Jump to content

Sky Slate Blueberry Blackcurrant Watermelon Strawberry Orange Banana Apple Emerald Chocolate
Photo

Dynamic Places Bar in Open/Save-dialogs


  • Please log in to reply
8 replies to this topic
mbirth
  • Members
  • 40 posts
  • Last active: Jul 31 2008 11:12 AM
  • Joined: 03 Oct 2005
Did you ever wonder how to change the five "places" in the "places bar" displayed in the newer open/save-dialogs? With TweakUI, there is a possibility to change them - but in a rather static way.

Posted Image

I wrote this little AHK-script to set them depending on the application I am in. So if I'm working in my IDE, the places show folders like "Development" or "HTML". When working in OpenOffice, there are links to "Documents" and similar folders.

Configuration is done through the interface accessible via the Trayicon (doubleclick or menu).

Download source + binary

Cheers,
-mARKUS

Places
  • Guests
  • Last active:
  • Joined: --
http://www.simplisof... ... s&src=Home

mbirth
  • Members
  • 40 posts
  • Last active: Jul 31 2008 11:12 AM
  • Joined: 03 Oct 2005

http://www.simplisoftware.com/Public/index.php?request=Places&src=Home


Yeah, but this tool is similar to TweakUI: You set them once and have these settings in every application.

My script here changes the places in background automatically. So you can have different "places" in different applications instead of one set of places in every application. That's why I made it.

Cheers,
-mARKUS

PhiLho
  • Moderators
  • 6850 posts
  • Last active: Jan 02 2012 10:09 PM
  • Joined: 27 Dec 2005
This seems very interesting and improves greatly the usefulness of such placebar (which I never used until now...).
I have yet to test it, but I like the idea.

Suggestion: make 2 downloads, one for the source, the other for the exe, they are a bit redundant. Indeed, the Zip is still small, so I don't really mind the current download (I just have to rename the file from dlcount.php to FavFolders.zip when I choose Save link target as... in the context menu of the link in Firefox).

Off topic: which visual style do you use, and where did you got it? :-P It looks nice.
Posted Image vPhiLho := RegExReplace("Philippe Lhoste", "^(\w{3})\w*\s+\b(\w{3})\w*$", "$1$2")

mbirth
  • Members
  • 40 posts
  • Last active: Jul 31 2008 11:12 AM
  • Joined: 03 Oct 2005

This seems very interesting and improves greatly the usefulness of such placebar (which I never used until now...).
I have yet to test it, but I like the idea.


Thanks. I used the placebar with the configuration shown in the screenshot for quite a while and got the idea to this script while reading this thread. :-)


Suggestion: make 2 downloads, one for the source, the other for the exe, they are a bit redundant. Indeed, the Zip is still small, so I don't really mind the current download (I just have to rename the file from dlcount.php to FavFolders.zip when I choose Save link target as... in the context menu of the link in Firefox).


I played with the idea of offering two separate downloads but - as you already mentioned - I found the size still acceptable for a single shot. The wrong filename you get in FF might be a problem with FF not recognizing the filename sent in the headers. Opera loads the file as FavFolders.zip.


Off topic: which visual style do you use, and where did you got it? :-P It looks nice.


OT, too: The style is Thallos VS found on DeviantART. The user "-kol" also has some other really nice skins there. You'll need a patched uxtheme.dll though (best done with NeoWin's Patcher).

Cheers,
-mARKUS

Laughing Man
  • Members
  • 84 posts
  • Last active: Oct 25 2007 04:43 AM
  • Joined: 28 Apr 2005
Nice! But it doesn't seem to work with word for some reason..
"I thought what I'd do was I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes" ~ Laughing Man - GITS:SAC

  • Guests
  • Last active:
  • Joined: --

Nice! But it doesn't seem to work with word for some reason..


Office uses another registry location for its places bar and allows more than 5 places. So adding support for it to this script would be somewhat complicated since you also have to use a registry key depending on the installed version.

If you want to try coding it: HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\[Office Version]\Common\Open Find\Places

There are the keys "StandardPlaces" and "UserDefinedPlaces". New places are created by adding a new key "PlacesX" (X being 1..255) to the "UserDefinedPlaces"-key and there adding REG_SZs "Name" and "Path".
Office 2000 only supports displaying 5 places, so you have to hide the entries from "StandardPlaces" by adding a REG_DWORD "Show" with value 0 to each entry.

I'm using OpenOffice.org, so I don't know whether I will implement this by myself some day...

Cheers,
-mARKUS

Laughing Man
  • Members
  • 84 posts
  • Last active: Oct 25 2007 04:43 AM
  • Joined: 28 Apr 2005
That's ok, I was just wondering why it didn't work. (I have other scripts that don't seem to work with Microsoft Word too). Guess I'll just ditch it for OpenOffice's Writer.
"I thought what I'd do was I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes" ~ Laughing Man - GITS:SAC

evl
  • Members
  • 1237 posts
  • Last active: Oct 20 2010 11:41 AM
  • Joined: 24 Aug 2005
Nice script - I've been meaning to try it out for ages and glad I have now :lol:

A couple of thoughts I had:
- For both of the tray Defaults options, it'd be nice to have a confirmation msgbox asking if you are sure AND telling you what they will revert to.
- The exit option could be a separate entry - the user may not want to exit, but only change the defaults.
- Related to the above: I managed to end up with blank buttons (an invalid path) in the save dialog by (I think) trying to restore "Previous Defaults" after having already restored "Windows Defaults".
- The tooltips for the active process don't really seem necessary for everyday use - they could be a tickable option in the tray too.
- Any reason you used Goto instead of SetTimer for CheckActWind? An option to specify how often to check might be helpful too.