Rainbow Folders - Custom folder icons in the project browser? Easy!

@PhannGor Sometimes it's better to just move on. In your shoes I'd be worried about having to continue supporting two assets, but it does depend on how much work is involved in providing those little fixes that keep the asset working when Unity updates their Editor. Giving people a bit of warning does help soften the blow, but as far as I know Unity doesn't seem to have a good way for developers to contact their customers. Many of us will only find out once we see that red 'deprecated' text appear on the asset import page. Giving people that grace period really only works if they're aware that this is what you're doing.

I do think your new pricing is a little bit off on v2. As I said, €10 with a 50% discount for existing customers would make a lot more sense to me. Compare what else you can get on the asset store for your current asking price. It just feels too expensive for a non-essential utility. I know that assets are generally way under priced, but you've got to trust to economies of scale and get your money back that way.

I love that you obviously do care about your user base so that's what you've got to articulate. The more people buy Rainbow Folders, the more they'll tell their friends and colleagues. I know I do!

 

My sour luck,
I just bought the package on January of this money and enjoying it so much. I guess i have to get back using the classic flat color look. But thanks for a good plugin, it helps a lot when you have so many folders to manage.

 

First of all thanks for this great asset. I have been using this for a very long time and it has saved so much headache and anger! I have to agree with the previews comments though. The update execution could have been better.

To me, on the asset store, it looked exactly like the old one. To be honest I was not happy at all. I had to come over to the forums to see what was going on, and then I read the previous posts. I went from being upset to wanting to purchase this again.

I am not here to criticize the price. I mean, I know you can't keep updating this for the rest of your life for free -I am happy to pay for such a useful asset. In fact I just purchased this asset again. But, I was upset that it looked exactly like the old one. No one will remember the description from 3 years ago when they bought it. At a glance it looked like a rip-off.

You should really revise the description and the title on the page. Highlight what the new version has for the previous owners. It would probably help to put the words NEW and a version number on the title. I'd do this immediately. I chose to come to the forums to find out what was happening, but who knows how many would stop and turn away at the store.

 

Hi @AutoRotate,

You're absolutely right. I really appreciate your constructive feedback and going to update the description on the Asset Store immediately.

Thank you!

 

Why is this beneficial over the old method?

 

Folder icons are now actually replaced instead of drawing them on top of default ones. Previously, a custom icon should have had the same shape and size as a defalut one. The benefit of the new method is that you can use semi-transparent icons or icons with different shapes if you want to.

 

Hello.

I bought Rainbow Folders 2, but it does not seem to be working when I hold ALT. A lot of errors pop up on my screen:



I'm using Unity 2019.1.0f2

 

Hi @maydragon,

Just did a double-check using clean project with Unity 2019.1.0f2 and all works fine. Did you do an update from a previous version as described in documentation? Do you use other assets that may have an impact on the Project view?

Also, could you please use our support@borodar.com email for support request? This forum is also OK but in that way, we usually reply faster. Thank you!

 

Hi guys,

Just a small update regarding the previous issue. @maydragon send us additional details when it happens: only when you clicking on some folder from the second column of the Project view when you're using the "two column" layout.

Now we're able to reproduce it and working on the hotfix. Should be done later today or tomorrow morning. If someone else experiences a similar issue then just ping us at support@borodar.com and we'll send you a patch as soon as it will be available. A new update that contains this fix will be also available on the Asset Store but with a delay of few days because of the review process.

 

Don't mind spending the extra money on the update. One thing that is irritating is the upgrade guide for past settings doesn't seam to work. Followed the upgrade guide in the pdf.

 

Hi @Meatloaf4,

Could you please add a bit more details what's wrong with the upgrade guide? I've personally did few asset upgrades using those steps and all worked fine. Meanwhile, I'll double check all the things if something important is missing there.

 

Hey PhannGor,

First off I'd like to say thanks for the awesome asset! It makes navigating through my folders much more pleasant.

I'm curious about finding solutions to other long standing project view annoyances, and if you might consider them for this asset:

1. Probably the most frustrating part of the project view is that you need to click on that tiny little drop down arrow to open up a folder. By default double clicking on the folder name renames it. I rarely need to rename a folder, and if I do [right click] >> [rename] is plenty fine for the frequency it comes up. Instead, it would make much more sense (and bring Unity more in line with standard UX) if a double click on the folder opened it (e.g. how the Windows file explorer works).
2. The fact that Unity cuts an asset's name off mid-text with "..." is maddening when searching through assets with names longer than a single word or two. Again, I think it would make more sense if Unity acted like any sanely designed OS or program and continued the asset name onto a new line (again the Windows file explorer is a good example here).

I'm not sure how well these fit into the scope of Rainbow Folders, but it would certainly be a godsend if anyone could figure this out. Even if you wouldn't consider adding these to the asset, I'd be interested in hearing from someone as familiar as you are with modifying the project view about if implementing these two suggestions would even be possible.

 

Hi @PartyBoat,

Totally agree with part #1. Thinking about this one for a long time because it is really annoying. No promises at this point but will try to implement this and add as an optional feature to the Rainbow Folders.

Regarding #2, I suppose it will be hard to implement because the Project view is intentionally designed to use a list/grid of elements of the same size. I'm not saying that it is not possible, however, it can lead to many side effects.

 

Ah yes, I suppose I wasn't thinking about the grid size because I always use the second pane at the maximum viewing size where there is plenty of room below the name. That does seem like it might be complicated to sort out for any arbitrary icon size, although maybe a solution could be to only overlay the second line when there is enough room.

Anyways, it's exciting that you might work on the first problem. Thanks for your thoughts!

 

Huge performance issue in 2019.1.7f. Freezes editor completely when interacting with Project editor. I deep profiled and also deleted Rainbow Folder2 to check.

 

Hi,

We have a few similar bug reports regarding performance degradation but for most of our customers, all works fine even on large projects. We cannot yet reproduce it locally and therefore we need to understand exactly what conditions lead to this bug. Therefore, we will be grateful for any additional information.

* Are you working on Windows, Mac OS or Linux?
* Do you use Collaborate, Perforce or Plastic SCM?
* Are you using other assets that have an impact on the Project/Hierarchy window?
* Do you able to reproduce this issue on a new project created from scratch?

Also would be cool if you can record a short video when you're experiencing performance drops.

Thank you!

 

I've only been able to on Unity version 2019.1.7f. I've upgraded to 2019.1.9f and the issue is gone.

The original issue environment:
1. Windows
2. No version control
3. No editor assets
4. Tested in 2019.1.9f and the problem is gone. Too lazy to redownload 1.7f

 

Question. Your assets are the only ones I've ever used that show my *entire* Plugins folder and all the contents when I go to upgrade (was just going to upgrade to 2.0.2).

It seems to think that the entire Plugins folder belongs to Rainbow Folders, when I've had other assets that show me change/updated files only in the asset folder (even if it lives in Plugins)... any chance for future packages you can somehow work around this? I can show you what I mean if its not clear (its in the import package window that shows what is new / changed / greyed out as not part of the package).

This is what it looks like:


Also, imagine that all the folders above RainbowAssets are expanded, and you need to collapse each one, one by one (rainbow hierarchy does it too, as you can see)

 

You can easily collapse and expand all nodes if you press Alt and click on the arrows ► and ▼ respectively in Windows.
So in order to scroll easily you can collapse all by pressing Alt and ▼ for the Plugins folder, then simply click on the ► arrow for Plugins and all your folders will be collapsed.

 

Thanks, thats a useful workaround. It would be best if this worked like all my other assets though

 

Related to that issue, I could not reproduce it. I'm using Unity 2019.1.10f1.
I'm importing the Rainbow Folders 2 plugin, but I do not see any other folders except the RainbowAssets.

 

Correct, this happens only when you already have the previous version of the asset in your project. If you're importing it the first time then it doesn't show any other folders. I suppose this is the thing that confused @f0ff886f. However, this is usual behavior for Unity Editor and it does not depend on the type of asset you're importing. There is nothing I can do with that as the author of the asset.

 

Hi @PhannGor,
a quick question at first. Since Unity 2019.3 (now alpha version) comes with a UI redesign – including folder icons – are there any plans to adjust this asset's icons to match the new look in the future?



But more importantly, I'd like to bring up a problem I'm having with the asset for a while – its performance. I have well over a hundred rules for assigning folder icons and when I try to edit the settings ("RainbowFoldersSettings"), typing a name and reordering the list manually is so slow that find it easier to just edit the asset file in a text editor.

Spoiler: Performance

This is in real-time. The text takes that long to appear.

The list is also quite long and difficult to navigate, so when I need to edit an entry, 'Find' function in a text editor is also generally much faster than scrolling through the list in Unity where it can't be filtered. Drag & Dropping a freshly added entry to its appropriate place likewise tends to be simpler in with cut & paste rather than dragging over 100 other entries.

I have so many folder rules because often I want to set an icon for all folders of similar type (e.g. Terrain icon for level folders "1 - Wood", "2 - Village" … "26 - City"; Rainbow icon for all asset packs, etc.). 'Recursive' option doesn't do the trick though, because it would override the folder icons for all nested subfolders (whereas only direct subfolders would suffice) and I also use the same folder icon for things like asset packs which can theoretically be scattered all over the project folder.

I'd like to propose adding some way to filter, or better yet, group the entries.
Something along the lines of this:

Spoiler: Grouping suggestion

Not only it would allow you to maintain some structure and assign/change icons of many folders at once, but the performance would probably improve as well since all the groups you don't need at the moment would be folded.
What do you think?

In any case, I truly like this asset, but currently, it's a bit of a pain to manage in larger projects.

 

Hi @Rallix,

Regarding 2019.3 redesign, definitely we will add new asset icons to match new look in the future. For now, we're waiting when 2019.3 will be in beta because in alpha Unity guys are changing things so often.

Regarding performance degradation in the settings list, you're right. We know about this inconvenience, as well a few other ones regarding this reorderable list and will reimplement it soon. While it was a good idea to use a simple reorderable list to manage custom icon assignments long time ago, the situation changed and now we're looking different solution. Also, we're thinking about some explicit "priority" field to avoid manual reordering of the rules. This approach also will allow optimizing draw calls a bit more aggressively when you have multiple rules for the same folder.

I like your idea about filtering or/and grouping. Definitely will take a look at what we can do here! Thank you for your constructive feedback!

 

@PhannGor What should I be using for my Unity 2017.x projects? From memory, the old deprecated asset was broken, but the newer 2.0.2 is only 2018+ compatible and throws errors (TypeLoadException: Could not load type 'UnityEditor.SettingsProviderAttribute' from assembly 'RainbowFolders'.)

Could you make v2 a bit more backward compatible?

 

Hi @jeromeWork,

Unfortunately. there is no way to make v2 backward compatible with Unity 2017.x because there is no API required for new functionality.

However, you can still use the first version of the Rainbow Folders for Unity 2017.x. Deprecated assets are still available for the import from the Asset Store for all users that installed them at least once.

P. S. I'm not sure what do you mean by "the old deprecated asset was broken". The first version of the asset should work fine for Unity 2017.x and even for 2018.x.

 

Ok. Thanks @PhannGor I do seem to remember the legacy version was broken for me, which had forced me to make the upgrade. I guess it might have been in one of my newer 2018 projects, I just can't remember. I'll give it a go and see how it goes.

 

​

Hi, folks! We've finally reproduced and thereafter fixed a bug regarding significant Editor performance degradation that affected some of you.

This issue was related to the new feature of drawing project tree outlines and appeared only under a certain set of circumstances (heavy scriptable objects, large prefabs linked to each other, etc.) The funny thing is that it was relatively easy to fix but really hard to figure out what exactly should be fixed... Thank all of you who helped us to catch the cause and figure out what exactly goes wrong!

A new maintenance release is now available on the Asset Store.

 

Is there like a template vector file I could modify for my own custom folders? I found some of your old icons in the github project for Rainbow Folders but they doesn't look as crisp as the ones that come with the asset.

 

Hi, coming back to this.

It definitely isn't usual behaviour, your assets are the only ones I've got that exhibit this. My *guess* is that somehow you packaged a Plugins.meta entry for the Plugins folder?

Look at what happens when importing the 2.1.0 update (all those blurred folders are assets that wonderfully have their whole tree expanded on import, thanks for the trick with alt+arrows to collapse Grumpy-Dot). Please pay special attention to the warning triangle beside Plugins at the very top (this is what leads me to believe you have included Plugins in the export of the package):


And this is what happens when you import another asset from the store (the first HighlightPlus is greyed out because it wants to import demos to the default location). I've moved the asset to Plugins a long time ago, and it shows me only the folders that are tracked by the asset's package (looks like I lost the original "HighlightPlus" GUID a while ago, since it is greyed out):


It's just a small thing, but makes a big difference

Thanks for the 2.1.0 update btw, much appreciated, it is faster here.

 

Actually it is. There are other assets on the Asset Store that have the same behavior.

Something like that. The difference between these two assets it that the Rainbow Folders are imported to the "Plugins" folder by default. Your second asset is imported into the "Assets" folder and then you're moving it manually to the "Plugins" folder. You can safely ignore the warning triangle, nothing bad will happen.

 

We're using raster images for new icons. Here are default folder icons in PNG format that you can use as a template:

 

Where to download support 2017 version?

 

The lowest supported version for Rainbow Folders v2 is 2018.3 or higher. V1 is currently deprecated on the Asset Store and there is no possibility for new users to buy or download it.

However, you could send an email to support@borodar.com with your invoice number for Rainbow Folders 2 and we will send you back the older version, which is compatible with Unity 2017.x

 

Any update on the new UI? Just purchased this asset for my new project and the main issue is not the old design of the icons, but rather that with the new UI the icons change for opened folders, which removes the assigned color.
Thanks!
P.S. The new flat design for the folder icons looks great too, and should work very well with color overlays.

 

@Devil_Inside,

There is a hell lot of changes in 2019.3 and it takes a lot of time to adapt. Almost done with the codebase, working on new icons now. Hope I will finish all the things next week. Will keep you updated in this thread how it goes

Thank you for your support and patience!

 

Thanks!

 

Hi folks,

This update took a bit longer than expected but... We've just finished with support for Unity 2019.3 and sent new version to the Asset Store for review. It could take few days before it will be available there. Meanwhile, you can ping us at support@borodar.com and we will send you new version immediately

 

Hi, first of all, thanks for your work, bud sadly I must say I really don't like the new design for the folders.
For me the main purpose of the plug in is to quickly know what folder to click without reading the text by looking at the color of the folder, not the small icon.

Yes the icons are colored, but very small


I understand the change of design to match unity, but I think theyt would look better with the folder with color instead of white. the "RainbowAssets" looks nice.

Also, the new default folders for unity Open and Close the icons, would be nice if you could support that with double icons per folder.



Or perhaps I just set it wrong.

 

Hi @daville,

We're currently working on custom icons generator that would allow you to generate your own icons from presets, specify custom colors, etc. This should solve the issue in the future.

Regarding open/close icons, I guess it would be overkill to generate 4 icons per folder. Moreover, the "open" variant of the folder has a really small area to put the icon, the icon should be distorted, etc. which makes it really hard to support this type of icons.

Anyway, thank you for your feedback! We'll think about those things and will try to figure out how to make your experience with the Rainbow Folders better in the next versions.

 

Hey, @PhannGor. We had to switch our project from Gamma Color Space to a Linear Color Space. When we did that, the icons started looking differently - basically they have less contrast now do to the color space change. Do you think there is a way to fix this?

Update: It works properly now. After creating a new folder, the old look came back.

 

@PhannGor and @daville

Got to agree, those new minimalist icons completely defeat the point of using this asset. I don't want to be spending ages setting up my own custom icons, I've got better things to do Please at least match the folder color to the dominant item type colour, as it was before.

Very glad I saw this before updating. Personally I'll be sticking with my current version until it breaks.

 

The new alpha/betas have broken v1, this is how to fix it:

in the file RainbowFoldersBrowserIcons.cs:

comment out this from the top

//using ProjectWindowItemCallback = UnityEditor.EditorApplication.ProjectWindowItemCallback;

and add:

public delegate void ProjectWindowItemCallback(string guid, Rect selectionRect, Action repaintAction);

and then add ", null" to these

_drawVcsOverlay(guid, rect, null);

_drawCollabOverlay(guid, rect, null);

 

Hi. A new person on my team would really like to use this plugin. We would like to let him try it to show the team how it's useful, but we don't see a way to turn it off. We would like a way for people who don't want the plugin enabled to not have to deal with it. I saw some options in Project Settings but they don't appear to actually disable the plugin. Do you have any suggestions?

 

Hi @AndyMartin458,

If you use some VCS then just add it to ignore list (like .gitignore for GIT). If you don't then people who don't want the plugin enabled just can delete it from the project.

 

It would make sense to ignore it with gitignore and have people add it individually, but we were concerned about a couple of things.

1. We'd like for team members to be able to share their settings for it. When it was demoed to me it seems there is a lot of customization that would be useful to share.
   
2. If these settings are all stored in some kind of project settings which can be shared regardless of if the team members have the plugin installed, then would people who do not have it installed receive any errors?

Thank you for your time @PhannGor

 

You can create a separate repo only for the Rainbow Folders plugin. The team members which would like to use it will clone this repo in a folder which is ignored in the main repo. They can even use different branches / tags of the sub-repo and share different configurations of the plugin. The settings of the plugin are stored in the Data folder, so they will be included and committed with the plugin. Hope this helps.

 

Hello.
How do you get the old, colored icons back? The new design is not very helpful. How can I transfer custom settings to other projects?
Regards, Lutz

 

Hi all, has anyone created any custom coloring/icon configuration that they would want to share ? I'd love to check on what others are using it, in terms of folder colors/tags/background colors etc...

 

@King-Lube-III,

I can extract and send you the old ones but they will not look good with the new Unity 2019.+ UI. However, we've got a few requests from other users similar to your one and planning to add another set of "color-coded" icons in the next version of the asset.

Meanwhile, I've created customized icons per your request. They aren't final ones and we'll improve their quality and "readability" in the near future, for sure:

http://www.borodar.com/stuff/rainbowfolders/share/rf_icons_colored_2019.zip

You can apply them using the "Custom" item from the "icon" dropdown menu in the configuration dialog box.

Sorry for the inconvenience and thank you for your feedback!