Total Commander

As I use many tabs in conjuction with view modes I've encountered with the problem to recognise the active tab.

So I'd like to ask you to consider of possibility to set custom text color and text font properties (like bold, italic, underline etc.) of active tab.

Thank you

The text is drawn by the Windows theme engine, I don't have any influence on that, sorry.

ghisler(Author) wrote:The text is drawn by the Windows theme engine, I don't have any influence on that, sorry.

Oh I see.

Well, as I've read other topics here about tabs, its highligting etc., there is only a way to distinguish the active tab by setting the ActiveTabColor - no possibility to use solid color instead of gradient or use gradient between two different custom colors, right?

Yes, that's currently the only way to show it.

2George2005
Followed by a discussion here in the forum I currently use the following solution which okay for me. I don't use tab colors anymore. Instead I'm using tab icons only. I created a few 'generic' icons which are just solid or gradient rectangles saved as ICO file.

This are my pros/cons for my solution:
+ Tabs are still recognizable as active/inactive at first glance
+ You can also use dark colors without sacrifying readability.
- The area which is colored is of course much smaller
- You cannot use a generic tab color and a more specific icon as the same time.

All in all this works better for me compared to the normal tab coloring.

The best would be to combine these approaches similar to this:
http://lefteous.totalcmd.net/tc/ideas/tabcolors_reduced.png

Lefteous wrote:2George2005
Followed by a discussion here in the forum I currently use the following solution which okay for me. I don't use tab colors anymore. Instead I'm using tab icons only. I created a few 'generic' icons which are just solid or gradient rectangles saved as ICO file.

This are my pros/cons for my solution:
+ Tabs are still recognizable as active/inactive at first glance
+ You can also use dark colors without sacrifying readability.
- The area which is colored is of course much smaller
- You cannot use a generic tab color and a more specific icon as the same time.

All in all this works better for me compared to the normal tab coloring.

The best would be to combine these approaches similar to this:
http://lefteous.totalcmd.net/tc/ideas/tabcolors_reduced.png

Well, it sounds very promising, thanks a lot!

2Lefteous
could you please explain how you do this?
Is it possible that only the active tab in the left or right panel gets an icon?

Buttercreme wrote:2Lefteous
could you please explain how you do this?
Is it possible that only the active tab in the left or right panel gets an icon?

It could be great to implement special rule for Auto Switch Mode which could 'match' the active tab. It could also solve the current situation that there's no UI setting for active tab color.

Mr. Ghisler, what would you think about it?

I have considered it, but it would cause many problems, e.g. when a user defined a different columns mode or sort order for the active tab. Maybe I could add ActiveTabIcon= as I added ActiveTabColor=, but now is the worst moment for that (new final version imminent).

2Buttercreme

could you please explain how you do this?
Is it possible that only the active tab in the left or right panel gets an icon?

No no - misunderstanding. I'm using custom tab icons (solid/gradient colors) for view modes. It has been discussed in other threads that the tab coloring makes it harder to recognize the active tab.
When you are using Windows 10 or a visual style where the active and inactive tab looks almost the same... that's another problem.


This is how it looks: http://lefteous.totalcmd.net/tc/ideas/colored_tab_icons.png

ghisler(Author) wrote:I have considered it, but it would cause many problems, e.g. when a user defined a different columns mode or sort order for the active tab. Maybe I could add ActiveTabIcon= as I added ActiveTabColor=, but now is the worst moment for that (new final version imminent).

OK, no problem. I understand that it's not a right time for it now.

So I'd like to ask you to remember such feature of ActiveTabIcon ini value to implement it in the future.
Thank you very much for your best support!