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June 06, 2008
Expanding on the Opus
Charles wrote about Directory Opus in this week's Green Guide. Apparently a gem of a file manager, advocated long ago by AussieBoykie. It's good to hear when a product gets better and better. I've been using Christian Ghisler's Total Commander for a long time, ever since Windows 3.x. Total Commander lost it's nice appellation, Windows Commander, when Microsoft sent Christian a desist letter. TC runs as shareware initially, you have to click on one of three (randomised) buttons 1 or 2 or 3 when you first start. I used it like that for a long time, until I felt I owed Christian some gratitude and paid him. He sent me a 3.5" floppy diskette (uh, remember those?) with the Windows 3.x version. Ever since then, upgrades have been free, I'm now on 7.03 Win32 version. It gets workable features in the handling of the keyboard, mouse and file system slowly but surely. My most recent enjoyment is, for my ageing eyes, that each line is coloured alternately so that my eyes can "run a finger" horizontally along that item. Microsoft Office Access 2007 finally took the bait and followed suit recently.
But, there's more. The Norton Commander or Orthodox File Manager interface has been strongly emulated by many products - Free Commander works off a no-install USB stick - I use that when I don't want to share Christian's good graces with public Windows PCs. Sometimes, when I am uncomfortable in Linux, I use Gnome Commander, Midnight Commander. There's also Krusader. There's even a far out non graphical interface Far Commander (also free). There's a plethora of NC clones out there.
On the other hand, if you never liked the 2 Pane Norton Commander metaphor, a much respected friend uses ZtreeWin - yes, it's XTree Gold all over again.
It looks like a coolish weekend now that winter's in Melbourne. Either get out there and shoot some pics with your new camera. Huh? Yes, your new camera, the one you're buying in all this mid year clearance sale frenzy. Or manage some files and folders.
P.S. Do back up before you start messing around, ok?
Posted by Anandasim at June 6, 2008 12:19 PM
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Comments
I agree, I've been a big fan of Total Commander since about version 3.something. It has great plug ins available including enhancements for its quickview pane that allow you to edit id tags for mp3 files and lift copy straight from word files. With the plug-ins the quickview pane lets you scoll down a file list of mp3s, mpegs, pdfs and word docs and see what's in them in the next pane without opening them. (Though I should note I've never got the pdf one to work, keeps complaining about ghost script and I never seem to have time to bust that one.
It also brilliantly treats zip and rar files as if they were just another directory to be opened.
I also really like its directory synchronisation command and the easy file rename tool that lets you, for example, number a whole lot of files at once or change the extensions. And of the course the advanced find file features, though perhaps in some cases superseded by a computer search engine like Copernic, are also useful. You can search for names, extensions, text and by date made and file size. All with just Alt F7
The other really useful thing, a recent addition, not only can you still bring up a file tree with Alt F10 and just start typing the name of the directory and jump to it, it also allows you to save favourite directories in a drop down menu. And of course the provision of tabs means you can have multiple panes open.
On top of all this (can you tell how much I like this program yet?) it's mainly a keyboard based utility, no more sore hands and arms from too much of the mouse!
Now it comes in a very basic bland white background when it first starts, so I recommend customising it. It doesn't exactly offer the blue background and gold text of the original Norton Commander but I use a light blue background with an inverted cursor and have the select highlight in the default red.
If you download it to play with I recommend the customisation as the first thing you do. Go to configuration, display, color. And don't forget to tick inverted cursor.
Posted by: tflip at June 11, 2008 09:09 PM