Today I had a collaboration with my graphic designer who, as you probably guessed, has been using Macs for ages. Yet I had never been as impressed as today when I saw the OS X file manager in action, with the contents of a directory 'sliding' out to the right, then the contents of the selected subdirectory, etc. etc, until there were several columns displaying contents within contents within contents...

The whole thing reminded me of ADM's multiple column view.

So my question is: does anyone know of a Windows file manager that can show files in this way?

And, for that matter, does anybody know of a Windows outliner that can show multiple hierarchy levels in a way similar to ADM?

TIA
alx

P.S. Apparently the Finder (Mac OS X file manager) view that impressed me so much has got a name, Miller columns ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_Columns ) and I have found nothing similar in Windows yet, but am still hoping.

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:

P.S. Apparently the Finder (Mac OS X file manager) view that impressed me so much has
got a name, Miller columns ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_Columns ) and I
have found nothing similar in Windows yet, but am still hoping.

Maybe a long wait. See http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=2682417&userid=81600

srd

Not exactly the same thing, but Directory Opus has a "flat view" which lets you view the contents of a folder and all its subfolders as if it were a single folder.

Chris

I know; it's the main reason that I'm (again) testing Directory Opus. I have a specific file-management intensive project that would justify the significant expense.


Chris Murtland wrote:

Not exactly the same thing, but Directory Opus has a "flat view" which lets you view the
contents of a folder and all its subfolders as if it were a single folder.

I'll second the Directory Opus recommendation -- it's a great file manager. I own this software for about a year and use it as a Windows Explorer replacement (on my Vista Business Dell laptop). Has an extremely elaborate user's guide, take a look here: http://nudel.dopus.com/opus9/index.html#introduction

BTW, free only today, by Giveaway of the Day: "ShellLess Explorer". Description - "This simple yet powerful application is perfect for browsing the files on your compute. With its tabbed browsing feature, you can easily switch between different common operations and keep track of multiple files." I can't recommend this software myself since I use Directory Opus. But it's worth reading the users' comments at the Giveaway of the Day website by the end of the day...
http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/shellless-explorer/

Folks:

If I understand the request I believe I have just the answer for you and it is free (although a donation would be appropriate). The file manager is called "UltraExplorer" and you can find it at: http://www.mustangpeak.net/ .

I think what you are looking for is called "column mode" but that is just one of the treats of this tool. It is terrific, in active development, and there is a new version coming soon (it is in Beta).

I am not sure why nobody seems to know about this I think it gives every other file manager I have tried a run for their money (I decided that upgrading my license for Directory Opus was not worth it with UltraExplorer available).

Give it a try!

Charles

Charles,

I tried out UltraExplorer, and its column view is indeed what Alex was asking about. Pretty cool, especially since it's free. Makes a good addition to the arsenal even if it doesn't become my main file manager (I use the built-in FTP client from Directory Opus very often, and I haven't had time to try UltraExplorer's features beyond the column view). Thanks for the tip.

Chris

I notice UltraExplorer also has the same flattened folder view as Directory Opus.

Doesn't look like it's under development anymore, but WinBrowser looks/works like the OS X file manager: http://www.winbrowser.com/winbrowser.htm

Charles, Robert,

many thanks for your suggestions! I'll download & test and write back :-)

Cheers
Alexander

Chris Murtland wrote:

Not exactly the same thing, but Directory Opus has a "flat view" which lets you view the
contents of a folder and all its subfolders as if it were a single folder.

Chris

Chris,

I think TotalCommander - which is considerably cheaper than DirectoryOpus - has a similar feature to "flat view". It is called "Branch View (with subdirectories)." http://www.ghisler.com/

I don't see a way of configuring it to do Miller columns, though - but I may be wrong; it has a lot of plugins that provide special features (as DO does, too).

Derek



Derek

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:

Today I had a collaboration with my graphic designer who, as you probably guessed, has
been using Macs for ages. Yet I had never been as impressed as today when I saw the OS X
file manager in action, with the contents of a directory 'sliding' out to the right,
then the contents of the selected subdirectory, etc. etc, until there were several
columns displaying contents within contents within contents...

The whole thing
reminded me of ADM's multiple column view.

So my question is: does anyone know of a
Windows file manager that can show files in this way?

And, for that matter, does
anybody know of a Windows outliner that can show multiple hierarchy levels in a way
similar to ADM?

TIA
alx

Alex -

See Ultra Explorer http://ultraexplorer.mustangpeak.net/

There is a good discussion of Miller columns in the TotalCommander forum, which also discusses why TC doesn't have this feature, and what approximations can be made to it.

http://www.ghisler.ch/board/viewtopic.php?t=17970&highlight=columns

Derek

UltraExplorer is a keeper, though I have the impression that its code has not yet been optimised as I find it a bit 'reluctant' (I wouldn't really say slow) at times.

The only thing I really miss at the moment is that there's no option for configuring it as a windows explorer replacement (automatically opening when clicking on a folder).

Interestingly, considering that UltraExplorer is a hobby project, it also boasts another NeXT GUI feature suggested by Wikipedia, namely the Shelf: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelf_(computing

UltraExplorer calls it the DropStack. ShellLess Explorer, mentioned here and promoted by Giveawayoftheday has the same feature going by the way of ToDo Cart. If you wonder what it does, consider it as a Word Spike for files: it collects discontinuous items from various folders, allowing one to perform batch operations like cut/copy on them later on.

Winbrowser also looks interesting, but given that it hasn't been updated since before Windows XP I think I'll skip it.

Alexander

ShellLess Explorer has some ingenious features. The To Do Cart is a good example of both the usefulness of the feature and the program's limitations masked by the feature. In a slightly more "technical" tabbed file manager, such as xplorer2, you can easily create a spike by creating a new folder tab dedicated to that function. To get items into the dedicated spike folder, you can drag the item to the tab. ShellLess Explore (because of, I think, its greater reliance on Windows native file management) does not let you drag to tabs. Without the ToDo Cart, you would have to occupy precious workspace to duplicate the spike functionality.