You mean you want to see collapable switchbar items, that offers a drop menu or popup menu when clicked?
mIRC does have a feature that allows you to collapse all windows within a connection ID by holding ALT and Left-Clicking on the Status Window tab. I know this isn't what you suggested, but you should know about it either way.
I'm not too keen about creating new switchbar tabs which would represent multiple windows though, as I think it would be confusing to people. But someting along these lines certainly would fit along with mIRC's current design, and can even be done currently with a script.
This week I finally got around to writing a script that auto-hides channels and queries based on their activity and how long since I last viewed them. If nothing is said in a channel for 60 minutes, and I had already viewed that channel, it gets hidden. If nothing is said for 6 hours, regardless if I read it or not, it also gets hidden. A channel never gets hidden if it's active or has unviewed highlighted text or if I was deopped or kicked. If someone joins then it unhides briefly, and if someone speaks it unhides until it becomes idle again for 6 hours (or an hour if I viewed it).
The script is actually quite simple, keeping record of when I joined, last viewed, someone last spoke, etc $ctime in a hashtable. /window -h hides and /window -w shows it again. $window().sbcolor returns "event, message, highlight or $null" and $window().icon returns on/off depending if the window is hidden or visible.
Back to your suggestion however, I agree that this wouldn't be a very mainstream feature, and may actually encourage bad habbits amongst new chatters... such as joining a channel, becoming cronically idle, then forgetting they were even in it. Or worse, it would encourage joining a b-zillion vanity channels like #2¸000 or #DONT_WHOIS_ME! Most people also don't spread themselves across 6 networks like I do now (until recently I only frequented three), so most people wouldn't have a practical use for it.
I think that a script provide a much more enjoyable experience anyway. Now that I've started keeping a tally on channel stats (idle, lines per hour, etc), I'm coming up with interesting ideas for a functional dialog that'll allow me to navigate the hidden channels I'm in while displaying these various stats.
For now I'd just suggest using CTRL + L-Click, or write a script like this. I'd be happy to share some of my code.
- Raccoon
