I'd like to request a feature, if possible. ACD Systems used to offer a product called mPower Tools, but they've stopped development and support, while the tool was really extremely handy and useful for your workflow. Basically it was ACDSee but dockable at the side of your desktop, so at any time you could move your pointer to the side of your desktop to automatically access a panel of thumbnails and view images, navigate through different folders and drag thumbnails from the side panel into other applications, to easily load an image into Photoshop, insert it as an e-mail attachment, etcetera.
But as I mentioned before ACD Systems doesn't upgrade mPower Tools anymore and it needs ACDSee 5 to operate properly. I've just installed Windows XP 64 and I am sure mPower Tools will crash a lot if I reinstall it. It already crashed a lot on my old 32-bit XP. Besides I like XnView much more than the plump bloatware that ACDSee has become.
I really hope you are interested in adding the docking feature to XnView, as it really enhances image handling workflow.
Here is a summary of its features:
1: The thumbnail bar automatically appears when you move your pointer against the left, right, bottom or top side of the screen (depending on your preferences). As soon as you click outside the thumbnail panel, it disappears again, unless you activate a lock button (a pin icon next to the exit button at the top right of the panel), that made the panel stay visible and on top of other windows.
2: Left-clicking on a thumbnail selects it.
3: Double-clicking on a thumbnail shows it (according to your image viewing preferences)
4: Right-clicking on a thumbnail offers a menu with all options that are available in ACDSee, such as image conversion etcetera. The menu also shows a larger version of the thumbnail.
5: Dragging a thumbnail into any open application window opens the corresponding image in that window. So if you drag a thumbnail into Photoshop, the image (not the thumbnail) will be loaded into Photoshop, and if you drag a thumbnail into an e-mail window, the image will become the attachment.
6: On top of the thumbnail panel are a group of buttons that make optional extra panels appear next to the thumbnail panel, such as a panel showing a folder tree and a panel with your favourites. Other buttons give you access to things like the options, help, search function, moving up a folder level, etcetera.
7: You can quickly set the thumbnail size in the panel through a drop-down menu with thumbnail size presets.
8: Another really useful feature of mPower Tools is a function that nests the right-click functions as a context into a standard Explorer right-click menus. This enables you to right click on any image file in any Explorer-compliant file window and instantly see the large thumbnail of that image in the appearing right-click menu.
Here are a few screenshots:
Many thanks in advance if you want to pick this up!
Best regards,
Metin
