User Interface
Papermerge comes with a simple and intuitive user interface (UI) layout. The UI is divided into four areas:
- Navigation Menu - contains different views like tags, users, groups, inbox
- Search Bar - quick search of any document
- User Menu - contains user preferences, API tokens and other menu items.
- Commander Panel - or Commander - area for browsing documents and folders
Dual Panel Mode
Commander (in figure 1. marked with number 4.) is designed to have similar look and feel of modern desktop file browsers. This is the place where you browse your documents and folders.
In order to assist you to quickly move around documents, folders and pages - there is a special mode - dual panel model. In dual panel mode there are two panels displayed side by side. Between two panels documents (as well as folders and pages) can be moved with one simple drag'n drop. Figure below shows how dual panel mode looks like:
In order to switch to dual panel mode, use Commander's upper right button:
To switch back to single panel mode, use close button - which is in the upper right corner of one of the panels:
Note
Close button will be displayed only on one of the panels. Although both panels look and feel exactly the same, internally application still distinguishes them as main and secondary one. Main panel is the one which is always visible and secondary panel is the on which opens and closes i.e. the one with "close button" in upper right corner.
Commander
Commander or Commander Panel is one of the two available panels. Commander is the panel which shows documents and folders - modern web based file browser if you will.
Viewer
Viewer or Viewer Panel or Document Viewer is one of the two available panels. Viewer is the panel in which document is opened.
There can be two Viewers opened side by side. This mode (i.e. dual panel mode with a Viewer in each panel) is very handy when it comes to moving pages between documents.
Thumbnails Panel
Document viewer features a thumbnails panel which can be toggles on and off. Pages can be selected only inside thumbnails panel; also pages can be dragged/dropped only from thumbnails panel.
Context Menu and its Peculiarities
Context menu - is a gui menu which appears when you perform a right-click operation with your mouse. Context menu appears in same position where your mouse pointer is when you perform right-click.
Papermerge features its own context menu, which may be invoked only when your mouse pointer hovers over Commander or Viewer. Web browser feature their own context menu - in this sense, browsers' context menu will appear whenever you perform right-click operation outside of Commander or Viewer.
Pay attention to the animated image below, the Papermerge specific context menu will appear only when you right-click over Commander or Viewer, otherwise the default browser's built in context menu will be displayed:
Context menu is dynamic - which means that it will display different menu items depending on what makes sense in current situation. For example, if you did not select any document or folder then it does not make sense to display menu items such as "Rename", "Download", "Move" - and context menu won't show those items.
A less obvious, but extremely important to understand, is the fact that context menu is bound to its panel, in other words if there are two panels (e.g. two Commander panels) opened side by side, then each panel has its own instance of context menu. This fact can be illustrated when in one Commander panel you select one (or multiple) folder(s) - while in other you don't select anything; in this case, each panel's context menu items will differ:
Warning
Context menu is bound to its panel! If there are two panels e.g. two Commander panels, then there are two different instances of the context menus, and each instance is bound to, in other words is specific to, its own Commander.