Forums Feature Suggestions Window Grouping

Yes, yes, I know, before anyone says anything. This is predominantly a feature that very limited hardcore IRC users would actually use, and it might not generally benefit the whole.

Yes, yes, I already expect the rants to begin against it (I'm sure someone here has been ticked off by some posts I've made on threads).

At any rate, I see it like this, I think mIRC should support Window Grouping. (I did a search for all posts with 'group' on the feature suggestions forum and didn't find anything).

I currently reside in 16 networks with 28 channels spanned across them. This may seem like in excess, and no I don't act as bot to some These are channels I do speak in (at least when I find the chance).

My suggestion is this.

All windows under a Connection ID be grouped into a channel bar item, named after the Network it's connected on. It'd take on the name of the status window, and group status windows, query windows, custom windows, and DCC windows.

All windows should have the option to group them via the right click menu on their channel bar item.

An option in the mIRC options should be "Group Windows after X windows opened" ; with the active window NOT being grouped when the others group. Example: I open a query window to a user, which triggers the max windows open for a grouping to occur on that connection, it leaves the query window while grouping everything else.

Also, I would like to have it "Group after X seconds inactive" or "Group Immediately" options. Or maybe even "do not group most frequently used channels". This way you're not interrupted all the time of having to make multiple clicks on a dropdown.

Oh, and finally, the option to set the window to permanent non-grouping.

I think I've detailed it all. Questions/Comments welcome.

  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

Wow, I never knew of the alt + L click function that existed there. I rather like that feature, haha.

At any rate, it can be done with scripts I'm sure but not with the elegance of the coding. As you said, you completely hide the channels and are working on dialogs to work with them. That seems like a little too much work for me at the moment (I'm not talking about the actual coding, I'm talking about calling the dialog up, etc.)

Something along the lines with the alt + L functionality to be extended would be nice.

Not necessarily Window Containers, just simply a dropdown menu of channels.

I don't know, I can kind of see your point in how users could forget they're in channels. But then again, I do know a LOT of users that are in many different channels and networks such as myself.

Are there any DLLs for this, maybe?

At any rate, knowing the ALT + L function exists will benefit me greatly, and now this sort of menu system for it is not something I so desire for now

We all learn something new at times, the very reason I come to this forum

make a treeview list, its not very hard ive got one, i have a dll that detects every windows opening and closing inside of mirc and sends it to mirc as a means to call an alias. it keeps things nice and neat looking and i presonally think the windows list should have been this way all along.

I don't like tree views, personally. I don't even use Windows Explorer in tree view mode.

Besides, my original idea was to focus HEAVILY on not detracting from the overall usage function of mIRC and how it displays channels.

I can imagine something similar to what you're proposing, however, it works somewhat more like the Windows XP auto grouping taskbar.

Whenever the taskbar gets full, and there are common programs (say Internet Explorer, or word, etc), it places them all into one grouped item.

A similar sort of thing in mIRC could be viable. However, instead of it simply happening when you've got X number of windows open, it could happen based on a similar sort of system as suggested by the second replier to this message.

I quite like this suggestion