Troubleshoot.CantSortDownloads

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I can't sort the downloads by file size, progress, etc... anymore

A lot of users complained about Shareaza 1.8.10.8 not allowing to sort the download window by clicking on the column headers anymore, as it was possible in earlier versions. This feature has been back in Shareaza since version 2.1, but it's disabled by default. If you want it you need to enable it again, as follows:

Go to the Shareaza settings and select 'Advanced'. Note: The advanced settings are not available in 'Normal Mode'. If you're in normal mode, then switch to 'Power Mode' from the menu View. In the long list of advanced settings, look for Downloads.SortColumns and set it to 'True'. That's it, but you will need to restart Shareaza for the change to take effect.

Optionally, you can also enable Downloads.SortSources, which will automatically sort all sources of a download so that the current transfers are at the top, followed by the queued sources in queue position order.

Why was this feature removed in the first place?

The short answer is: The code which handles the download list has been rewritten for better performance. So it's not a feature having been removed, it's an enhancement made to those lists. Unfortunately, the sort feature has not been rewritten for the new code yet, so it was not possible to sort these lists anymore. This feature is now back, but it still uses a considerable amount of resources, especially for very long lists.

If you want a longer answer, here is what Mike (the developer) said on the Shareaza Forums:

Mike: Previous versions of Shareaza used a standard Windows control for displaying the list of downloads and uploads. This worked well if there were not too many downloads/uploads in the list, and if you kept the downloads collapsed. It didn't work so well if there were many downloads/uploads, or if downloads were expanded to show a few hundred sources. A lot of processor time was required to prepare the necessary data from the download/upload systems in a form that the list views could use. I was okay with this when it only made the GUI slow down, but for some people it was also affecting transfer performance because it kept various resources locked much of the time, leaving them unable to function properly.

I decided at that point that something needed to be done to bring the downloads/uploads views up to speed, so that you could use them any time, with many thousands of sources or transfers visible, without slowing down the application or affecting performance. (A similar upgrade was done for the search/browse file lists back in version 1.2.0.0 or so, a long time ago now)

The new downloads and uploads views perform MUCH better, and offer amazing performance improvements to anyone with a large number of downloads (or uploads), often rendering the application usable again.

So when you say "Isn't a new release supposed to be only progress?", I would say that this is in fact very important progress. I'm much happier now that the downloads and uploads views are not massive black holes of CPU time.

The news views are efficient because they cut out the middle-man and directly access the downloads/uploads systems within Shareaza. Because there is no middle-man to reformat the information, what you see in these lists is exactly what Shareaza sees: Downloads are shown in the order that Shareaza processes them, from highest to lowest priority. Uploads are shown in queue order, with actively transferring files first, followed by those waiting in queues in the correct order.

For some users this works fine: seeing the downloads in priority order is reasonably natural, and a download can be given a higher priority simply by dragging it higher on the list, and vice-versa. Others miss the ability to sort downloads by filename, to more easily locate a file, by progress to see which are closest to completion, or by status to see which are active and which are not. These are all valuable tools, so it is likely that these functions will return at some point in a slightly different form.

Anyway, my point is that it's not a case of me saying "well I know, I'll just remove some random features for this release and see if I can piss some people off" -- it is actually a result of creating and installing far superior downloads/uploads views with widespread benefits. It would be great if the new views immediately did everything the old ones did, but when that isn't possible you have to prioritize and do the most important things first.