Powertoys: Improve 'discoverability' for enabling preview pane in explorer via helper text in settings

[rorsino]

Hello,

File Explorer Preview is not working. My General screen does not even look the same. But all the options turned on for File Explorer Preview to work.

There is also NO option in the ribbon to enable it.

[Jay-o-Way]

First of all, thanks for including the screenshots. I see you don't have the Preview pane visible yet, you smarty-pants. Click the button top left in the Ribbon - or press Alt+P.
Second, just to be clear, these plug-ins are only for two specific filetypes.

[rorsino]

Oh, Duh... Feels like a Monday..

Thanks. Its working now 🙂

Robert​

---

From: Jay [e-mail]
Sent: Friday, May 29, 2020 9:26 AM
To: microsoft/PowerToys [e-mail]
Cc: rorsino [e-mail]; Author [e-mail]
Subject: Re: [microsoft/PowerToys] File Explorer Preview not working (#3858)

First of all, thanks for including the screenshots. I see you don't have the Preview pane visible yet, you smarty-pants. Click the button top left in the Ribbon.
Second, just to be clear, these plug-ins are only for two specific filetypes.

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[dancingmonkey]

@Jay-o-Way Missed that one to... lol

[Jay-o-Way]

Maybe a bit more text, on the Settings page, would be nice. I think literally mentioning the name Preview Pane would help a lot, for a start.

[crutkas]

That is a really good idea Jay.

@rorsino, stuff like this is a great chance for us to improve. https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/tree/master/src/modules/previewpane does make it pretty clear but i think having additional text in the settings app would be helpful too.

[Jay-o-Way]

https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/tree/master/src/modules/previewpane does make it pretty clear but i think having additional text in the settings app would be helpful too.

Yeah, I like to think of this as a Help file/page, and the less you need it, the better 👍

[crutkas]

@niels9001, i'm torn between quick helper text and linking to a helper doc. I like the helper doc since we can embed an animated gif

[niels9001]

@crutkas Is there a way to turn on the preview pane programatically? And is there something we want to do?

Or - can we detect that it's not turned on? If so additional helpertext can be shown.

Easy fix: a hyperlink button that is both a helper text and a link to the doc. Or some hybrid thingy.