|
Glenn Posts: 99
18/07/2020
|
First, a boring history story/paragraph to provide context:
So, although a long-time user of SyMenu on shared Dropbox folders supporting a variety of projects, I had used other tools on my primary computer. The "Free Launch Toolbar" worked for a while, but seemed to be dependent on file structures set up and used by IE, which got deprecated. And then I got a 4K monitor instead of two portrait monitors. But I had grown used to having my task bar (containing my Free Launch Toolbar) on the left edge of the right-hand portrait monitor.... in the middle of the work area. I saw no reason I should be forced to mouse all the way to the left or right edge of the 4K monitor to find my task bar, so I looked for a different solution, and found Winstep Nexus. It has some interesting features... in addition to allowing a group of icons representing folders in a toolbar that can be positioned anywhere on the screen, it also allows the icons from the system tray to be included in the toolbar... these capabilities pretty well emulated my prior use of a taskbar in the middle of my work area, after a bit of configuration. Recently, however, Nexus has not always been allowing selections to be made from the folder expansions, and when I set up a new machine this month, that bug occurred much more frequently, and the workarounds I and their support person came up with are not quickly effective, and after using them Nexus will frequently crash, and restarting it often takes several retries. After too many issues and crashes to bear, I decided to set up the basic folder configurations using trusty SyMenu.
The attached picture shows the menu I came up with, pretty simple, 6 folders (the bottom one is new and will point to the Dropbox projects when I complete it, so 5 presently useful folders) in the middle, a quick access to CMD prompt, and shutdown button (which is an AHK script that knows how to shut down active processes in a good order before invoking Windows Shutdown which sometimes only does a logoff if the shutdown takes too long!).
During the setup process, I noticed that after doing "Save and Exit" from the configuration dialog, that the floating "start" icon would go away for a while, and the icon in the system tray would be non-responsive for a while. After getting the upgrade to 6.11, I decided to see if that still occurred, and to time it... roughly, just by using my digital watch's "minute hand"... if more accurate timings are needed, I could use the stopwatch on my phone.
I was extremely surprised to discovered that the whole process actually took over 2 minutes! The floating icon was gone for over one of those minutes, and after it appeared, it didn't respond to hover (as configured) and clicking it produced a blgger black background and a "busy wait" circle cursor from Windows.
I don't recall this happening in my other configurations on Dropbox, and they are far more complex than this one.
Once the SyMenu icons decide to respond, then I get the usual rapid response I've come to expect from the menus.
Any clues as to why there is a two-minute delay?
Nexus has a bunch of "fluffware" features that I didn't use much, but didn't figure out how to eliminate them from the task bar either. But it has a couple features that I really like, and that might be considered for adding to SyMenu.
1. The toolbar concept. This is sort of like SyMenu's floating Start icon, except the main menu is pre-expanded showing icons only. Now Nexus allows the toolbar to be either horizontally or vertically oriented containing those icons, but then when clicked, they open to a vertically oriented submenu. I only ever used the vertically oriented toolbar in the middle of the 4K screen. The toolbar uses icons that are roughly the same size as the Windows taskbar's "Large" icons, whereas I actually use "small icons" in the real Windows taskbar (which is still inconveniently position there on the far left edge of the window, for use when one of the many windows on my desktop gets completely hidden and I need to click it to the front).
2. The system tray icons being included in the toolbar was handy, as they were in a more visible location. I don't know how they do that, but the toolbar reflects the icons in the system tray dynamically, as the icons would change to reflect the state changes for whatever program they were for. And they were clickable too, but the clicks apparently got sent to the "real taskbar" icon, and any menus that opened as a result of clicks appeared there. On the other hand, tooltips generated by hovering over the icons are visible close to the Nexus toolbar copy of the icon, which was also quite convenient.
My current plan is to run both Nexus and Symenu on this machine, and get the nice toolbar feature of Nexus when it works, and when it doesn't, to have the expected-to-be-more-reliable SyMenu available for use, so I can get something done beyond fighting with Nexus.
|
|
Gianluca Administrator Posts: 1274
20/07/2020
|
Let's try to solve your issue on saving the configuration.
It's unusual that the saving process take so much time so I have to ask you to make a test for me.
SyMenu is able to change the default configuration folder so we can use this ability to test if the issue is tied with that particular Config folder or the interaction with DropBox.
For example you can create a C:\SyMenuConfig
Please choose the fastest drive in you PC, an area outside the control of DB and possibly put an exception on your Antivirus software for that folder.
Now copy everything you have in [SyMenuRoot]\Config folder inside the new one.
At this point start SyMenu from the command line with the parameter -fc"C:\SyMenuConfig"
SyMenu now reads and writes its configuration files in the new folder. Nothing changes in your menu because the configuration files are the same as before.
Now play a bit with the configuration form and take the times.
When you have a clear idea of the new situation (it's slower than a turtle, it's the same as before, it's improved, it's a fastest thing you've ever seen), please report your observations.
I will start the analysis from there because this way we exclude every external element from the equation.
|
|
Glenn Posts: 99
20/07/2020
|
Well, what you are suggesting is effectively what I did to create the shown menu and timings. I copied a configuration from my master Dropbox SyMenu configuration, to my local disk (actually, an NMVe flash drive), deleted all the commands existing commands, and added in the 6 folders shown.
So I did it again. Made another copy, started it up, change the "hover" message for the icon, and saved. 85 seconds before the menu (menu on hover) popped up.
|