Suggestion: Off-line files

[NotNull]

When trying to open a file in Everything that is on a disconnected external disk or network share, an error message will be shown ("Can not open ..").
In case of a network share it can take some time before the message is shown.


Suggestion:
Everything is already aware if a volume is on-line or off-line. So instead of executing the file straightaway using Windows calls, check if on-line first before passing the call to Windows.

If not online, Everything could show a message like "Network share X: unavailable at teh moment. Check ...", without the 20-30 seconds delay.

In case of an external removable disk, Everything could even show a message like "file off-line. If you want to open it, Please connect disk .. with label ..." as Everything already has the required information.

[void]

I have on my TODO list to 'dim' offline files in the result list.

I will consider a warning prompt when trying to open an offline file.

Thank you for the suggestion.

[meteorquake]

The other option to consider is a warning if a file is above a certain size (set per device/share etc) and you try to open it.

David

[NotNull]

How is that related to offline files?

[meteorquake]

It's related in that when the user clicks a file to open a file, the post is asking Everything to do a check to see if it should launch it, and I was mentioning a further check that could go with it. There's an additional connection that off-line files may be due to networks not having been logged into, and networks are often the things that need such a size check.

David

[raccoon]

I have a related but unrelated aside. Whenever Everything attempts to wake a sleeping disk, which could take as long as 15 seconds to spin up and respond to requests, a large contingency of actions are performed synchronously on the main GUI thread, not asynchronously / on a background thread.

This means that Everything becomes non-responsive (Do you wish to terminate this process?) when waking up a disk, until the disk has awoken.

I feel like this is related insofar as asynchronous considerations might be made to alleviate the responsiveness issues mentioned above.

[void]

Everything 1.5.0.1310a improves offline status.

Offline files and folders are now partially transparent.

To customize the offline transparency:

• In Everything, type in the following search and press ENTER:
  /offline_alpha=128
• If successful, offline_alpha=128 is shown in the status bar for a few seconds.
• where 128 is the transparency in the range from 0 (transparent) to 255 (opaque)

Improved the detection of offline volumes.
Everything should now immediately see volumes as offline when they go offline.
Everything should now see volumes as online within a few seconds of when they come back online.



The online: search function now matches online volumes only.
online: will no longer match items with an unknown online status.

If you would like the old behavior, use the following in your search:
!offline:
offline:

There is currently a bug with offline:, where it is searching for online: files.
This will be fixed in the next alpha update.


Online status is only available to volumes that are monitored by Everything.
To enable monitoring for NTFS volumes:

• In Everything, from the Tools menu, click Options.
• Click the NTFS tab on the left.
• Select your NTFS volume.
• Check Monitor changes.

To enable monitoring for folder indexes:

• In Everything, from the Tools menu, click Options.
• Click the Folders tab on the left.
• Select your folder.
• Check Attempt to monitor changes.

File lists always have an unknown online status.



I noticed online property doesn't work with the Everything Service.
I am working on a fix.



I will look into improving asynchronization where possible.
A lot of Windows Shell functionality works on a single thread.

[void]

Everything 1.5.0.1311a fixes an issue with Everything treating system volumes as offline.

Everything 1.5.0.1311a also fixes an issue with the offline: search function matching online files.