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12 Windows Explorer Alternatives Compared

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superboyac:
 :up: :up:
for the above post by, JohnFredC.  That's what I call a thorough analysis.

mitzevo:
Nice dissection there..  ;D I'm going to settle for either XYplorer (always hated the name) or xplorer2 (not found of this name as well  :o), lol oh well.. never judge a program by its name..  :Thmbsup:

Dirhael:
As I'm on vacation at the moment, and stuck with a slow dial-up connection, I'm not able to download and install all the file managers listed above by JohnFredC (though I have some with me on a USB stick, like Dopus9, Xyplorer & TC). What I wanted to say though is that you did not mention one of the things that kills some of those applications for many users; Unicode support.

FreeCommander - Don't recall if it has it, been a while since I tested it (hated the interface, so it was a short test at that).
Total Commander - No full unicode support, but at least it lets you work with your files to some extent. It's just that some features does not work at all with these files.
Directory Opus - Full unicode support.
SpeedCommander - Full unicode support.
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.
Xyplorer - No unicode support, but for what it's worth it will at least it lets you launch the files. Be aware that it misbehaves if you ever try to rename a unicode filename, or at least it does it the build I have installed.
Xplorer2 - Don't really remember...been a while since I tried it, but I think it supported unicode.

There are a some other points I'd like to make, and a few of yours I'd like to challenge/don't agree with, but I'll wait until I'm back on my regular workstation. Nice list though :)

PhilB66:
FreeCommander - Don't recall if it has it, been a while since I tested it (hated the interface, so it was a short test at that).
-Dirhael (July 29, 2007, 05:57 AM)
--- End quote ---

FreeCommander does not have it.

JohnFredC:
Unicode support.-Dirhael (July 29, 2007, 05:57 AM)
--- End quote ---

Excellent point.  Lack of unicode support is a deal killer for many.  (Not a problem for me, though.)

In some cases the core code of these file managers is probably legacy from the 90's (TC and Salamander, for instance).  In those cases, it appears to be rather difficult to support unicode.

For what it's worth, the Salamander team seems to have dropped everything else (development of tabs, quickview, more than 10 favorites, etc) to implement unicode.

Apparently TC is written in Delphi 2!  From what I gather, many if not all of the TC file list controls, trees, what have you, are custom coded from the basic Windows listbox control.  All would have to be re-written to some extent (IMHO).  For a single developer (in TC's case) that's a monumental task.  Maybe not worth it psychologically.  For many it is really difficult to get motivated to write the same application twice.

Though a large portion of these file managers' user bases do not require unicode, for global credibility it seems de rigeur.

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