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sl23 Posts: 285
19/11/2018
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Hi Gian, long time no see! :-)
Hope you are well.
I wondered if there were any chance you could add a function similar to the windows Show Hidden Items. But instead of this working on Windows Explorer, it would simply be an option to show or hide the hidden items within SyMenu.
So for example, when items are hidden within the Config form, you would click the notification SyMenu icon or the floating icon. Then navigate to the top entry called SyMenu. Which opens the usual Config, Options, Enable Ext Manager dialogue. An extra item for Show/Hide Hidden Items could be placed here which could work visually in a similar manner to the Enable Ext Manager.
The reason for the request is that I have two SyMenu's, one for ALL apps, the other for most used to keep things minimal on a day to day basis. It would be helpful and less confusing to maintain if there could simply be a switch to remove those items not required regularly.
Hope you like the idea.
Thanks
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Gianluca Administrator Posts: 1274
20/11/2018
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Hi sl23.
I don't like very much the idea.
An hidden element is an element that, for certain reasons, you don't want to delete but you don't want to see too.
I don't care a lot what the users do with this feature, but it seems a good one because it introduces a scale of existence instead of a simple switch.
You are suggesting to modify the middle level behavior through an option that makes it effective, hiding the item, or uneffective showing the item as a normal one.
A behavior like this is useless and confusing.
But let's analyze your scenario.
It seems you need instead a system to activate or deactivate certain profiles.
Today you have two profiles, the larger one with all the items and the smaller one with the minimal configuration. But we can't exclude you can have more than two, for example according to the PC you are working on, to the day of the week, to the task you are busy with.
So why don't imagine a multi profile system?
What comes to my mind is a label system.
You can assign one or more labels to every items. When you switch on the profile identified with a certain label, you can see only the items with that label.
If we consider the possibility to implement a label system, we will find out that the hide attribute is nothing but a simple label (the "hide" label). And the "normal" items we have today are again already implicitly labeled with a certain label too (for example "default").
So we can choose to see only the items labeled with "default", or the items labeled with "hide", or both of them.
Naturally it'll be possible to add new labels with univocal names and assign them to any items.
The only label we can't modify or delete will be the "default" one. Anyway an item labeled with "default" can receive other labels, or we can remove the "default" from it.
The label switcher can be located on the contextual menu, while the label manager will be located on the configuration form.
A great improvement and a big really work, but I think it's feasible.
What do you think? Can be useful in your case? Can be useful for other scenarios?
To implement this feature I need to get positive feedback from the users because my TODO list is so big and full of interesting features that today I'm in trouble in choosing what's next.
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sl23 Posts: 285
20/11/2018
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Hi Gian,
Thank you for taking the time to answer, and for the great and lengthy description 
I understand your hesitation, it makes sense why you dislike the idea.
But I love the way you turned a negative into a positive!
I like the idea of profiles, but this introduces an annoyance in my opinion. Maybe you could find a way around it?
Liberkey had this option, you could effectively create several menus within the main menu and switch between them. Exactly as you propose.
The downside that I found out when trying it out was that I want an easy life!
The issue is that you create your main menu profile 'A' and a secondary profile 'B'.
But you can't see both at once without creating second shortcuts in menu B. So when looking for something it can become a chore and becomes messy!
I found myself searching to see where shortcuts were and if they existed at all!
Yes there's the search function, but I prefer not to use this. Keyboards are cumbersome and slow me down.
Gianluca wrote:
An hidden element is an element that, for certain reasons, you don't want to delete but you don't want to see too.
That is the very reason for my request 
There are some small things that just work in PA.com's menu, and this is one of them.
Right click a shortcut in their app and there's the option to show/hide hidden items. If I hid something I put it in a hidden folder so it was out the way when these items were shown. For me, this works. I realise you need to do what's right for the majority, so hopefully there's a way around this problem?
Profiles is a good answer but this requires multiple entries of an app should you require it on more than one profile, there needs to be an easy way to handle this. Maybe make make a switch that allows editing one shortcut with this name to be copied to all shorctcuts with the same name?
I have several apps with different shortcuts due to having different versions. Each has a small difference to denote it's origin or version. example, at the end of all PA.com apps I put an * to let me know which version I am looking at. Firefox is a big issue for me at the moment. I still use v56.0.2 as such I have this as 'Firefox * v56' and the up to date version as just 'Firefox *' as well as the second profile version as 'Firefox * 2'
So even though I have several apps with the same name, the shortcuts differ, so that option would be a good compromise for me. But may not be an option for others, so the ability to switch this 'syncing' of shortcuts off would be an idea.
Thanks for listening
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Gianluca Administrator Posts: 1274
22/11/2018
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Well I spoke about profiles but my mind was on a completely different concept that will solve all your problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faceted_classification .
As Internet users, in our common experience the faceted classification has become very famous because of gmail. The Google mail introduced the labels from the very start and I think that feature was the real game changer that leads gmail to destroy all its competitors.
So in our scenario you won't have different profiles but facets (labels) that you can attribute to any custom item.
I haven't studied the solution yet but it could be something like this:
- you add a new item (item A) and it automatically takes a label called "default";
- the contextual menu, by default, shows only the items tagged with the "default" label. Up to here nothing changes;
- now from the item A you can remove the label "default". The item will be unattainable from the context menu (in today concept it becomes hidden);
- you add the new label "profile A" to the item A. The context menu still doesn't show it;
- you set a new display to the context menu: you choose to include the labels "default" and "profile A". The context menu shows your item A and all the others;
- you set a new dispaly to the context menu: you remove the labels "default" and leave checked the label "profile A". The context menu shows only your item A and the built-in elements which are always neutral;
- for what it's worth you can remove from the context menu display all the labels and now your menu shows you only the built-in elements and no custom item.
Nice huh!
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sl23 Posts: 285
22/11/2018
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Very nice!
Would this be easily swappable from one profile to another whilst keeping the menu minimalistic tho?
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Gianluca Administrator Posts: 1274
23/11/2018
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It has to. I need to think which kind of UI is more suitable for this purpose.
The menu should have a new button or a new item where all the labels are available.
The better one is probably a new button on the title like this one
When you click it a new window pops up and, through it, you can select all the labels you want to include in your current display.
Naturally, the label management will be delegate to the configuration form.
Well I don't hide that this feature is a really nice one and I like it very much, but, as I told you, I need to evaluate the program priority because the graphical implementations have taken too many months and the new features development are a bit still.
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sl23 Posts: 285
26/11/2018
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Thanks Gian.
I understand your predicament, and am grateful for all your work.
Still this app remains the best of it's kind!
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