Files: Does anyone want a macOS/iPadOS like column view?

[TyJOrtiz]

[yaichenbaum]

Definitely not by default but having it as an extra option would be welcome.

[duke7553]

This can be part of the eventual tablet-optimized UI

[duke7553]

Great idea!

[Telescuffle]

Yes, please!

[duke7553]

@imthewiseguy Were you going to build this? I can assign it to you.

[TyJOrtiz]

@duke7553 yeah

[TyJOrtiz]

to preserve the existing functionality ill have the app to launch the column view in a new window, until i can integrate it without breaking anything

[TyJOrtiz]

sorry

[duke7553]

If you need any help finding your way around the code please let me know. I’m going to be AFK for one week, but I’ll try my best.

[duke7553]

I would recommend detecting if the device is in tablet mode and then navigate to the appropriate layout on startup.

[TyJOrtiz]

I wanted to see what people thought of this. I put the context menu commands in the preview pane (I was playing around with styles, i wont leave it iOS-like lol)

[TyJOrtiz]

[duke7553]

@imthewiseguy Are these changes open sourced yet? I'd like to help you work on them.

[mukundshah]

i'm desperate for this feature.....

[TyJOrtiz]

I’m sorry everyone, i haven’t had much progress on this because I’ve been dealing with a death in the family among other things. I’ll try to make headway on this project soon

[duke7553]

@imthewiseguy I'm really sorry to hear that. There's no rush at all for this. Take as long as you need.

[TyJOrtiz]

HI,

I need to get the latest version of the project. and then change some code and then integrate it. I'm going to be working on that today

[TyJOrtiz]

ColumnPage.zip

here's the source code for the column view if anyone wants to do any change to it

[duke7553]

The work we've done should streamline some of the process of adding new layouts. Expect to hear more about this after Launch. 😉

[TyJOrtiz]

That sounds cool! I've been working on this feature in the meantime just on a separate app so i don't break anything

[duke7553]

My vision is to allow contributors to work on/maintain their layouts without having to worry about breakage. We're in the process of abstracting away some of the tedious details of layout modes. I'm still using the work you submitted above to test against 😃

[Chris2011]

Yes, great work. I also wanted to add this feature right after I found thi great tool here 😀. Glad that still some other people are thinking about it :)

[mdtauk]

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/communitytoolkit/controls/bladeview

With some added shadows would be great. There will also need to be some horizontal scrolling

_These were mockups I did when a version 2 of the BladeView control was being discussed_

https://github.com/windows-toolkit/WindowsCommunityToolkit/issues/2243

[Chris2011]

Definitely, I don't like autoshrinking. I think the Mac OS finder has a setting for fixed width and if you have more columns than space on the screen, it get's a scrollbar.

[TyJOrtiz]

I'll be back on working on it then

[TyJOrtiz]

I'm getting the ColumnView working, I just need to know how can I create a dynamic list of items in a selected folder to open another column?

[yaichenbaum]

@TyJOrtiz You should be able to get the path of the selected item with listedItem.ItemPath.

[TyJOrtiz]

I see that but I need to know how to create an ObservableCollection with the files and folders contained in the listedItem.ItemPath

[yaichenbaum]

@TyJOrtiz ItemViewModel has both EnumerateItemsFromStandardFolderAsync and EnumerateItemsFromSpecialFolderAsync.
fyi @duke7553

[TyJOrtiz]

I got the column view working (sorta, none of the menu options except Layout Mode work)

I'll create a pull request

[mdtauk]

You may want to consider the selected item styling for the inactive columns. I believe only the active Colin should use the filled in accent colour style, whilst the inactive columns could use an accent coloured border instead, or filled in a grey colour.

It will help those with accessibility issues, and those using keyboarding to navigate, to tell where the active view is.

Also this should function properly when the app's FlowDirection is set to RightToLeft

[TyJOrtiz]

like this?

[TyJOrtiz]

Light mode

[mdtauk]

That fits the bill yes!

[duke7553]

@TyJOrtiz Currently, we only have support for populating the read only observable collection FilesAndFolders which can be accessed from an instance of ItemViewModel. To populate the observable collection, the layout modes internally call RefreshItems().

If your layout mode has any specific needs from ItemViewModel, we can help you with that 🙂

[TyJOrtiz]

That would be great if there was a way to get an observable Collection like FilesAndFolders from a selected folder, the way I'm doing it now doesn't have support for OneDrive File availability or file icons.