Files Au3 - AutoIt File Manager

[WildByDesign]

FilesAu3-2025-12-29:

I added Mica to the GUI in dark mode for Windows 11 build 22621 and higher. Mica is quite tame and decent. Now that the framework is in place, it will be very easy for me to add the ability to switch between Mica, Acrylic, Tabbed, etc. from a submenu or something.

The switch between dark mode and light mode clears the Mica material and all is well.

I also fixed the tooltips in light mode because the tooltip colors were not switching initially when switching between light/dark.

At some point, I should add the ability to detect when the Windows theme changes outside of the app and change accordingly.

Now that I am quite happy with the overall GUI functionality, I think that I am going to move on to some ListView features. Such as adding the ability to hover over a directory/file and show some details in a tooltip. There's a lot of fun ListView stuff that I want to explore.

EDIT: As always, the updated source archive is in the first post.

EDIT2: I forgot to mention that I implemented the OWNERDRAW statusbar in this release.

I believe that the majority of the code for the OWNERDRAW statusbar came from @pixelsearch from this post in the Resizable status bar without SBARS_SIZEGRIP thread.

However, I had to make some changes to it. There was a conflict between the ScrollbarProc drawing (for the gripper dots, etc.) and the non-client area painting over the white line below the menubar in dark mode. This conflict was unavoidable and would cause the entire GUI to lose entire theming go back to Windows Classic type of theming.

The only workaround was to remove $WS_SIZEBOX from the GUI. That meant that we could only resize the GUI from the gripper in the bottom right corner and we could not resize the GUI using any of the sides. This was just not the way to go, unfortunately. 

Also, I noticed that Notepad++ did their dark mode theming on the modern theme statusbar without removing the theme (eg. _WinAPI_SetWindowTheme($g_hStatus, "", "")), so I thought, why not try...

So I kept the modern theming of the statusbar and everything still worked well. The OWNERDRAW painting and everything worked as expected. The one and only negative was that the gripper area does not show the actual gripper (dark mode only). That is just a limitation in Windows dark mode theming at the moment and not a showstopper. The gripper area still functions to resize and so does the sides of the GUI.

Explorer++ dark mode also shows the same thing with the missing gripper. No big deal. But yet somehow Notepad++ keeps the modern statusbar theming and still has the gripper showing beautifully. Notepad++ is a great example for all dark mode related things. If anyone is curious (and knows c++), here is the statusbar related code that Notepad++ uses: https://github.com/notepad-plus-plus/notepad-plus-plus/blob/18811c6f0605ec2166e57d4a9a4ca53db90bd29f/PowerEditor/src/WinControls/StatusBar/StatusBar.cpp#L139

Edited December 29, 2025 by WildByDesign

[WildByDesign]

FilesAu3-2026-01-01:

I added some beautiful (dark mode / light mode) tracking tooltips for the ListView items. It ended up being way more work than I had expected but absolutely worth it.

Hovering over files gives some file information. Hovering over folders gives the total size of the folder contents. Hovering over drives in This PC gives a bit of drive information.

The structure is in place now and working well. I would like to add more information to each of those tooltips at some point. For example, dimensions for image files.

[WildByDesign]

FilesAu3-2026-01-06:

• Updated DPI functionality (removed _WinAPI_DPI.au3 UDF)
• Updated CreateDots function with full DPI support
  • Dot size, spacing and alignment are identical to gripper dots from light mode Explorer theme
  • Gripper dots tested up to 400% DPI scaling

Not a lot of changes. However, those DPI changes particularly with the gripper dots made a beautiful difference. The gripper dots are sharp now on all DPI factors and they match the gripper dots from the aero.msstyles resource files.

[WildByDesign]

FilesAu3-2026-01-11:

• Updated TreeListExplorer UDF to version 2.12
• Significantly improved column sorting (thanks to @Kanashius)
  • Sorting now persists when you change directories
• Added new column for Type (again, thanks to @Kanashius)
• Lots of important tooltip fixes
  • Tooltips now only show when hovering over column 0 (Name column)
  • Tooltips will no longer show while vertically scrolling in the ListView

This turned out to be a really nice release.

[WildByDesign]

FilesAu3-2026-01-12:

• Updated callbacks to the newer Callback_ListViewPaths and Callback_ListViewItemCreated method
• Statusbar improvements
  • ListView selections (including during marquee selections) update statusbar calculations in real-time now
• ListView tooltips improvements
  • Tooltips are cleared now when hovering from one item to the next

I think the tooltip functionality is complete now. The tooltips can use more information, for sure. That can easily be added. But as far as how/when the tooltips activate and how/when the tooltips are cleared behaves beautifully now.

Changing selections in the ListView seems to cause some flicker on the TreeView which is interesting. I haven't tried to fix that yet but I'll figure out a solution (hopefully) soon.

EDIT: I was able to fix the flicker on the TreeView successfully by making the TreeView composited. No flicker anymore. I will add that in the next release.

Edited January 12 by WildByDesign

[WildByDesign]

On 12/8/2025 at 7:32 PM, WildByDesign said:

to get around the AutoIt bug #1492 which causes problems between WS_EX_COMPOSITED and ListView headers due to AutoIt using CS_OWNDC for GUI's despite Microsoft's guidance against using CS_OWNDC.

Slightly off-topic:

It looks like AutoHotKey copied AutoIt with regard to how their interpreter initiates GUI creation using CS_OWNDC.

Curiosity got the better of me (as it always does). So I was curious to see how AutoHotKey would handle a simple GUI with a simple ListView. All good, as expected. I then added the WS_EX_COMPOSITED extended style to the GUI and sure enough the ListView in AutoHotKey flickers just the same. I don't know much at all about the history between AutoIt and AutoHotKey other then a few things that I've read on Wikipedia.

[Jos]

17 minutes ago, WildByDesign said:

I don't know much at all about the history between AutoIt and AutoHotKey other then a few things that I've read on Wikipedia.

Just keep it like that and you'll be fine. 😉

[WildByDesign]

Far beyond the abilities of my own skill set, I have miraculously achieved the drag and drop between TreeView/ListView (and vice versa), TreeView/TreeView and ListView/ListView. And somehow it is done in a way that is beautiful looking.

So I just wanted to give a heads up that that is what I am currently working on. I never expected to be able to do that part myself.

There are quite a lot of intricacies that still need to be done. But I’m hoping to share it soon.

[SOLVE-SMART]

Very briefly, because I'm in hurry:  the README of the repository does contain a Acknowledgements (Credits) section now, to appreciate peoples supported work here or on GitHub.

Best regards
Sven