12 Windows Explorer Alternatives Compared

[lanux128]

...
Servant Salamander - Absolutely no support for unicode. It won't even let you launch files with unicode names from it! Useless for me and many others. They have been promising unicode support for what seems like forever now, but nothing has happened yet. ...

-Dirhael (July 29, 2007, 05:57 AM)

dirhael: 1st of all, i agree that Salamander's dev team have progressed very cautiously (about 10 years to move from version 1.52 to 2.5  ) but to be fair they have a whole page in their help file dedicated to explaining and using workarounds in the mean time..

Unfortunately, Unicode is not supported in Altap Salamander 2.5. We plan to support it in feature versions. Now we will describe how to deal with foreign names of files and directories. If you didn't encounter problems with names of files and directories, you can skip reading of this chapter. ...

-the help file

[Dirhael]

... Really appreciate you looking into such a insignificant problem, I don't think many other developers would have taken the time

-Dirhael (July 30, 2007, 04:45 AM)

A crash is not insignificant to me. Hey, I'm a developer with an attitude!

-DonL (July 30, 2007, 09:25 AM)

Hehe, good to hear I'm back from my vacation now, so as soon as I'm done uploading the archive of gif's to my server, I'll send you a mail with the link and some more detailed tests I just did to verify that the problem still exists even with the latest version.

[Dirhael]

...
Servant Salamander - Absolutely no support for unicode. It won't even let you launch files with unicode names from it! Useless for me and many others. They have been promising unicode support for what seems like forever now, but nothing has happened yet. ...

-Dirhael (July 29, 2007, 05:57 AM)

dirhael: 1st of all, i agree that Salamander's dev team have progressed very cautiously (about 10 years to move from version 1.52 to 2.5  ) but to be fair they have a whole page in their help file dedicated to explaining and using workarounds in the mean time..

Unfortunately, Unicode is not supported in Altap Salamander 2.5. We plan to support it in feature versions. Now we will describe how to deal with foreign names of files and directories. If you didn't encounter problems with names of files and directories, you can skip reading of this chapter. ...

-the help file

-lanux128 (July 30, 2007, 09:00 PM)

It's true that they do have such a page, but unfortunately none of the methods they list is a proper workaround. In fact, none of the methods would help me at all as I need more than one Asian fallback language at any one time, and using Windows Explorer is most definitely not an option.
Let's just wait and see what happens with the future releases instead

[DonL]

I do know of a sure fool-proof way to make it crash though...

-Dirhael (July 29, 2007, 04:48 PM)

Can't reproduce. I'm using thumbnails on huge folders with small image files since years without any crash. Maybe one of your tile files makes trouble? You can send them to me in a zip (if that's okay).

Donald (XY's author)

-DonL (July 30, 2007, 03:02 AM)

Absolutely, I'll send them to you when I get back from my vacation. I should clarify though, this problem only happens if the images are GIF's. I have never encountered the problem with jpeg's and png's. Really appreciate you looking into such a insignificant problem, I don't think many other developers would have taken the time

-Dirhael (July 30, 2007, 04:45 AM)

My intuition was correct (but you could not find it as easily as I can from here): It is *one* pic that is truncated and throws XYplorer out of the tracks: wp_floral_931.gif

I did not fix the image but I fixed the crash. The next version will just display "Bad Image" and go on working.

Thanks for spotting this!

Don

[Dirhael]

I do know of a sure fool-proof way to make it crash though...

-Dirhael (July 29, 2007, 04:48 PM)

Can't reproduce. I'm using thumbnails on huge folders with small image files since years without any crash. Maybe one of your tile files makes trouble? You can send them to me in a zip (if that's okay).

Donald (XY's author)

-DonL (July 30, 2007, 03:02 AM)

Absolutely, I'll send them to you when I get back from my vacation. I should clarify though, this problem only happens if the images are GIF's. I have never encountered the problem with jpeg's and png's. Really appreciate you looking into such a insignificant problem, I don't think many other developers would have taken the time

-Dirhael (July 30, 2007, 04:45 AM)

My intuition was correct (but you could not find it as easily as I can from here): It is *one* pic that is truncated and throws XYplorer out of the tracks: wp_floral_931.gif

I did not fix the image but I fixed the crash. The next version will just display "Bad Image" and go on working.

Thanks for spotting this!

Don

-DonL (August 05, 2007, 01:29 AM)

No thank you for fixing the problem, and to think that you got it done it just a couple of days!

12 Windows Explorer Alternatives Compared

Never imagined to see a fix so soon, especially for something that most people would never have a problem with

[Tuxman]

As I recently stumbled upon this thread:
The major reason for me not to use TC is the lack of a single-pane mode. I tend to do a bunch of file operations within the same directory. The second pane is a waste of space for me.

[JohnFredC]

 

The second pane is a waste of space for me.

Simple solution to that:

Drag the TC panel divider all the way to the left or right margin and proceed.  All dual-panel commanders support single-panel mode in addition to dual-pane mode.

The major reason for me not to use TC is the lack of a single-pane mode. I tend to do a bunch of file operations within the same directory.

Why not set up both sides at the same folder and use dual-panel mode that way?  There are operational/task efficiencies even when both sides display the same location in the navigation hierarchy.  Give it a chance and you will discover them.

One benefit of two panels looking at the same folder is that you can use the panels to scroll to different locations in the folder.  Admittedly this is only useful if you have lots of files in that folder.

If you use many custom metadata columns in detail view, horizontal (instead of vertical) split mode would be good too, again pointed at the same folder in both panes, but perhaps scrolled to different locations.

That's the great thing about the commander-style interface: it is a superset of the single panel mode and supports any method of working you desire, including the rather limiting single-panel mode.

[f0dder]

I prefer having the flexibility of a file browser that does both dual- and single-panel views... having to "drag away" a pane is what put me off from 2xExplorer. Fortunately, the successor supports both single- and dual-panel modes, tabs and whatnot.

The optimal mode depends on the task I'm performing, and that very often includes having only a single pane of information.

[Innuendo]

Another option with TC is to turn on Tree View. You'll end up an interface much like Explorer where the tree view is in the left pane and the file list is in the right. Of course, you'll still have all of TC's power at your disposal so it'll be like Explorer on steroids.

However, everyone manages files differently so thankfully there is a plethora of file managers on the Windows platform and they all do things slightly differently so it's a pretty much sure thing that one will be able to find something that works the way they do.

Mac and Linux users don't have as rich a selection in this area.

[Tuxman]

However TC's folder tree implementation is still a bit, ehm ... weird. Using the second (respectively first) panel as a folder tree doesn't fit my definition of a separate folder tree..