File window additional display options

[Mike]

Three new options for the file window:

a) Deactivate the file display would be particularly interesting if, for example, we are editing trees and item preferences.
Not a single click would trigger unnecessary computer activity anymore.

b) Show up to X files (even if there are many more of them). This is interesting when you just want to take a quick look at something and don't want to load everything.
E.g. if you have documentation archives with representative examples on different topics. Quickly remember different styles, different authors' work, types of textures, effects, whatever ...
without letting the computer work like crazy when it is not really necessary.

c) Only show if there are fewer than X files (precisely adaptable)

[JohnZeman]

Do you use the file window pause option?

My database currently has 126,000 files but IMatch is fast enough on my machine to leave it set on never pause.

[sinus]

Good catch, John

On old computers I used this pause also, but tough I have about 300'000 files, I have set this to "never pause" since years.

If it would be very easy to create a possibility to "show no images" ... ok, why not.
But I guess, I would never use it.

[Mike]

Do you use the file window pause option?

Yes I do. It depends on the situation. The "deactivate" function I proposed is nothing more than a more radical version of today's pause function.
My computer is not that new, an older i7 3.40GHz, 32GB of RAM etc, but still acceptable. I don't have to wait an incredibly long time for the files - 370,000 - to appear.

However, I still don't think it makes sense for the computer (including the SSD) to run hundreds of thousands of processes over and over again when I don't need them in the given situation. So why not pause in such cases?

[Mike]

Oh, I have to apologize.

Due to the problems I had with the key combinations - they did not work properly with the pause function - at some point I no longer used the full pause, but only the "if more than 1000 files" version. At some point I completely forgot about it.

Unless it's too complicated, it would be great if we could pause it in any situation without having to click the files window first.

[Mario]

All your requests are already fulfilled by

a) the Pause/Auto pause function and
b) the Search Bar or Filter Panel

You can even use a tabular layout which does not show any icons or thumbnails or other data than a file name. This results in the best performance because no metadata or collections or categories need to be evaluated when filling the File Window.

There are two keyboard shortcuts for pausing the file window. Windows sends keyboard messages to the active window so you have to click the file window once to make them work. Or just click the pause button.

I'm actually considering removing the auto pause completely, because for 99% of the user base, it sits on "never", according to telemetry.
Keeping a Pause button to temporarily disable the file window can be useful in some cases, for example, when I work with all files in my 850,000 files database.