TerraFileBrowserSheetSkin: improve User Experience with slow Drives
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Key: PIVOT-796
URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/PIVOT-796
Project: Pivot
Issue Type: Improvement
Components: wtk-terra
Affects Versions: 2.0, 1.5, 1.4, 1.3, 1.2, 1.1
Environment: Windows with Network (SMB-) drives attached and/ or
special drives like card reader drive letters or virtual cd drives
Reporter: Thomas Guretzki
Priority: Minor
Fix For: 2.1
The current TerraFileBrowserSheetSkin blocks quite often on the UI Thread when
reading the list of root directory after each directory change, and when
refreshing the file list of directories on slow drives.
On Windows, the reason seems to be that reading file attributes of those drives
(especially isDirectory()) is quite slow. This has a number of consequences:
- Retreiving the list of files on slow drives freezes the UI, and users don't
necessarily realize that the system is still working
- Sorting of the retreived files is quite slow, as the FileComparator keeps
refreshing those attributes
- After each directory change in the FileBrowser, users have to wait until the
complete list of drive letters (root directories) has been refreshed. This also
happens on local drives.
In response to these problems, I've enhanced TerraFileBrowserSheetSkin in a
number of ways:
- FileComparator caches file attributes, leading to approx. 70% decrease in
file refresh time
- refreshing the drive letter list uses dedicated tasks, so the user doesn't
have to wait for the slow drives to respond
- while drive letters are refreshed, a small ActivityIndicator next to the
ListButton is displayed
- while the file list is refreshed, an ActivityIndicator is display instead of
an empty file list
- the responsibility of RefreshFileListTask has been extended to include
sorting the files, as this used to take roundabout 50% of refreshing time and
to freeze the UI
- changing the sort while RefreshFileListTask is running is now supported
The patch, including a few extensions of the bxml file, is attached to this
ticket
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