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Notes for MetviewUI users

Importing folder list

On first start up Desktop imports

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the MetviewUI folder list and opens

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all these folders up in the same window as a set of tabs.

Dot files

MetviewUI stores icon positions and types in hidden files (dot files). There is one such file for each icon. In Desktop this information is still stored but there is only one dot file per folder.

Icon positions

MetviewUI icon positions are read only when Desktop opens a folder for the first time, then icon positions diverge in the two system (due to the different way of storing icon information).

Drawers

Metview will not update the contents of the Icon drawers automatically any more. These tabs belong to the users now, which means, users are responsible to organise them. Please note that this is a different behaviour to MetviewUI, which automatically updated the Icon drawers with new system icons. System icons in Desktop are exclusively available in the Create new icon dialog.

The Desktop window

Overview

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• Menubar: contains menus and actions
• Toolbar: contains a set of buttons/widgets to customise the view and navigate through the folders
• Folder view: contents of the currently selected folder (or folders in different tabs).
• Sidebar: contains the Bookmarks panel
• DrawersIcon drawers: drawers are a set of centrally accessible folder tabs. They appear at the bottom of each Desktop window.
• Statusbar: displays information about the icons and provides the buttons for changing the icon size

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in Desktop always refers to the Metview home folder (and not the UNIX home folder)! Second, we cannot directly access files outside this file system from within Desktop (but we need to use symbolic links for these files/folders).

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desktop_folder_tabs desktop_folder_tabs

Working with folders 

Folders are represented by this icon in the user interface:

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• Apply icon size to all open folders:it is a one-off action broadcasting the icon size from the current folder to all the open folders is one go
• Save view settings as default: it saves the view mode and icon size of the current folder as a default
• Revert view settings to default: it changes the view mode and icon size for the current folder back to the default settings

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desktop_icon_info desktop_icon_info

Icon information

As the mouse hovers over an icon in the folder views some icon information such as name, type, size and modification date is automatically displayed in left edge of the statusbar:

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desktop_drawers desktop_drawers

Icon drawers

Icon drawers are a set of tabs containing icon-strips appearing at the bottom of each Desktop window. Their contents is shared between the Desktop windows, so each window shows the same set of drawers.

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