Viewer in combination with categories

[Mees Dekker]

I use the new viewer (5.5) which is way faster than it used to be. It is really very easy and fact to navigate (left arrow, right arrow) through a series of pictures/files you selected to be viewed (I always have the filmstrip at the bottom of the screen). This is very good, but brings me to a feature request.

When I make the categories panel and/or Favorites panel(s) visible in the viewer mode, I can of course assign the selected picture/file to 1 or more categories (same with favorites), but after I checked 1 or more categories/favorites, I then have to click on the picture/or the filmstrip first to be able to use the left/right arrow again for navigation. It seems that the filmstrip and/or picture viewer are not active any longer (although visible) or lose their focus after selecting a category and/or favorite.

This is not the case when you have the collections visible in the viewer. If you apply a rating to an selected picture/file, you kan keep navaigating using the arrow keys.

Would it be possible to keep the viewer window/filmstrip active at all times, in order to be able to keep navigating (by left/right arrow) through the strip, even after applying a favorite or category to a picture/file? That would avoid an extra click in the filmstrip and would make the workflow of applying favorite/categories even faster.

[tmcgill]

I like this, since I make extensive use of categories, but I wonder how it would be accomplished. The problem is that the left and right arrow keys are valid for navigating in the category tree, as well. I'm constantly hitting the left arrow to jump up to a parent category in the list, the left arrow again to collapse the tree, then up or down to move to another parent category, right arrow to expand its subtree, and so on. If we lose the ability to do standard keyboard navigation of the category tree, we'll be trading away something quite useful and making the interface inconsistent between the viewer and the main workspace.

It sure would be nice to be able to accomplish your suggested goal somehow, though, even if only with a strong visual indication that the input focus is now on the category list and not on the filmstrip anymore, and a single key to hit to put the focus back. (I almost want to say Esc, but then if you hit it at the wrong time, the whole viewer will disappear.)

[Mario]

The category panel is a "window". And when you click on it, Windows makes it the active window. Windows sends all keystrokes to the active window, in this case, the category panel. And the category panel uses a standard Windows tree control element, which processes cursor keys etc. itself, e.g. for navigation. This is hard-wired into Windows itself.

The collection overlay is of my own doing. It is not a window and it does not pull the focus away from the viewer image window. This is why you can click the starts etc. and still navigate with the cursor keys.

Do you know that you can use the scroll wheel to move forwards and backwards? Just move the mouse cursor inside the image window and scroll the wheel. This also works when the category panel or favorites panel has the focus.