Since I’m lead to understand that DTPO is due to undergo some significant changes soon, I think it could well at last do with a little TLC in the interface department.
When one is viewing a database using three panes, widescreen (which I’m sure many people do), it would be much better if the third column - the item name column - could be revamped so that each item’s name (or a portion of it, if it’s very long) wraps in the column’s current width over a few lines, rather than having one single line which you have to drag wider if you can’t see the entire title.
In that space could also be a larger preview icon of the first relevant image that may be present in the item, and maybe (controlled by preferences) some other information as to kind, size, etc (instead of further columns chosen for this).
See the differences in the view obtained by Keep It and that by DT3. The former shows more useful wrapped information and a preview image in the list whilst the latter does not:
That’s a good view choice. It doesn’t always fetch an image in an RTF/RTFD file, however - only if an image happens to be near the top of the icon preview (otherwise it just shows tiny, unreadable text - better would be a snippet that is actually readable).
The text of the icons is notoriously unreadable even when they can be resized to the very largest size. Keep It overcame this problem in the list UI by fetching the first image from the RTF/RTFD (if there is one) and displaying it inside the readable wrapped snippet of the text which is limited to 3 or so lines.
And, unlike DT3’s implementation, with Keep It you may choose the types of metadata that are shown.
I’m pleased to know that this years-old ‘show details’ addition to the list view in DT3 is available, but one can’t say its implementation is as good as Keep It’s here, because clearly it isn’t. Thus the suggestion.
Always something to discover.
