There are two controls derived from BetterListView. One for the navigation pane (folder tree on left side) and one for the file view (on the right side).

The FolderListView control allows browsing through virtual folders as well as folders on removable drives. We needed this control in our products because .NET does not provide any similar managed control (there is only FolderBrowserDialog, but we actually need a control).

You can use it for your purposes as well, it is available in Better ListView Samples source code.

Many features of Better ListView can be used to enhance file browsing, for example:

• Drag and Drop – moving or copying files
• Label Edit – renaming files
• Thumbnails – display thumbnails of image files
• Custom Tooltips – display extra information on each file item
• Groups – organize files into groups (e.g. by size)
• Check Boxes – select folders and sub-folders properly with three-state check boxes
• Images – every file type could display different image (extracted icon)
• Context Menus – do extra operations with files, like displaying file properties
• Searching – doing keyboard search is very easy to search for some file
• Sorting – sort files according to multiple properties (this is demonstrated in the sample)
• Background Image – show that the user is located in special folder by ambient image on the background

Item hierarchy with multi-line items in groups

Summary of what’s new:

We have added four new major features:

• Groups – items can be organized in collapsible groups
• Item Hierarchy – items can be organized in a tree structure, can be also collapsed just like the nodes in a TreeView
• Multi-Line Items – item texts can break in several lines and each item can have different size
• Data Binding – complex data binding is fully supported, any List, DataTable, DataView, array or any other IList-type object can be bound to Better ListView as a data source

Many existing features of Better ListView has been enhanced in favor of these. For example:

• Item reordering can be done with hierarchical items as well; user can even create child items
• It is possible to move items between different groups

Some of the minor features added are:

• Layouts can be adjustable – item sizes and spacings, even internal spacings
• Added new label editing controls (calendar and drop down box)
• Better ListView content (columns, items and groups) can be saved to file (XML or binary)
• Multi-line items support added
• See full changelog for details

We have also fixed many issues and improved performance of Thumbnails view and operations with collections.

About then new version

The new version 2.00 brings new major features, the most important one being item hierarchy support. This allows you to create tree-list structures in the list view, without having to sacrifice any of the list view functionality (columns, sorting, grouping, Drag and Drop reordering, etc).

Highly customizable item grouping capabilities were added. Individual group headers can have customized look and behavior. The group headers can be collapsible, support images, custom context menus, are focusable, and more.

Version 2.0 also improves the thumbnail view. The control handles larger images smoothly, even while resizing.

List items, group headers and column header can newly have custom padding specified for all of their elements, which makes it easy to do owner drawing of custom elements, such as overlay icons in the thumbnail view. Every part of the control can be newly replaced by custom drawing, not just overdrawn.

Version 2.0 newly allows you to save/load the list view contents with 1 just line of code, either in XML or binary format, to either file or string. Data-binding with custom column-mapping is supported as well.

Multi-line listview items are also newly supported. List items with very long text can take place of two (r more) regular items, so the text whole text is readable.

Thumbnails in groups

DataTable bound to Better ListView

Other news – new comics for developers!

We’ve also started publishing new webcomics for developers on our website, drawn by the Better ListView lead developer, Libor Tinka.