Filer status?

Hi ALL!
Sorry to ask buit not found nothing around...
I see that Filer was stoped at 53.31 from about 2 years...
I havent found nothing new neither on OpenAmiga site.

Just to know, maybe Orgin dont have time to continue with it? Any other motivatio?


Thank you!

Is something missing or doesnt work?

Last i heard was that Filer was "bug-free" and working as planned, so why do you need an update?

At least one bug exist and known,
if you click for example on 'Date' to have
files ordered by date the header bar disappear,
this way it's impossible to change the order a second
time.

yep, that's a quiet annoying bug..

@Raziel
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I think he just want more new stuff from "todo". More the better :)

I think the opposite in this case, there a lot of options in Filer and not well organized imho (a bit chaotic imho), let's still the basic functionality then eventually improve it

1000 functionality does not always make a tool better

... sure limitation still with the current OS so until they improve the system we can't do so mutch

Well...
For me Filer was an usefull tool but I miss something...dunno exactly what...maybe some new feature that I need or maybe as sayd samo79, was only the little caothic aspect of filer itself, dunno...
I remeber that some limitations of the WB, but also remember that when you scna big dirs and Filer quesry for type/make thumbs was really slow...simply try listers under MOS to get what I'm saying...
Also for thumb creation was a must to have Exif thumbs support that Filer miss atm...as the ability to show files as in wb windows as icons...

So I need a more userfriendly feel probably...that was because I like Filer but much of the times I have to copy files accros my HDD I still use DOpus4...

Seems no one likes it anyway? ;)

@orgin

Don't get me wrong, i use Filer everyday as well so --> it means i find it quite usefull even now, but still imho it need also to be reorganized a little bit, for example cutting some not immediately usefull features or feature that soon will be integrated into the OS directly (thumbnails for example) and leave only the basic one features

Let's see, what we miss primary on our AmigaOS GUI interface ?

We miss a normal filemanager, means we need to open 1000 window before reaching our directory and so on

This feature is availible on Filer and it's the best basic one, so great ... let's starting with this "basic" feature and going to improve the user interaction ... no need tons of new options when for example to change the files visualization we need 10 click, having an extra window popups in front just to rename a file and so on ..

Just look at Ambient, windows manager on Win and any other modern GUI out there

I know creating a GUI from scratch is a very difficult job, needs a lot of user interaction studying and so ..

And just to add, maybe all will be better if you can be able to work with the Workbench source directly, maybe that's way this sense of a "not well integrated" results ..

I'm not an GUI expert aswell (i even not a developer at all), i just try to understand what it might look wrong and how we can improve the usability in general to make it more user-friendly

@samo79

Well, unfortunately I don't have the time to rebuild the whole application on a daily basis when the "next guy" comes in with a grand idea of how it's supposed to be done.

On more than a few occasions I had one or a few guys bugging me about adding or changing something and then a week later or so a set of other guys wanting things in a completely different way just to have to change it back or to a third alternative the following week.

Amiga people are hard to satisfy. Some people want options, other don't, some people want this while others don't and some want something complete different.

At some point I just couldn't keep up with it anymore.

I'm slowly working on getting the search functionality up and running again, when that's stable I'll release a new version. But after that I'll just do some minor tweaks here and there to make it do what I need it to do.

If someone else wants to get into the "next guy's ideas" game after that then they are very welcome to do so. Just one small tip on that though, one guy working on it is not enough.

@Orgin

I love Filer... I donnot use DOpus at all, ergo = great. However, speaking of useability/userinteraction, there might be some additional ideas. We may open a new thread about that... I could contribute there

I like it, but as sayed above I neeed some clean up work...And yes the much iimportant thing was to have a general speed up in thumb creation/file recognition...
Was so much hard to implement exuf thumb read? IT will improve a lot the Filer experience...
And also a "View by Icon" option will be fine :)
And also a proper drag'n'drop feature was missing...cant drag files to ASL and to AmiDock was ugly :P But I know was an OS limitation...

So I llike Filer but need some little more work to be really uswfull to me...

simply taht :)

Related to Filer...

If it helps I've added a nifty feature into the next version of Jack... press F in the interface opens two instances of Filer side-by-side. Filer has in-built arguments to support that behaviour.

This is gonna be very useful for me, saves time and less frustrating.

The only reason I ever use Filer is to move files between destination A and B - if I want a new instance it never opens the window intelligently instead it just calls the Filer icon again and using any tooltypes that may be set.

@orgin

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Yep exactly and i can understand you at 101% on that, adding and adding or removing features again and again just to satisfy during the coding all users around is maybe the real reason of why program might looks a bit "chaotic" now

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I think that would have been better to set a basic structure first according to the OS4 developers, maybe just the filemanager part (with a very basic code for example), then improve at best the user interaction, for example thinks longer:

How many click a user need to do to be able to reach this specific operation ?

I think examples exists even outside the Amiga community, then of course each solution might have pro and con and surely it's quite impossibile to satisfy all, but still, a sort of compromise can be reach in a way or another ..

Your efforts is really good aniway, If I were an OS4 developer i would take several part of your code

I got a small question that isn't specific to Filer but I thought that I should ask anyway. When it comes to disk operations it anoys me that the speed is so different between applications and AOS itself. Since update 3 copying/moving files bekame really quick in AOS when using workbench/shell to copy/move files while DOPus 4 came in second place and Filer last. With update 2 on the other hand I believe that Filer was equally fast as AOS.

This is anoying because I really like Filer.. and DOpus 4 as well actually but I was using Filer almost exclusively when it was working. Powerfull, easy to use, looking nice. So when the new version is released I would love for it to be as fast when it comes to disk operations as AOS.

I also wonder if anyone got any ideas why the result is different? I thought these kinds of applications used system functions and therefor the speed should be the same? I've clocked copying the same file (an ISO) between the three and there are some big differences between them on my machine.

And the machine is an A1 XE. Can't remember if I used the SII0680-card or the SII3512 but AFAIK the speed is similar. I used the same file and harddisks in all programs though. Also I don't think that this is something new, it's been this way forever AFAIK, even back to the 3.x days.

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I know you said that with a smiley but I feel a strong urge to say that
it's the best utility i have on my SAM. I feel utterly crippled without it.

Keep up the good work when you have time for more, but it's hugely valuable just in it's current state.

Samo and Tuxedo are somewhat out on a limb by themselves I think...

> Seems no one likes it anyway? ;)

Well, I must admit that for me filer is the most commonly used tool, I feel the workbench way of browsing folder frustrating, slow and cahotic.

Obviously, I would appreciated that filer could be able to interact directly with my brain and change its layout and its behaviour on the fly depending on what I'm doing at a specific moment.

At the moment the current version just works, which is simply great.

@orgin Quote:
Don't be silly, it's the single best utility for AmigaOS4, and I use it every day . But it could do with at least a fix for the bug which appeared with recent OS update.

And as Tuxedo says, the thumbnail system seems to slow Filer down a lot (while scanning thumbnails), even though it scans in the background. I don't know why that is, but maybe it is unavoidable with the current GUI implementation?

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If you were getting too many ideas to implement, then fair enough. But it seems a bit sad to go from trying to do everything to not doing anything. Perhaps you could do a poll of the requested features, to see what is *really* important?

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In that case you should stop letting your users design your program, as they don't (in general) understand the real problems. i.e. User X may say they want feature Y, without realising this will have unwanted side-effect Z.

IMHO better to get *general ideas* for what should be added or changed, but specify the precise features according to how you think it should be done (with the allowance for *tweaking* it later after user feedback). Doing this is easier when you have a clear idea what you want your program to be.

Otherwise you do risk your program becoming a "jack of all trades", and thus a "master of none" or possibly worse it will look like the car designed by Homer Simpson... (I'm not saying Filer is like that, but it was certainly heading in that direction.)

@samo79 Quote:
NO, please don't go removing features, as all of them are useful (and in fact needed by many people). But hiding the "advanced" features in a separate 'page', and/or having better defaults, would help beginners a lot.

e.g. Something which would help beginners SO much is simply having "Reverse source/dest button" ticked by default. I remember reading many users really confused by the Source window showing "Destination" & vice versa (even though this is logical behaviour from a certain perspective).

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Of course not... except when you have 100s of different feature requests, then even one feature can seem daunting (as you know there are 99 more to do after that).

If there was a poll which showed users were only really interested in 4 particular features & changes, out of everything suggested, then perhaps Orgin might feel a bit more inclined to resuming coding of Filer?

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I like it, and use it all the time.