Submission details
Windows Explorer treeview hides expand/collapse glyphs when it doesn't have focus
Windows explorer treeview auto hides the expand/collapse glyphs when it looses focus. You can only see which node had child nodes by hovering the mouse over the treeview area. The problems with this are:
- Most important: you loose information regarding the structure of the tree in the treeview (who the hell thought that was a good idea?)
- In aero, the hiding & showing of the arrow glyps use fading. This animation is distracting.
- With aero turned off, the +/- glyphs don't fade but are instantly shown/hidden. As one moves the mouse around the screen and passover the treeview, this flashing is distracting.
- You have to move the mouse to get information that was available previously in XP.
- The behavior spills into other application such as the Options dialog in Visual Studio.
- The behavior is not used in other areas such as the Server Explorer or Solution Explorer in Visual Studio, or in Computer Management shown. So it's inconsistent across MS applications too.
- No other implementation of a treeview component, in any other application, toolkit or 3rd party library, or in any other operating system behaves like this.
I should also the mention that the alignment of the expand/collapse glyphs, the node icons and the text is also so messed up, it's just ugly. See the Computer Management treeview as an example of how it should be.
Always show the expand/collapse glyphs, if the node is expandable, even if the treeview has focus. If they must behave this way, give me an option to turn it off.
Fix the alignments too.
High
Low
Not fixed
Discussion (12 comments)
I dont get what you want? No arrows? How will you know what expands and what doesnt? you support that ugly icon less toolbar in windows 7 too?
Changed solution description.
Sorry if I wasn't clear, I've updated the solution.
I always want to see the arrows, if they are there. I do not want them to hide when the treeview loses focus.
Well I guess I kind of ment what you said, But its ment for a clean view and thats what we want. If you arnt using something, then it should be hidden.
Was it that messy to begin with? I certainly feel that the loss of being able to see which node has children (i.e. is expandable) at a glance > "cleaner" treeview > animating/ flashing when the mouse passes over it.
The expand button of nodes where you can't spot that it has children should at least be semi-transparent
It would seem that people are voting this down. Could anyone who did so, please perhaps explain why you think the current implementation is a good & better than WinXP (and every other implementation).?
Added new image attachment.
I agree with damo. I just can't think of any good reason for hiding expand buttons, can you?
Because it makes it more cleaner. like i said, if your not using that one section then hide it. keep everything clean..... hover over the section to get your arrows or plus marks..
I agree with damo as well...I suspect those who are voting this down are somehow missing the point.
Hmm, cleaner in the eye of the beholder. In my eyes, less useful and more distracting. Perhaps I could have written the article better too.
Changed problem description.
.Chris, using it doesn't mean always hovering your mouse over that part. You can use it with your eyes also.
I totally agree to damo. It has several issues. I'm currently looking for a tweak for it, but no solution yet.
Please post here if you can find anything...
damo wrote on October 19, 2008, 9:32pm
This is the single most annoying thing I have with Vista (actually, I'm using Windows Server 2008 "Workstation") and I had to try really hard not to add curse words to my submission or screen shots. I really cannot believe that someone, somewhere came up with this idea and thought it was good.