Balaji’s Blog

Tabs are just better

Tabs in a File Manager are awesome – who knew? I fell in love with Firefox for tabbed browsing a long time ago (gushingly so) but never felt any need for a better File Manager. Until some time back that is, when a Lifehacker article got me to try out some alternative File managers. It’s true – once you have tabs in an application, you can never go back.

The number of alternative File Managers for Windows is just staggering. Here’s a sample list:

1. Xplorer 2

2. Ultra Explorer

3. Total Commander

4. Free Commander

5. Directory Opus

Several of these programs usually offer more features in a “Pro” version.

I personally went with Directory Opus – it was the only program I found that closely matched the default Windows Explorer interface I’m comfortable with¹ but with plenty of power features (rename and copy in one click – sweet!)

File Manager replacements seem to be highly individualistic (Mark Pilgrim’s post about Window Managers rings true here) so trying each one out for a little while is the only way to decide. Virtualization software like Sandboxie is really helpful here.

Eventually, one of these Explorer replacements will feel just right. And just like every other great innovation, you are going to wonder how you ever lived without it.

1. namely, drive “groups”, control panel under the My Computer link etc [↩]

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 28th, 2007 at 10:40 pm and is filed under Geek. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.