Favorites Tab[s] - your favorite assets and game objects

Done!
Just take the latest version from Asset Store, it's live already

 

Cool, thanks! Works great now.

 

I'm not sure if this has been asked before, but I have an awful lot of GOs in my Hierarchy and sometimes would like to parent something at the top of the list to something near the bottom. Normally, this would involve drag-scrolling for ages, but it occurred to me that if I could just drag the hierarchy object onto a favorite in my Favorites tab, it would save so much time. If this is possible, could you add it to your todo list?

 

Great! Thanks for confirming that

 

That's a great idea! Sound easy to implement, so it will be added with the next version. Thanks!

 

yes would be great disable stars and use instead drag and drop, stars are distracting

 

Hmm, the point of having stars is to make it easier to find what you're looking for in the Hierarchy and in the Project view even without having any Favorites tab open. You may find that distracting, although it should be attracting your eyes...

Anyway, thanks for the feedback! I'll make the stars optional, so you can disable them if you like that more. Then you'd have to drag the items you want to bookmark to a Favorites tab, and then right-click them to unbookmark them from the context menu... Or I can also make them more subtile by allowing you to change the alpha so you can make them barely visible and less distracting but still there when you want to click on them?

Marble's request was about something else - to allow using drag-drop from the Hierarchy view to items in the Favorites in order to change the parent of a game object.

 

Thanks! Waiting for update!

or to delete items just select and press delete. Don't like alpha idea its better keep standart look for unity interface

 

There seems to be another minor issue with Hierarchy2 installed:

I have to right-click on a very specific, tiny spot inside the Favorites window to get the correct context menu. I never know quite where it is, so it takes a lot of right-clicks to get the right spot. Pressing delete keyboard key from it will just delete the game object instead.

 

Thanks Nezabyte, I'll check...

 

Hey Nezabyte, I checked this one and (at least on my PC/Unity) on first right-click opens the context menu of Hierarchy2, and then on next right-click (while that one is still open) opens my context menu. It doesn't really matter where is the click as long as it is somewhere on the selected item.

I've looked at some possible solutions too, and one would be to prevent the context menu coming from any other extension and show my popup only, but then you wouldn't have all the coolness of the Hierarchy2 context menu inside the Favorites tabs. Another solution is to make the first half of the item always show my context menu, and to let all other extensions override that but only in the second half of the item. This might be a bit better but I still don't like it because it's a little bit unintuitive and obscure. Or I could just leave it as it is and then you still have both context menus, first one comes from the extensions and second one from the Favorites... But then that's also weird and unintuitive...

Maybe enforcing my context menu on the icon would work fine? I see, there's no keyboard shortcut assigned to Remove, so maybe just adding that will be enough? What do you think?

 

Thanks for looking into it. I think a keyboard shortcut would be fine as long as I can use it for both single-select and multi-select of favorites makes it easy to clear all favorites and start over for each task I'm working on.

 

Favorites Tabs just joined the Asset Store Madness sale event and it's available with 50% discount!!!

If my extension was on your wishlist this is the right opportunity to extend your set of productivity tools for Unity.

You'll be surprised how a top quality simple tool like this can improve your workflow! Thanks, and I'm looking forward to see the next 5 star review - yours

 

How'd you know it was on my wishlist?! <Cautiously looks over shoulder>

A worthy addition to any collection. And it's on sale? Perfect.

 

Hehe, thanks man!

Just noticed your GYA is on sale too now in 24h Deals, so I took the opportunity to grab it for half the price only, saving $17.50!

Thanks for the great review too! That's the achievement I've been waiting for - 10 reviews, all 5 stars!!! You guys are awesome! Thanks a lot!

 

Quite welcome, it was well deserved. And thank you as well!

Nice on the ten 5 star reviews! Hoping for the same down the road, I'm getting closer. Step by step, inch by inch, slowly I turn. Niagara Falls!

Now that brings back memories.

 

i have trouble i try to explain when i use him
maybie someone can help to explain how is work

when i got fav i click on it she select in project that's will be cool
but here now i want make selection only in inspector because i need drag resource on fav prefab

 

Hi @kilik128! I am not sure what do you want to do exactly... Can you send me a screenshot maybe?

Note that Favorites tabs work very similar to Hierarchy and Project views. Selection changes on click, but it doesn't change if you click an object and start dragging it (without releasing the button, just start dragging immediately) to where you want. I think this is what you want to do, but I am not sure, so please let me know

 

i just imagine one idea optional where the selection is autolock
for improve speed creation of prefab

 

Ah, I see something like right-click -> Open in New Inspector?

Sounds cool, I'll see if that's possible. Thanks for the idea!

 

Yay!!! Favorites Tabs got features on Asset Store's front page!

It's also still on sale, so maybe you'd like to take it for only half of the original price

 

Just a friendly reminder - Favorites Tabs is still on SALE, 50% off the original price, but hurry up as the Madness ends in 6 hours and 15 minutes.

Thanks to all of you who already did that! Just keep in mind that I'm eagerly waiting to hear about your impressions

 

Hi Flipbookee,
I found a problem with the last version of Hierarchy2.
Often in the editor I have this error:

I hope that you could easily fix it.
Thanks

 

Hey man, the Favorites Tabs here is not doing much - it only handles callbacks coming from Unity's original Hierarchy tab and dispatches it to all other listeners.

The crash is probably happening because the scene object got destroyed either before receiving the callback (which would be very weird) or while processing the callback. The first case can easily be prevented in my code, just replace line 1469 of FavoritesTab.cs that looks like this:

Code (csharp):

1. if (hierarchyItemCallbacks != null)

with this:

Code (csharp):

1. if (hierarchyItemCallbacks != null && EditorUtility.InstanceIDToObject(item))

Note that this would be a workaround for some weird issue in Unity's original Hierarchy tab, but it doesn't really matter if it works. Just let me and @thienhaflash know about this so we can add similar checks eventually in other places in our code... Or, if this doesn't help then there might be another issue somewhere in Hierarchy2 code, which you might be able to "fix" easily by adding a null check in vlbObject.cs at line 78, just add a 'go &&' in front of the return expression, which will check is the 'go' GameObject null or destroyed just before trying to access it. If this solves the issue, please tell @thienhaflash to add a similar check in his code, or he knows what's best to be done there.

 

Hello there,

I already issue an update with the null-reference checks, still in the queue but will be available soon. Sorry everyone for this inconvenience

thanks

 

Thank you both for you support.
The fix proposed by Flipbookee seams to help. Anyway, yes, I also added some other null checks in the Hierachy2. So the new update is welcome

 

Did that feature actually make it? If it did, it doesn't seem to work for me.

An alternative idea to tell favorites with the same name apart would be to allow custom aliases, ie. the ability to rename a favorite in the Favorites tab while letting the referenced item keep its name. If the referenced item is renamed, the favorite is synced to the new name as usual.

Rationale: right now I have a lot of project folders under assets with a similar structure. Each project folder has a Resources folder. I'd like to favorite multiple Resources folder at the same time, but they are all displayed as "Resources" in the Favorites tab. My work-around for the moment is to favorite the parent folder instead, but that workaround may not be suitable anymore when favoriting deeper items.

In fact, an earlier screenshot you posted shows 2 favorites with the name "Scripts" so you must be familiar with the problem.

 

Thanks @movra for the explanation! That makes sense very much

No, the requested feature hasn't been added yet... That's a great alternative idea how to address the issue! Another user suggested adding short comments or annotations to favorited items and to show that just to the right of the name in the Favorites tabs... Adding all these three features is not so difficult, so I'll try to add them ASAP. I'm still busy finishing the Si3 which is very close to getting released on Asset Store and to replace Si2, but I'll put that on hold for this, just a little bit... Thanks!

 

Ah, now I feel guilty for delaying your other product. On the other hand I am glad to see the requested features added in!

 

Hey guys, do you think having something like this would help?

As an option, of course

 

Hey I already use your great plugin Favorites Tab
What will be the difference?

 

I was trying to address the issue where you'd have favorited multiple assets with the same name, such as those three Scripts folders, but all three are located in different subfolders under Assets. So I've added an option now to show the location of the asset as folder path below each favorited asset... I may do something similar for scene objects although that might not be enough since in the scene hierarchy objects can have the same name even under the same parent object.

 

Yes true, I was completely blind!
Very nice feature indeed.

 

Looks absolutely fantastic!

 

Thanks guys for your feedback!

New version got just released - 1.2.10 - take it from the Asset Store

Showing paths is turned off by default, so you'll have to switch it on.

Also now the Delete or Backspace keys will remove selected favorites from the list, so now you can easily unfavorite all items in a Favorites tab by selections all with Ctrl+A and then Delete.

And the last one is the new feature "Show in New Inspector" accessible from the context menu on favorite items in Favorites tabs. This will open a new Inspector tab and lock it showing a favorite item, but it will keep the previously selected object still selected in your default Inspector. Now this might be a very powerful tool, either to quickly change the properties of an object without actually changing your selection or to see the properties and preview to check is that the right object you were looking for, or to maybe drag-drop components between this object and the selected one, etc.

So, try it and let me know how this works for you

Enjoy!

 

The changes in 1.2.10 simply bring Favorites Tab to a higher level. The path underneath the favorites is really a big improvement for my use-case. The New Inspector feature looks like it could open a new workflow as well. Thanks a lot Flipbookee!

 

That's great to hear, hehe!
And thanks a lot for posting such awesome review too!!! Eleventh five-stars review - you guys are amazing!!!

 

I've submitted a tiny update that doesn't use default parameters now just to help those of you guys who are using incompatible IDE's that "see" the C# code as version 3.0, so take the latest update if you need that. Otherwise you can ignore this update since the rest is all same as in version 1.2.10 relesed a few days ago.

Enjoy!

 

Hey guys, have you had a chance to try the new "Show in New Inspector" feature? How does that work for you? I'd like to hear if you have found some use cases where this feature come really handy The screen of my laptop died just after releasing the last update, so I wasn't able to try that myself... I hope to get a new one this weekend if I'm lucky...

So far I've heard from Yann it's great for dragging out a specific component of a game object to be assigned to an object field of another game object. He has also reported a tiny bug with this feature which I'll have to fix too.

 

Coincidentally I was just thinking about that feature. So far I've used it to compare a Prefab to its instances in the scene. Saves me a lot of switching back and forth.

 

Question, is this new version going to be compatible with Unity 3.5.7? I am a bit afraid to upgrade now.....

 

Yes, it is compatible. Don't worry just take the update and let me know what you think about the new stuff in it.

 

I am using favourites tab since a week and it's great. But 2 times it stopped working. The add star button disappeared from hierarchy and project panel. Already added favorites was there and could be removed. Setting to default layout and restarting unity solved it. I didn't get any errors (I didn't check warnings) when favorites tab stopped working, But sometimes I am getting this error when it's already working. I am getting this randomly.


NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
FavoritesTab+TreeViewTracker.ProjectItemOnGuiCallback (System.String item, Rect selectionRect) (at Assets/FlipbookGames/FavoritesTab/Editor/Scripts/FavoritesTab.cs:1401)
UnityEditor.ProjectBrowser.OnGUIAssetCallback (Int32 instanceID, Rect rect) (at C:/BuildAgent/work/d63dfc6385190b60/Editor/Mono/ProjectBrowser.cs:558)
UnityEditor.TreeView.OnGUI (Rect rect, Int32 keyboardControlID) (at C:/BuildAgent/work/d63dfc6385190b60/Editor/Mono/GUI/TreeView/TreeView.cs:404)
UnityEditor.ProjectBrowser.OnGUI () (at C:/BuildAgent/work/d63dfc6385190b60/Editor/Mono/ProjectBrowser.cs:1733)
System.Reflection.MonoMethod.Invoke (System.Object obj, BindingFlags invokeAttr, System.Reflection.Binder binder, System.Object[] parameters, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture) (at /Users/builduser/buildslave/mono-runtime-and-classlibs/build/mcs/class/corlib/System.Reflection/MonoMethod.cs:222)

I am developing for windows phone.

 

Thanks @Meceka for reporting the error! I'll take a look...

I've seen the missing stars once. It happened just after importing it in a new project, and then after entering game mode it started working normally. I'll check that too.

 

Great News!

Favorites Tabs version 1.2.11 got just released on Asset Store

Update your copies because this version fixes a couple of known issues, such as hollow stars not showing sometimes, a few NullReferenceExceptions (which were harmless, but still), and a bug discovered by Yann Papouin where "Show in New Inspector" was not working correctly right after favoriting a scene object (thanks Yann, you're awesome).

There's only one new feature, I've added the "Show in New Inspector" feature on context menus of assets in the Project view, so you can use this feature directly from there even for assets which are not in your favorites. I hope this will be useful to some of you, so I'll need your feedback on this to help me decide is it worth keeping it there in the future or not.

Huge thanks to Mehmet Can Kahraman for his nice review, it's very much appreciated!!! That's 13 five-star reviews now!!! So cool, and I hope this recent improvements will convince the rest of you to post some reviews too

Enjoy!

 

@Victor_Kallai That's a very interesting question, man!

I'm posting my answer here:

Adding this "feature" is pretty easy, as @thienhaflash explained already...

However, there's much more work required to convert an idea for a feature to something great. Besides adding the feature one would have to handle all of the following:
- make it work smoothly for everyone;
- tune performance for all different kinds of Unity project;
- improve usability to fit various users' workflow;
- clean all bugs.

Now, you would imagine all of that is simple, and in fact it is, more or less, but only if you have an army of people using it everyday so that it gets thoroughly tested by a huge audience! Keep in mind that only a small percentage of them will actually send you their feedback, give suggestions, or even report bugs... Growing the audience is the trickiest part, at least for me, but it is absolutely necessary and required in order to finish all those steps!

Once a product grows its users base, it's pretty easy - just repeat these simple steps:
- listen to users' feedback;
- fix all reported bugs;
- add improvements based on feedback;
- release new version.

After about two years repeatedly doing that you'll end up with a great product which everyone loves, such as the Favorites Tabs, and you'll be very proud of having made something like that (even though you know you'd never have succeeded without their great feedback )

 

I got one suggestion for FavouriteTabs, maybe you could add custom group in the Favorite panel or at least group the items by star colors. It will greatly improve the usability I believe

 

Favorites Tabs 1.2.12 is available now on Asset Store!

Please update! I just fixed the search box in it to handle Backspace and Delete keys when it's focused. These keys were not handled properly in the previous version because the favorites list control was "stealing" these events and it was executing the "Remove from Favorites" command

@thienhaflash: Thanks for the suggestion! I think something like that has already been suggested, but it isn't an easy change. It's on my to-do list for some of the future updates already. Instead of that Favorites Tabs currently has various filtering options and multiple tabs can be shown at the same time, each with its own filtering. This is addressing a little bit the missing groups functionality, although it isn't exactly the same, and I agree having manually selected groups would be useful... So, I was trying some combinations of filters to check if I can simulate the groups and that's how I discovered the Backspace and Delete issue ... Thanks man, you helped me find and fix an important bug!

 

I have a suggestion:
With a folder that has been favorited, once you click on it, it displays it within the project as collapsed. It should open up the folder when clicking. That would save me a click.

 

Hmm, is this for Project view in single column mode or for two columns? Some long time ago, I've made a change to support showing the content of a favorited folder in the second column... Is your suggestion for the first column or for the single column mode? Although, doing this in both cases would be nice, so let me see is that possible...