xplorer2 v.5.50.13 beta

[nikos]

just twiddling thumbs, waiting for the translations to come in...
https://www.zabkat.com/test/xplorer2_se ... t_beta.exe

* ctrl+C copy text in message dialogs (notify & confirmation)
* splitter bar drag handles
* check the demo video: http://zabkat.com/blog/xplorer2-v60-narcissus.htm

[Gandolf]

I assume that you are not going to get rid of the "simple version" / "more properties" hardly visible micro message that responds to a mouse click within half a mile of it?
It should be in the options setting, not in the dialogue.

Any bugs in V5 that you have fixed, if so, what were they? Otherwise, V5 does everything, so V6 is pointless. Just "eye candy" added.

I'm disappointed in you Nikos, I thought you were made of sterner stuff, but now you admit to "thumb twiddling"!

[nikos]

yes

[Gandolf]

It looks like the end of the line for x² as far as I'm concerned. Too many "features" I don't like / won't use. Other file managers do what I want, the way I want.
I wish you well Nikos.

"live long and prosper"

[nikos]

look, the last month you have been "negative Nancy" for both xplorer2 and me personally. At least I didn't go ad-hominem

[johngalt]

I'm not gonna lie - I use OneCommander as my daily driver, but I keep X² handy because it does things that OC cannot, where OC does things that X² cannot.

One thing is that OC cannot access connected 'devices' - like when I connect my phone and put it in File Transfer mode. X² does this natively, and I do this often enough - couple times a month at least - that I break out X².

If there is one thing that is holding me back from using X² any more than I do now is the UI, where OC is an intelligently laid out, modern UI versus the look of X², which looks like it still belongs to an OS from 20 years ago. Sorry, but that is the truth, I'm being objective here, not nit picky nor snippy about it. I understand that you have built up X² with a lot of customization to make it work with how the UI is based now - and I also know that a lot of the users here use X² because of that simple, tried but true UI works for them.

I recall promising screenshots before, but I never managed to get them to Nikos - I think I will work on that today, since I already have the day off so I could assist my elderly parents to go vote in local primary elections anyway. The time and effort that developer has put into OC is not much behind what you've put into X², if not for as long as you have been doing it, Nikos, and it has a LOT of nifty features built into it that rival (and in some cases, exceed) the capabilities of X².

• I can directly single click on a .ZIP file and I get a prompt to Extract, Extract to a folder named based upon the .ZIP file's name, or open in an external app - even if .ZIP is already associated in Windows to that particular app (WinRar in my case, though it was recently also 7-Zip). I use this function daily, multiple times a day, as I try to use a many apps as I can from portable formats.
• Having made some of the same shortcuts in OC that I use in X², like F5 (Copy to other pane), F6 (Move to other pane), and F8 (Create a new folder), but if I have a file selected in a pane, and I press F8, I get options to create a folder, or create one based upon the name of the highlighted file, or EVEN Create a folder from the filename and move the file into the folder - something I do a good bit.
• It integrates with TeraCopy (regardless if TC is a free version or registered (paid) version) to achieve a very close facsimile of the native X² Copy / Move method, but it is useable inside and outside of OC, even when I am just using Windows Explorer to move files manually.
• It has a robust file (and multiple file) renaming function, including being able to use RegEx to really rename files.
• It has this add-on (May be part of the paid version, only, I'll check) called a connector that attaches to ANY Windows Explorer dialog (regardless if it is spawned from Explorer, or another app, when you want to open a file, for example) and will put a nice little drop-down underneath the dialog listing the last 10 locations you have interacted with in OC (even across multiple profiles, aka windows) for you to quickly select a location to open a file from....

It may look like it is fluff, but it really is not.

I'll try to get the screenshots and put them up in my Google Drive, and then link to them here. Not just regular UI screenshots, but actual use screenshots as well. If I am feeling frisky, I'll try to capture some small videos of it in action.

The reason I mention this is that a lot of the stuff he has added to OC that follows users' requests from his forums, as well as general bug fixes that are reported, that he seems a lot like you, Nikos, in listening to your users for functionality and bug fixes. It's a powerful software, and while not as powerful as X², it it a close second to X². But more importantly, it fulfills my needs for a daily driver with the things I do.

[Kilmatead]

If there is one thing that is holding me back from using X² any more than I do now is the UI, where OC is an intelligently laid out, modern UI versus the look of X², which looks like it still belongs to an OS from 20 years ago.

Curiously enough, to my older eyes, all homogenised .NET interfaces (such as OC's) look the same to me, and I hate them all. But that's just me - I'm not a .NET fan (for UI's or managed code). The only programme I tolerate that's .NET oriented is MusicBee simply because it's the best music manager in all of human existence, so I have to put up with it. Not relevant here, of course, but every time someone uses that word "modern" regarding a UI I die a little inside. There are also a lot of Total Commander fanboys who will beat you up after school for dissing their seriously old UI (but they love it for some reason).

It integrates with TeraCopy [...] to achieve a very close facsimile of the native X² Copy / Move method, but it is useable inside and outside of OC, even when I am just using Windows Explorer to move files manually.

Just an observation (I'm not sure if you mentioned TC as a "plus" or "minus"), but if you disable Robust Copy in the advanced options editor, then x2 integrates seamlessly with TeraCopy (F5/F6/drag/drop will just use TeraCopy instead), so when switching between file-managers all your copying will be consistent. You might find that easier.

I use TC in x2 because of its superior logging and always get a smile out of the completely ridiculous overkill in hash algorithms - what was that dev thinking - who needs 30 different types? Absurd, but I love the silliness of it, so I change it once a week just to amuse myself.

I'm easily amused, you see.

[johngalt]

TC is a plus in my book, for sure, and I am similarly tickled at the overkill aspect of it.

I've considered disabling Robust CopyMove in X2, but I like it too much. And, since I only use it occasionally now, it is fun to still see it.

As for Modern UI flabbergasting people, I understand - but X² simply does not satisfy my need for dark interfaces like modern UIs do.

Here is a screenshot of my default profile in OC:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/XACgsHovuEtLGnvo6

So much info gleaned just by looking at the files there - the color bars, the size of an image / version of an executable (this particular part is not a separate column, either), the age of the file, the last time files within a folder were updated, and direct access to drives, network, Favorites and even a history of recent locations.

Once you get over the concept of the Modern UI being, well, not brazen with physical bars and 3D elements, being more Material flat UI, you see it has a lot going for it that other FMs simply don't.

For my workflow, with daily use of my PC, OC does the job. When I start needing some advanced features, I resort to X² because it has the features that I need, and specifically that OC does not have.

[Kilmatead]

Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against OC, all this stuff's a preference - there's no end of stuff I'd change in x2 if I could (Nikos != UI design-maestro, to be sure). Unfortunately dragging him to the church and getting him to see the light are two different things, and he hates both of them.

Yeah, "flat" is the word I was looking for - whoever thought "flat" should be adopted as a milieu was out of his skull. Am I the only one who can't see overlapping window-edges anymore? If God hadn't assassinated Steve Jobs, I would have done it for him.

Just for the fun of it, if you'll permit me, I will take one dig at OC simply because on the website it makes the somewhat hubristic claim that...

"This program doesn't attempt to be just a better-looking Windows File Explorer with tabs or a MacOS Finder for Windows with columns, but to challenge the existing workflows that remained unchanged since the '90s."

Ok, great, but why does everyone who makes this claim (and all FM's do) think that the best place to start is by removing the menu-bar?

Flat menu-bar-less things are apparently my personal hobgoblin, and they seem to be everywhere. It isn't just that I don't like it (that's subjective), it's that I don't GET it (that's cognitive). There's got to be more to it than the normal reactivist response to aging - I can be emotionally blown away by a Jackson Pollock or completely intellectually cowed by a Mark Rothko (if you've ever seen one in real life, you know what I mean), and certainly in the case of the latter that's as "flat" as you can get, so it's not the paradigm that's a mismatch to my psyche... it must be something else.

[FrizzleFry]

The icons on some the the new dialogs are very pixelated as if a small image is being expanded.

Tools/Options
Actions/Change attributes
Customize/User commands/Organize

[johngalt]

Ok, great, but why does everyone who makes this claim (and all FM's do) think that the best place to start is by removing the menu-bar?

I think that it is an extreme that a lot of apps simply cannot get away with.

For FMs, though, I think this one gets away with it by offering the functionality right at the source. Need to rename a file? F2 or double click a file - why have a file menu to have a function that takes more time and space for no reason? (Mind you, I'm not defending it, merely stating what I see as the reason behind it).

Having used OC for a couple of years now, with increasing frequency until it has become my daily driver, I have found that ... I don't really miss the the menu-bar. Of course, my workflows have changed somewhat since the old days when I absolutely needed a menu-bar for, well, menus, of course. But in this respect, I've found that I really, truly, don't need them. Anything I need done that can be done by the FM can be done directly where I am at (or with a nice keyboard shortcut).

Of course, that just epitomizes my evolution.

Take web browsers. Back in the day, I had to have menu-bars - everywhere. I didn't like it when they started getting hidden, even if they were deployable at a moment's notice using the [ALT] key - I wanted them there. And my Bookmarks toolbar. And my tab bar. A lot of innovative developers and tons of users started pontificating on how vertical tabs were much more efficient, and I scoffed. I had 1,920 pixels across my screen, and I damned well wanted to use every single pixel I could for browsing!

But then, slowly but surely, standards came into play - standards such as a primordially offensive 3 inches of gaps on either side of a page's content - which, as time wore on, became the de facto standard for advertising placement. Go figure. But, as I progressed into adulthood, and then older adulthood (which is as far as I'm going in describing myself lol) I realized that things were not going to change - that no matter how much I railed about the lack of real estate usages on any given web page, things were not gonna change, and I'd sill have these offensive gaps on either side.

Around this same time I also decided that I would get even wider monitors, shifting to a 16:9 ratio. And then it became unbearable. I now had entirely too much unused real estate, even with the plethora of advertising on any given page. But, Windows being Windows, I also realized that trying to place my apps using multiple apps to fill in the space always broke - no matter what. I didn't want to buy an app to fix that for me, so all apps went to being used exclusively in maximized use (with a task bar not hidden because, again, I like my menus, tyvm).

From there, I upgrade again to 4K wide screen monitors, and yes, the gaps remained. In fact, they were now even more pronounced on some sites that were hard coded to use a specific resolution versus using percentages of screen real estate. So, I finally gave in and started experimenting with vertical tabs in a sidebar.

And you know what? After being all curmudgeony about it for so many years, once I tried it, I never looked back - all my browsers either use vertical tabs - or just don't get used all that often.

Similarly, I used 2Xplorer for a good while, and then shifted to X², and bought the license, and then the lifetime license after that. I also bought licenses for Nikos' other treasured apps, too, for that matter. Having used 2X or X² for something approaching 2 decades, as a lot of people here have as well, it fit my bill for a long, long time. But with the switch to 4K monitors, I had more continued and ongoing issues with X² than I ever recall having previously. That whole multi-monitor manifest thing? I was one of the ones complaining about it repeatedly because X² was breaking when I moved it from a 4K monitor to a 1080p monitor - regardless of the fact that both monitors used the same ratios.

Another problem is the fact that, at such a high resolution, there is a problem that toolbars beget:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/MVFzu95M3RNjFx8p7
X² using my main "Personal" window profile, with many of the same folders open as in the OC screenshot

https://photos.app.goo.gl/SG5JKCHzaV4K6Yux6
All that wasted space at the ends of each menu-bar

Those toolbars at the top - a good 50% of the space they occupy is wasted space. In fact, here is a pixel measurement of the address bar:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/oSbTcY3ZftriqYab6
~3100+ pixels of wasted space

Granted, I'm in probably one of my shortest tree there, in the \ISOs folder on H: - but still! Even if I had a tree diving 8 levels deep it would not take up the entire space (I'd be hard pressed to have it take more than 75% of the space).

Then, there is the fact that each pane has a clickable breadcrumb style path that you can use to easily navigate (Yes, I know you hate them, but X² has had them for a while now), but if you want to manually type in a path, you have to use a different bar located at the top. In OC, each pane has an address-bar, that is both breadcrumb style as well as a normal path - type away at them if you don't like breadcrumbs. And each pane's address bar reflects the currently selected tab, every time. Swap tabs? Path changes in the address-bar to match.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/jPGSYRFzUcciVCh78
Downloads folder - note path

https://photos.app.goo.gl/8WvrJaX84cn7GRSp6
Screenshots folder - note path

https://photos.app.goo.gl/3xqgi5RukB4p8oWd7
Direct breadcrumbs navigation in the address-bar

https://photos.app.goo.gl/uE8pVkgkHhW8N61a9
Direct path editing - single click in the address-bar not on a breadcrumb

When I was using lower resolution monitors (and those that stuck with the tried and true 4:3 model), this was not a problem - that address-bar was not nearly as long, in terms of ratio of used to unused. Now, on these fancy schmancy 4K monitors, it becomes a problem - and, counterintuitively, it has become easier to now have individualized address-bars for each pane because of how much real estate there actually is.

Go back to my OC screenshot - you'll see it is damned near full. There is stuff everywhere. Now look at my X² screenshot above (and for posterity's sake, I used what used to be my default daily use profile / window in X², in order to give a closer apples to apples comparison). I'm unusual in that I have every drive letter from C through J in use on my system (though J is currently down for maintenance). Why do I need a toolbar spanning my entire monitor for 9 drives? Why does someone with 2, maybe 3 drives at any given time need that?

And if you try to combine the toolbars together to mitigate thee wasted space issue, it becomes a hot mess faster than you can blink. Using small icons on a 4K monitor is pretty much infeasible. The font sizes for icon captions are different from the ones used in the panes. Making them smaller negates having the verbiage there in the first place. And I'm not a young lad anymore, I do need to be able to read things without grabbing the nearest magnifying glass.

Once again, compare OC - all of the fonts everywhere are uniform, making it easy to read, navigate, and manipulate (files and folders).

And all this is just observations about the basic UI and how Material / Flat / Modern UIs scale - and scale well - versus the antiquated ones that just, well, don't.

As for the X² toolbars, and especially the icons - I've tried using editors to upscale the icons to larger sizes - nothing I do will give me sharp, clear icons that are readable at sizes like 64px, 96px, or even 128px - they are simply blurry. I'm forced to use the largest toolbar I found that actually has icons that I like for X², and that is, I believe, 48px. The UI is based upon elements that are not meant to be scaled extremely largely, because the entire concept of such large scaling was not something that interfaces back then were expected to do. In today's world, though, they most certainly are - even if the vast majority of PC users are not using 4K resolutions for monitors like I am, they are most certainly using much large resolutions than 800 x 600, or 1024 x 768 - and I'm willing to bet that that more users than not are using 16:9 displays versus 4:3 displays, so even if 1080p is the norm, that's 1920 x 1080. So-called 2K is 2560 x 1440 - rather large also, and thus, also contributing to wasted space at the ends of the toolbars. And yet, my 4K displays are set in Windows to scale to 150% already. And the text is set to be independently scaled to 125%.

Mind you - I've only tackled the basics of the UI differences, not even touching on features, like the pretty pretty colors, the in-line dimensions / file version, etc.

So, basically, in the end, it's a combination of my age (and the early onset of my eyesight starting to get it's own case of old man syndrome) combined with the advancement of technology, that has started to give this whole modern UI an in-road with me. I don't regret having bought the licenses from Nikos - his was, and still is, a cut above everything else out there, from the first time I discovered 2Xplorer. But it's simply not as well suited for daily use for me anymore as it used to be (and Windows Explorer, even with multi-tab capabilities, or the Files app, with multi-pane capabilities, won't cut it either). I picked function over form - I don't really care for flat pan style, but I get a true boatload of functionality from the UI as it is laid out in OC to use each and every day. When I need it for functions OC can't handle, X² is my backup.

As a final note - at the top, I mentioned that I have functionality built-in right where I am at.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/PztvNh8Q275N4PUJ6

This is a representative context menu for the BT driver installer file that shows the functionality available to me for this file. Things like included folder creation from this particular file, scanning, dropping as a symbolic link, creating a checksum, the Robust copy hotkeys (that I) borrowed from X² for moving files between panes, scanning with security software, etc.

And one thing I also acknowledge - I've always been fascinated with you users who have scripted all kinds of things to do with X² because the UI and underpinnings of X² were always accessible, if not always easily, even as noted in this and the other v6 Beta threads. I rarely ever did that - I was more of a direct manipulation kind of guy - the FM is there to manage my files - I don't need to micro-manage the FM to do its job, was the way I approached it. In my case, that mindset also made it a lot easier for me to use other FMs are any given time, and since I don't have a need for a lot of backend scripting, I was able to adapt to OC a lot better than more than a few users here will be able to. And I fully realize that.

None of what I wrote is meant to be bashing in any way. There are plenty of people who prefer to ride motorcycles, but still own regular cars / autos for transportation for whatever reason. Motorcycles have advantages that cars don't, and vice versa. And even some motorcycle enthusiasts still put more miles on their cars than they do on their motorcycles.

That doesn't mean they don't like their motorcycles. Far from it.

[nikos]

you know that you can actually DRAG the toolbars and move them all in a single row, right?
(you can also right click on the TOOLBAR and pick autoarrange from the menu)


in general having never used OC I cannot tell much about its pros and cons
my personality and that of xplorer2 is of a "deconstructing to the simplest" type. You have elementary blocks and you build whatever you like. These "modern workflows" you claim are good if they fit exactly to what you're trying to do (which is unlikely), otherwise you are stuck

The icons on some the the new dialogs are very pixelated as if a small image is being expanded.

this is actually a "minecraft" style statement. Do you have your own skin or something?
I will add another option to have the icon shown without pixelation

[johngalt]

you know that you can actually DRAG the toolbars and move them all in a single row, right?
(you can also right click on the TOOLBAR and pick autoarrange from the menu)

And if you try to combine the toolbars together to mitigate thee wasted space issue, it becomes a hot mess faster than you can blink. Using small icons on a 4K monitor is pretty much infeasible. The font sizes for icon captions are different from the ones used in the panes. Making them smaller negates having the verbiage there in the first place. And I'm not a young lad anymore, I do need to be able to read things without grabbing the nearest magnifying glass.

What I meant by Hot Mess is that, because I don't use small icons, the address-bar has more space above and below it and looks rather ungainly.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/avfLvmJ4TRhoHXsh7

And those breadcrumbs above each pane also contain wasted space.

I could make use of 2 toolbars, separating the address-bar on its own line as it is by default, and combining the menu bars and the drive bar. At least those two toolbars use the same icon sizing, so they appear in-line with each other with no futzing around. But that leaves the original problem of ~3100 wasted pixels in the address-bar.

this is actually a "minecraft" style statement. Do you have your own skin or something?
I will add another option to have the icon shown without pixelation

Or, you could take it as a "the UI needs better scaling for those of us (an increasing number of us, BTW) that have high resolution displays".

[pj]

The fact that OC doesn't support any OS older than Win 10 is a non-started for me.

I have laptops going back to Win 7 that are still being used for specific tasks, with absolutely no need to fix what ain't broken.

I am very happy that Nikos chooses to support a reasonable suite of older OS's. Lord knows no one should be running the abomination called VISTA, or even our dearly departed XP. But Win 7 still has a large installed base, including myself.

I might install OC on my desktop running Win 10, which was forced on me by Paint.Net, but we won't go into that hot mess.

Until then, discussing file managers is akin to discussing religion, with the faithful of any one being adamant theirs is the only true file manager.

-------------------
PJ (still) in FL

[johngalt]

The fact that OC doesn't support any OS older than Win 10 is a non-started for me.

I have laptops going back to Win 7 that are still being used for specific tasks, with absolutely no need to fix what ain't broken.

Until then, discussing file managers is akin to discussing religion, with the faithful of any one being adamant theirs is the only true file manager.

-------------------
PJ (still) in FL

Agreed. X2 gets installed and used on all older Windows VMs I have for that reason. But on the more modern ones, It gets installed and put into a holding pattern, until I get to something that I can't do with OC.

However, I'm not trying to convince anyone to stop using X² - hell, I'm not even trying to convince anyone that I'm right.

I've had a long lived abhorrence toward light skinned anything - the web, apps, videos,, anything. I prefer darker backgrounds, and reduce light when I can't. I also don't like wasted space, and if I can avoid it I do.

If the toolbars in X² could be made vertical? If they could be relegated to the same area as the tree, and also hidden, so we only use them as needed, instead of just across the top?

I mean, it's not really about "with the faithful of any one being adamant theirs is the only true file manager." I'm here showing Nikos how there are better ways to implement some of the things he has implemented, as well as demonstrating that modern technology (like high resolution monitors) make X² scaling not up to par with other facets of modern software.

It's that simple.