I hope this works, my users will love to drag and drop files to docs and mail (easily).

That's a nice sidebar plugin!

Unfortunately, I often get error messages like:
Windows - kein Datenträger (no volume)

Exception Processing Message c0000013 Parameters 75b0bf7c 4 75b0bf7c 75b0bf7c

[Abbrechen] [Wiederholen] [Weiter]
(Cancel, Try Again, Continue)

Looks like a Windows XP error message. It is displayed when the file navigator is first opened, when a file from a Notes document is dropped into the panel and when I collapse all the folders of a drive.

I have an A:\ and D:\ drive without volume and several (valid) subst drives on my machine.

I like this but I have the following observations:

1. Expanding the drive trees on first access is very slow - ideally this needs to be speeded up

2. Collapsing the drive trees is agonisingly slow and displays the hourglass throughout rendering rest of client inoperable until the collapse has happened - ideally this needs to be speeded up and/or not 'locking' up the client

3. If the volume labels could also be displayed that would be great.

regards

ian

@Ian: I think we're up against One of Those Things. Expanding the drive tree before the user is asking for it is not a good idea as it could take ages. Imagine a file server being down... Even asking for the info before UI interaction is Not Done. Imagine some of the drives or folders being CD-ROM drives or other shares on a file server on the other side of the world. Don't lock up until the users have done something to warrant it, it makes them cranky.

@Morten - I get that but I'm not saying expanding it before user asks for it. I'm suggesting it be speeded up when the user asks for it - even the c: drive was very slow (for me). COLLAPSING takes ages, locks up the client and nearly made ME cranky which is unusual because I am patient and understanding

And to re-emphasis: I really like this. I'm being a bit critical and asking for more because I see real utility in it and know my users will to but I feel it needs to be quicker before it would catch on.

Ditto on Ian's comment. This is a *really* useful plugin and I would distribute it to users today except that expanding and collapsing of objects is way too slow - and the entire client is locked up while you wait. Much slower than expanding the same objects in Windows Explorer. I hope there is something that can be done to optimize it.

Everyone, I've asked Lei XL Xiao and Jian Kang to respond but it seems they are out. Stay tuned.

Locking the client should be avoidable by moving the file system access out of the UI thread and displaying something like "Loading content..." while a background thread accesses the file system.

I really hope they can fix the issues. The plugin is a really good idea.

Very, very good idea. This is one of those sidebar apps that a lot of people will use all the time.

My dream app for the sidebar: Have file system like this but the contents are stored in a Notes database. A poor-man's document management system if you will.

I'd pay good money for that to be integrated into the XPage discussion template.

Hi all. Thanks for all your attention and suggession.

1.The plugin is a little slow. When one folder collapse, the whole tree will refresh. I think maybe this refresh could be removed. Do you think remove this will affect your usage? Otherwise, I will try to change some algorithm to improve the speed. Btw, I don't do too much test about the plugin, but on my work machine and test machine, it is not too slow, just about 1-4 seconds when refresh. But maybe my files are not too much or the capability of my computer is well.
2.The volume labels could be displayed, and I will improve this later.
3.I am not sure whether we could avoid the entire client locked up while the file tree is refresh. I will do investigate and give response here later.
@Karsten Lehmann: About your Windows XP error message, I am not sure now. I will do investigate and give response here later.
@Jamie Jenkins: thanks for your idea, we will consider it.

@11 - Nice work and thank you for your response. It is much appreciated.

To answer your questions: I do not think removing the refresh would be an issue. As an oblique example, I was having network issues at work recently and it was not until I tried to expand a network drive that the unavailability of the network became apparent. It was annoying not having the network there on demand but I didn't mind being ignorant of the fact in the interim.

I have about 15 network drives available to me at work and each of these is on a large SAN so there can be quite a lot of files and directories in all. Maybe that contributes to the slowness I perceived.

For comparison purposes I have 2gB RAM on a 1.79 GHz Dual core Windows/Intel desktop.


Thanks again

I like to spend as much time in the Notes environment as possible. Now I don't have to open Windows Explorer very much.

Great work. Thank you.

Would not it be great to be able to create a shortcut to a file located on a server?
Thanks

Has anyone run into this widget going into a loop when copying files to a new directory and it creates the directory inside of the directory inside of the directory, etc. to the point it crashes the notes client? And even the directories created on the File Server are not deletable by the Admin? This was the only time I've seen this, but wondered if anyone else had encountered it. Thanks.

This is awesome.

Would be even more awesome if date modified column was shown (may be a preference) and sortable. Ta