The Location Bar
The Location Bar is a Probe Component that helps navigating your storage more quickly. The folder and files most often used can be put on the Location Bar. From there, they are accessible with just one or two mouse clicks, at any time.
The Location Bar holds shortcuts to files, programs, folders, shell-objects, ...etc. It's purpose is to provide fast access to the objects accessed most often, without consuming excessive screen-area.
Fig 1: The Location Bar with one popup level open
Any item within the Probe browsing space can be put on a Location Bar, such as:
All items on the root-level of the Location Bar (see fig 1)
are accessible with a single mouse click. To provide shortcuts to more items, the Location
Bar was designed as a tree. In fig 1, the items with red triangles 
are 'Popup
Location Bars'. By clicking them, a new Location Bar pops up, with another collection of
shortcuts.
The tree structure presented by the Location Bar (through popup Location Bars) need not mirror the tree structure of the actual storage. This gives the freedom to group the shortcuts by project/subject rather than by physical location.
Since the Location Bar is essentially a collection of shortcuts to files, a File Collector is ideal for representing it.
Accessing Items on the Location Bar
An item on the Location Bar (or a popup Location Bar) is accessed by single clicking it using the left mouse button. Either the name-label or the icon of the item must be hi-lighted (see fig 2,4).
When either a Folder Browser or a Tree Browser is active, clicking a folder item in a Location Bar will navigate the Folder/Tree Browser to that particular folder.
Fig 2: About to click the folder ftp_sites on the Location Bar
Fig 3: The Folder Browser has navigated to the folder ftp_sites
Clicking a file item on the Location Bar will open it using the default toll for the file-type. In fig 4 and 5, a bitmap image is clicked and opened in an image editor.
Fig 4: About to click a BMP type image on the Location Bar
Fig 5: The BMP image has opened in an image viewer
When the mouse cursor is positioned above a Location Bar item having a red triangle
. Clicking the left mouse button now brings up a popup Location Bar. The popup Location Bar functions exactly as the normal Location Bar, although it closes automatically when loosing focus.
Fig 6: About to open a popup Location Bar
Fig 7: Having opened the popup Location Bar
Adding Items to the Location Bar
Items are added to Location Bars by Drag&Drop. Each item dropped on the Location Bar has a nickname associated with it. The purpose of the nickname is to provide a name that is short enough to be presented in limited screen-area.
New popup Location Bars, perhaps containing the most frequently used documents and folders for a given project, can be created. Further, items may be dropped onto popup Location Bars, at any depth.
To add an item to a Location Bar:
- Drag a single item, either from within Probe, or from the desktop, or some other application.
- As the item is dragged over the Location Bar, a black solid line (fig 8) indicate suggestions where to place the item.
- Drop the item onto such a black solid line. The dialog of fig 9 appears.
- Possibly modify the suggested nickname for the new shortcut, and press OK.
- A new item has been created, see fig 10.
Fig 8: The black line indicates a new shortcut placement
Fig 9: On drop, the Location Nickname dialog is shown
Fig 10: A new shortcut has been created
The purpose of the nickname (in fig 10, Control is a nickname for Control Panel) is to provide a compact presentation. From the nickname Control and from its associated icon, we understand that the item refers to the Control Panel without consuming screen-area for the wider name.
Dropping on Popup Location Bars
When dragging an item over the Location Bar, the mouse can be held still atop of a red triangle
Creating New Popup Location Bars
The shortcut Texts in fig 11 does not have red triangle indicating a popup Location Bar. To create a new popup Location Bar here:
- Drag an item from a Folder Browser (or elsewhere).
- Hold the dragged item still, above the label Texts, slightly to the right.
- A new, empty popup Location Bar is displayed (fig 12). Drop the item onto this empty Location Bar.
Fig 11: The shortcut Texts has no popup Location Bar
Fig 12: An empty popup Location Bar is displayed during Drag&Drop
Moving Items Within the Location Bar
Location Bar Items can be moved, either within a single Location Bar, or between popup Location Bars. To move items within Location Bars, do as follows:
NOTE: Popup Location Bars can be opened while dragging by holding the cursor atop of red triangles and waiting slightly.
Fig 13: Dragging the item Texts within the Location Bar
Fig 14: The item Texts has been moved
Clicking the right mouse button in the Location Bar brings up a context menu. It contains Location Bar specific settings and commands.
If a shortcut is hi-lighted when opening the popup menu, menu items for modifying that item are included.
Click the menu items in fig 15 to go to their associated help text.
Fig 15: The Location Bar popup menu
The menu command New Item is another way of creating a new Location Bar shortcut. When invoking the command, a dialog for editing a nickname, and browsing for a location is shown.
If the context menu is invoked while a Location Bar item is hi-lighted, the Edit Label item is available. It allows for modifying the nickname and location of a shortcut.
This command deletes the selected item from the Location Bar.
The shortcuts of the Location Bar and all it's popup Location Bars, are stored in a File Collector. This commands navigates the active Folder or Tree Browser to that specific File Collector.
It may be more efficient to edit Location Bar items in Folder Browsers, rather than by dragging and dropping individual Location Bar items.
If the File Collector that stores the structure of the Location Bar has been modified, this command will synchronize the Location Bar with the defining File Collector.
Optionally, the Location Bar can be used as a drop target, meaning that files may be dropped into the folders that the Location Bar items refers to. This option is disabled by default.
This command enables loading the entire structure of the Location Bar from a File Collector. This may be used for backing up and restoring the structure of the Location Bar, copying a Location Bar structure to another computer, swapping between Location Bar structures etc.
This command will save all items on the Location Bar (and it's popup bars) to a File Collector.
NOTE: After adding/moving/editing Location Bar items, it's structure may be saved to a File Collector. This makes it easy to restore the structure at a later time.
These popup menu commands are shared by all frames, and described in the section Frames, Reference.
The shortcuts on a Location Bar need not refer to items located within the same folder within the storage. This provides a degree of freedom, so that shortcuts can be grouped by subject.
Popup Location Bars provide an efficient means for arranging shortcuts to the most important files and folders of a certain project.
An example of organizing a popup Location Bar for a specific project is shown in fig 16. The project is a software IP-telephone project. A number of folders and files within the project are accessed frequently:
- Source-code for:
- The Client
- The Server
- Common source-code
- A text file containing a simple phone-book.
- A Word document describing test procedures
- A folder containing a presentation of the project
- A folder containing HTTP uploads
- An FTP-connection with the HTTP-server for the project
- A folder for backing up the project
Shortcuts to all items above have been grouped together in a popup Location Bar in fig 16.
Fig 16: A Popup Location Bar for the IP-Phone project
Edit the Location Bar in the Folder Browser
All items on the Location Bar, and on it's popup Location Bars, are stored in a File Collector. Through the command Go To Defining Collector (see The Location Bar Popup Menu), the active Folder Browser is jumped to that File Collector. Using Folder Browsers can be efficient when moving several items within the Location Bar.
The structure of the Location Bar can be stored in a File Collector. This enables restoring a Location Bar after accidently closing the frame. The commands (see The Location Bar Popup Menu) Save to Collector and Load from Collector, the Location Bar is saved/loaded.
The Shortcut Icons (BMP) Directory
Most items on the Location Bar have an icon associated with them. For efficiency reasons, these icons are cached in the BMP subfolder of the directory of where Probe is installed. If the BMP files within this folder are lost, icons for the Location Bar may be missing or incorrect.
Also, if using a Location Bar created on a certain computer on another computer, icons are restored if the corresponding BMP files are copied.
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