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While sorting files in directory program becomes completely unresponsive

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    Reported While sorting files in directory program becomes completely unresponsive

    OS: Windows 10
    IrfanView: 4.51

    Steps to reproduce
    1. Open IrfanView
    2. Select option "by EXIF Date (date taken)" from menu Options -> Sort directory files
    3. Exit IrfanView
    4. Go to a folder containing many images; in my case I notice it when there are a couple hundred photos or more
    5. Open any of those files (with IrfanView)

    What happens
    The program starts correctly, loads the image, but it becomes unresponsive immediately after while it (slooowly) sorts files by EXIF date -see attached screenshot-. I also notice one CPU busy with IrfanView, but no disk activity (so I assume the bottleneck is in data processing, not disk reading).

    What I expected to happen
    The program should start and either:
    • show clearly in the titlebar or somewhere else in the UI that it's sorting files (even better if it specifies that it's sorting by EXIF date)
    • allow me to see the image and also interact with the program, disabling navigation while files are sorted.
    • show a dialog with a progress bar specifying how many files has already processed (even better if it estimates time left-- and even better than that, if I click a "Cancel" button it resorts back to a faster sorting method)


    Why I consider it a bug and not a feature request
    It's arguable that this could be a feature request, but considering the program doesn't respond for several minutes while it's sorting and there's no clue for the user about why that's happenning, I think it's an important UX issue that needs to be addressed.
    I spent a good time wrangling around the settings and the Thumbnails window until I finally found that I had checked the "sort by EXIF date" option; and even though that's partly my fault, the user may not be aware of the implications of sorting by EXIF date or even be a casual IrfanView user who doesn't know what's making the application unresponsive.
    Attached Files
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