Add a Archive Button to the view types in Quick Preview Pane

[ij]

It would be really useful if when navigating the file list that the quick preview pane can be configured to show a file/folder listing of the files within (as a minimum Zip and Rar but ideally a configurable list of) archives.

My preference is the listing should be a treeview format rather than just the top level items.

This should be easily doable since it is already possible to open and display the folder structure of archives in the file list pane.

The benefit is that it makes finding/viewing content of archives much quicker because the preview updates as I move up and down a list of archives in the folder without having to actually open each archive individually.

My use case: I have a folder with 10,000+ Zip or RAR archives and I want to browse the file list to locate those archives with only one file inside to move to a different folder.  Providing the listing in a treeview format allows me to see if there is a single file but located in a folder below the archive root.

Second use case (which is also why the file/folder tree listing would be useful) to see at a glance which archives have no files or just empty folders so that they can be deleted.

Hint for other users: A partial temporary solution that works <span style=”display: inline !important; float: none; background-color: transparent; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia,’Times New Roman’,’Bitstream Charter’,Times,serif; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 24px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;”>ONLY </span>for Zip files: Add ZIP to the list of extensions in the ExtInternet= entry of FileVoyager.ini.  This will show a listing of zip file’s content but only at the ro0t level of the archive so if the files are in a sub-folder only the top-level subfolder name is displayed.  That’s why I asked for a treeview listing of folder/files in the feature request above

[FileVoyager (Author)]

Hi ij,

Why not extend the already existing Folder tree with that capacity? Wouldn’t it be better?

If yes, this is in my todo list. That way you would have one single place to view the Tree Hierarchy, including regular folders, archives, and in the futur, cloud drives.

[ij]

Well your proposed functionality would be desirable anyway but would not be efficient in my use case.

If you implement what you suggest, I have to navigate to a folder, wait for the 100,000 archives to appear in the folder tree, navigate to a specific archive then press keys to open the in-archive folder structure until I can see the files.  Then I’d have to select the archive (not the file in the archive) in some way from the tree and then navigate to the next archive over and over before finally pressing the move button to move the archives to a different folder. Then you’d have another very long wait while the folder tree was refreshed to update/display without the moved archives.  You’d also have to have selection, filtering and moving from the folder tree implemented for what you’re proposing.

Alternatively with my approach you use the existing standard navigate to a folder and display the files (archives) in a file list (filtered if required) then I select a single archive with mouse or keyboard, view the contents in the previewer and either press spacebar to select or down arrow to move to the next archive in the list and re-preview.  then press move button to move all selected items to a new folder.

Its why I reported the rectangular marquee bug because this marquee keeps preventing the down arrow moving to the next file in the list when marquee switches itself back on.

The tip that I mentioned in original feature request of <span style=”display: inline !important; float: none; background-color: transparent; color: #333333; font-family: Segoe UI,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;”>Add ZIP to the list of extensions in the ExtInternet= entry of FileVoyager.ini.</span><b></b><i></i><u></u>

almost gives me the functionality I need, but only works with Zip and only displays the top level files and folders.  Adding an additional preview type would allow several other archive styles such as 7z, etc to also be supported plus the in-archive file/folder listing as a tree would be particularly desirable because it minimises navigation if all you want to see is a single listing not interact with it (it’s a preview listing after all, not necessarily interactive).  For my purposes it wouldn’t be necessary to allow clicking on a file in the preview to view that file in the file listing but that would be a great additional feature.  I think you could implement this using the functionality in 7z(a).dll fairly easily to support lots of archive types in the previewer

The full archive preview listing capability is implemented in Quickview plus and Powerdesk but I only have winXP versions that don’t work in win 10 or x64.

Does that make it clearer what I’m asking for? I’d be happy to see what you’re proposing implemented but it wouldn’t do what I need.

[FileVoyager (Author)]

Hi ij,

First sorry for this late answer. I’ve been on holidays and completely disconnected from real world 😉

I understand better now what you expect and think it makes sense. I even remember it was something I planned to do, but gave it up eventually.

I’ll add your feature request to my backlog.

Honestly, I haven’t reopened the code since 7 months because of other constraints, but I’m eager to come back to FileVoyager.

Thanks for your contribution

[ij]

As it happens I’ve been away since making the request so no problems with the delay. Hope you enjoyed your holiday.

Looking forward to when you do find time to update the code but fully understand real life comes first.

[Author]

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