flyout menu's.... kinda suck

ok, not entirely true. i actually really like them... but they fail, so badly. they are so bloody slow for me. granted, i have more then one configured. but it can take up to a minute solid for the menu to appear, i'm guessing because it is trying to draw up the thumbnails of images or whatever. so my proposal is that stardock makes them not suck. add an option for a quick render, or something along those lines, so that when a folder has a flyout pointed at it, the flyout doesn't try to load up the whole bloody wallpaper file as a thumbnail. or something to speed it up. because i really truthfully want to have like 6 fly outs on my dock, and right now i have to use almost all stack docklets. and that branches me to my second request. the stack docklets have a wonderful little availability: an icon to open that folder in explorer. why can't this happen in the flyout menu's? or can it, and i am dumb?
42,490 views 18 replies
Reply #1 Top
http://www.aqua-soft.org/board/showthread.php?t=46859

see if this eases some of your troubles, i've not heard of anyone being disappointed by it yet. i just wish it had a little more functionality, but for what you seem to be wanting it might be right up your alley, and quick~
Reply #2 Top
I think that's what he's already using.

because i really truthfully want to have like 6 fly outs on my dock, and right now i have to use almost all stack docklets. and that branches me to my second request. the stack docklets have a wonderful little availability: an icon to open that folder in explorer. why can't this happen in the flyout menu's? or can it, and i am dumb?

Reply #3 Top
i have the same problem with flyout menus. they are kind of slow and sometimes they wont open the file you click on. and yea it would be nice to have an icon to open the current folder or maybe we can double click really fast to open it in a window.

flyouts are unique and have some good potential but it seems buggy, slow, and incomplete. i have 64 bit though so maybe thats causing some problems, i dont know.

for now i just use the stacks docklet which is fast and effective and complete.
Reply #4 Top
flyout menu's.... kinda suck


Without sounding condescending, you're entitled to your opinion, but I've been using fly-outs for years and it's one of the coolest things to use, if used correctly.

The speed of a fly-out depends on what you're populating, how much has to be populated and how you're displaying it.

Any large element like a big music or art collection will take a long time to display as opposed to something smaller, like a few folders on the desktop.

It's really up to the user to find the thin line between these applications and their respective systems' abilities. It's also up to the user to take charge and organize their system to keep it from bogging down.

It takes daily care for a PC to run at top performance and if you're not performing those duties on a daily basis, then stop blaming your software.

As long as I've used fly-outs I've found out what they can do, and what they do slowly. I prefer fast hence that's how it’s set up.

I hate disagreeing with anything, but fly-outs don't suck. But I'll tell you what does suck, the way the majority of the world doesn't take care of their computers is atrocious.

Cp

 :p 

Reply #5 Top
an icon to open that folder in explorer. why can't this happen in the flyout menu's? or can it


Yes you can! It's under the dock entry properties "Show folder in a menu", click the radial button to activate this feature.

 ;) 
Reply #7 Top
an icon to open that folder in explorer. why can't this happen in the flyout menu's? or can itYes you can! It's under the dock entry properties "Show folder in a menu", click the radial button to activate this feature.  


the only docklet i have that gives me the "show folder in a menu" is if I make a shortcut to just a menu. and it doesn't display it as a flyout, but as a mock/standard vista style menu. could you help me out with what you mean?
Reply #8 Top
[quote]Without sounding condescending, you're entitled to your opinion, but I've been using fly-outs for years and it's one of the coolest things to use, if used correctly.It's really up to the user to find the thin line between these applications and their respective systems' abilities. It's also up to the user to take charge and organize their system to keep it from bogging down. It takes daily care for a PC to run at top performance and if you're not performing those duties on a daily basis, then stop blaming your software./quote]

Without sounding defensive, i most assuredly take care of my system, and i'm borderline neurotic with system maintenance. i'm constantly keeping tabs on whats going on in task manager, and i'm constantly doing everything i can to improve performance. however, no matter what i do, i cannot get fly-outs to work well. i have one set right now to my 'quick launch' folder that has shortcuts to 7 programs, and it takes it about 4 seconds to pull it up. no other applications running, no high resolution anything. it just doesn't work well, except for a shortcut to small text documents, or something equally tiny and, in my case, unhelpful.
Reply #9 Top
also, cplair, in my original post, you'll notice that i said i really do like them, and i understand that somethings take longer to populate, and that i wish stardock would work at it so that things could load quicker. since it is set up to navigate folders until you open a file, it would be nice if it moved quickly to get to where i wanted to go.
Reply #10 Top
Sorry to be a little Off Topic here, Curtis , thats a great setup you have there ...
What are you using there , bud ?
Reply #11 Top
Tyler, are you using the free version or Plus? I'm not sure about the free version but in Plus you can go to "Performance Options" and set a couple items that may help the display speed.

Curtis is right in that the more items the flyout/stack has to display the longer it will take regardless of any other considerations......however 7 items should not take 4 seconds so I think it's a condition particular to your setup, ie video card or drivers or memory or conflicting program etc.
Reply #12 Top
Sorry to be a little Off Topic here, Curtis , thats a great setup you have there ...
What are you using there , bud ?


My man MikeB, glad you're likin' the diggs! It's a simple setup, here's the ingredients!

WB: Sexy By John “vStyler” Gordon
Wall: Reflection By Atomnet
CXP: Sexy By Javier Aroche
IP and Upper Dock: The Preface By DarOclcx
Lower Dock: Opus Black Collection By Pictoratus
Tab Icons: Seafoam Energy Folders By HDavisPl
OD Tabs & Tiles: Sexy Dock By Steven “Messiah1” McGetrick
Media: Sexy Xion By Steven “Messiah1” McGetrick
DXO: SimpleTime By CharlieCam
DXW: Sexy Weather By Lovely62
RL: Sexy Rainy By Lovely62

I'm using Pictoratus' Opus Black for the lower dock and fly-out to my desktop.

 ;) 
Reply #13 Top
also, cplair, in my original post, you'll notice that i said i really do like them, and i understand that somethings take longer to populate, and that i wish stardock would work at it so that things could load quicker. since it is set up to navigate folders until you open a file, it would be nice if it moved quickly to get to where i wanted to go.


tylerisfat, I respect and appreciate your eloquence, there's no muss, no fuss and no lie about you and I like that. I must reiterate though, fly-outs are indeed fast and instantaneous Sir, at least they are on my system(s).

As Lantec said, it's very possible that an issue with your system is causing your graphics to lag. A four second delay for a fly-out to display would piss me off for sure and I apologize for not being more compassionate to your plight.

So just for giggles and while I was replying to this post, I created 20 assorted fly-outs on my XP system including one leading to my 12,000 song MP3 collection, my wallpapers on an external drive displaying thumbnails, my screen shots and weather forcasts from 7 countries and the US.

The music collection took the longest, about 2 1/2 seconds to populate then display the album art. And since I own both platforms, for me this stuff runs damn near twice as fast on Vista.

If your fly-outs have always reacted slowly and that includes the default weather fly-out that comes with Object Dock, check your disk space, you want 50% free or better if you can, your monitor's refresh rate, video settings and drivers.

Hey I don't know what your specs are, but depending on what you currently have you may consider a higher end video card. It could be either one or a combination of many conditions that's causing your system to render slowly.

As an example, allowing Windows to decide between appearance and performance, Norton's Suite, McAfee's Suite and Tune-up Utilities visual styler could have an adverse affect on a system's over-all performance if not set correctly for your specific conditions.

Now if it's an issue where it use to run fine, then all of a sudden it doesn't, then the questions become, what changed on your system and when. You start thinking of maybe getting rid of the last thing you installed, a driver roll-back or system restore point if that's the case.

From listening to you though, you sound like the minority who actually maintains a system properly.

I do wish you much success with resolving this matter but I'm afraid that the developers cannot fix the application because it isn't broken.

Keep us posted here, I'm totally curious about this and offer my help as much as you can tolerate me.

 :CONGRAT: 



Reply #14 Top
i'm using plus. i've been working at some of the settings, but the trade off between speed and ram usage... is unapparent, at best, and nearly terrifying at worst.

+1 Loading…
Reply #15 Top
i'm running a dell laptop (i know, but whatever.) with vista home, 2 gigs of ram, core 2 duo processor, ati radeon x1400. i think the hardware is pretty capable :D.

now, i'm beginning to think your on to something with the tune-up settings, because i have had no end of trouble with getting that thing to interact with my system correctly. it keeps trying to automate and change settings when i've told it not to. so i'm looking into that at the moment.

and the weather docklet actually works great, go figure.

flyouts have worked slow the whole time i've had OD, i honestly have been under the impression this whole time that it was just a crap feature thrown in at the last second, and it didn't work well period. but it seems i have some little tiny setting to hunt down and change. sorry if i sounded pissed, CP. i wasn't by any means, i just didn't want to be written off as some noob with out a clue, who was just inventing problems.
Reply #16 Top
sorry if i sounded pissed, CP. i wasn't by any means


Not a prob at all TIF, I'm telling you, I'd be pissed if they acted that way for me!

Hope all goes well for you...

 :LOL: 
Reply #17 Top
i'm running a dell laptop (i know, but whatever.) with vista home, 2 gigs of ram, core 2 duo processor, ati radeon x1400. i think the hardware is pretty capable


That's a bangin' system!

 :SURPRISED: 
Reply #18 Top
That's a bangin' system!  


Yeah, until you try installing something like Rainbow Six on it. took me about 3 hours of patching and rewriting config files to get it running on the lowest possible settings and all that...


admins, this thread is done. :) you can kill it or whatever.