where sorting by icon (vs extension) would be helpful. Perhaps you could provide an example?

Last edited by Andrew (2016-03-26 19:30)

Elektro · 2016-03-26 20:54

Andrew wrote:

Even at 16x16px, a potential issue (depending on the implementation) could be slowdown in case there are lots of files

Not really, as you said, it depends on the implementation.

A good implementation could be a sort of selective icon extraction on filetype grouping, a short explanation:

The user drag&drop 1.000 files, all are non-exe files, and the same filetype (say .txt).

So, the file-icon associated to that file-extension only need to be extracted once, then the same image stream can be and should be reutilized/referenced for the rest of 999 files/rows, instead of getting the same results that we can get extracting the file-icon 1.000 times.
So, applying this logic with any other non-executable files, we will speed-up the overall procedure and maintain a proper memory usage, avoiding the instantiation of a duplicate of the same image 1.000 times (or whatever times).

Also it depends on the limitations of the current programming language (better said, on it's UI framework or the 3rd party UI framework in use by the author), I mean, if Delphi draws the entire listview/table content when the control window is drawn, or if it only draws the rows that are visible on the current control bounds until the user produces a window re-drawn when scrolling to see other rows, I'm not a Delphi guy so I don't know how their built-in controls works internally.

Andrew wrote:

I'm struggling to think of common instances where sorting by icon (vs extension) would be helpful. Perhaps you could provide an example?

It will be very helpful to gain a general performance improvement in the user environment, for the end-user side.

In psycology, one much known thing of "The Basics", is that the eyes can recognize and store an image instantly, in comparison of sorting by text, your eyes need to put a lot of effort and attention or concentration to read a dot, and a extension, then build an index of that line in your mind to still compare with the lines below consecutively reading and reading text. A image/icon representation will be much, much faster to anyone to localize any thing in the sorted results, its a fact that has no discuss.

Also, the sorting will give different results than the extension column, when sorting executable files with different icons, which well... could be better or not, depending on the task that the end-user will to realize to compare those icons, who knows, I can't give an example of that, exists thousands of possible reasons to pick just one.

Keep in mind, that the important thing is that it is a reasonable feature to add, and will introduce the end-user to a new optional user-experience using that column for whatever he likes to use, then why this need to be discussed?. Really there is no reason to say or to think "NO, its a bad idea", i hope Den4b think like me, hehe.

Thanks for read.

Last edited by Elektro (2016-03-26 21:14)

Andrew · 2016-03-27 18:55

Note that I never said "it's a bad idea". Yes, I agree with you regarding icons helping to distinguish files faster. However for that the icons can simply be added before the file names themselves. My point was regarding having an entirely separate column for them, because frankly I can't think of very many uses for sorting by icon vs sorting by extension. I mean, perhaps some niche use case such as when all your music files irrespective of format have a single icon and you need to quickly single them out, but I find it quite improbable.

In short, if there's no major performance hit then icons before file names sounds ok. Denis will have to say however if it's a good idea, and moreover whether icons should have their own dedicated column.

den4b · 2016-03-27 22:54

This feature request was added to the list with a low priority. It doesn't provide significant benefits, it's more of a "nice to have".

It is also quite difficult to implement across many platforms. (sneak peek at the future of ReNamer)

den4b Forum

#1 2016-03-25 23:05

[REQUEST] New column: "Icon"

#2 2016-03-26 19:30

Re: [REQUEST] New column: "Icon"

#3 2016-03-26 20:54

Re: [REQUEST] New column: "Icon"

#4 2016-03-27 18:55

Re: [REQUEST] New column: "Icon"

#5 2016-03-27 22:54

Re: [REQUEST] New column: "Icon"

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