Tweaking Windows Explorer

Posted by h3rald Fri, 29 Jun 2007 17:28:00 GMT

If you asked me what file manager I used on Windows, up to a month ago I’d have answered something like: A43 or CubicExplorer, for sure anything but Windows Explorer. Well, it turns out that I had to change my mind after all…

There’s a multitude of “Explorer Replacements” which aim to be more feature-rich, more user-friendly, less bloated than Bill’s favorite, and I indeed tried quite a few of them, mostly the free ones of course.

The only problem is that whenever I got close to choose “the one”, I noticed that there always was one or two features missing somewhere, which were present in another and vice versa. Additionally, to be totally honest, the level of integration with Windows and other applications was never complete.

These are a few stupid, silly things which tend to be lacking or at least are not 100% functioning - not in all the file managers I tried, but at least in some:

  • Environment variables integration - Alternative file managers normally are not able to parse Windows environment variables.
  • Icon overlays - Some file managers can’t render Subversion’s icon overlays.
  • Strange context menus - Sometimes right-clicking on a file or a directory may not open the standard Explorer context menu
  • Open Folder - Third-party application allowing you to open a folder, will always open it through Windows Explorer
  • auto complete address bar….
  • Special Folders - Some special folders (e.g. Control Panel) are now accessible using alternative file manager, but others may not (e.g. Network Connections). At any rate, typing “Control Panel” will not open the Control Panel in an alternative file manager.

What about trying to “patch” Windows Explorer instead of using another program altogether?

I never really thought of that until LifeHacker featured the QT TabBar shell extension by Quizo. That was my epiphany: I immediately thought I was going to “patch” Windows Explorer using a few really useful (and free, of course) Windows Shell Extensions.

Here’s my file manager now:

Yes, it is Windows Explorer, with just a few addons:

Read more...

Posted in  | Tags , ,  | no comments | no trackbacks