Explorer alternative?

Theres FindeXer for explorer that gives you that little mac-like treeview.

I find that there is a serious lack of super good minimal nice looking file managers for Windows. At least ones I know of that work in Vista. =/

Ever tried CubicExplorer? Probably not exactly *mainstream* 'minimal', but I find it's extremely usable and is very feature-rich.

Ehh ... no. But it looks a little to feature filled. I really don't use all that crap. I found a uber minimal one on VP but it won't work on Vista. Ztree seemed cool -- until it decided to not let me change any colors.

Crap? :O Ehh, you mainstream minimalists are too much. ;) It's very usable and fast, unlike other "minimal" FM's out there. Plus, I've reshacked it to death and it has less visual bloat. And all the panels can be hidden. Don't judge an FM by it's screenshot! Hehe.

If you don't like that and want TRUE power, use TotalCommander. It's shareware, but it pwns.

hey, anybody tried QT TabBar?
it explore files like in firefox (mutil-tab), you could also find many features, and skinable :)

click: http://members.at.infoseek.co.jp/Quizo/freeware/indexEn.html
#qttab

Ah yes good ol' QTTabBar..tabbed browsing for explo*d*er...sure is nice, I've used it. All good and merry except for the fact that it requires *cough* evil *cough* .net! Eugh. If you're not satisfied with TotalCmd or Cubic (which would be very surprising), just google and you'll find a ton of blog posts and random pages listing some others. To name a few, FreeComander, XYPlorer, xplorer2.....

I heard that this sort of stuff was around, will be looking into it and may feature it on some of my screenshots in the future.

I've always used 2Explorer, it got really nice and minimal after some hacking. I recently started using a different one that doesn't go as minimal but allows for iconless viewing.

But I may try another, I dunno, I really miss going iconless.

Thanks, fellas.
Pyro, are you referring to xplorer2? How did you hack it and what for?

As for me, I'm only looking for an alternative that looks better, not has more bells and whistles. I don't need the tabbed interface with all these extra features -- I just want something that shows files and looks good.

As for me, I'm only looking for an alternative that looks better, not has more bells and whistles. I don't need the tabbed interface with all these extra features -- I just want something that shows files and looks good.

What's wrong with explorer then? =P

Hah, exactly Enfusion. Though when Explorer was all hacked up I loved it.

And no I was referring to 2xEplorer. I made it minimal, hacked the menu and the buttons.

Oh, and in this shot of mine shows an example of 2xExplorer hacked up and minimalized.

for usual explorer tasks i use the one in windows with 2 useful things:
Explorer Breadcrumbs & Findexer


For a more powerful tasks... "i choose you explorerXP okemon"

http://minimalist.com/software/ExplorerBreadcrumbs/
http://tomseffect.com/category/findexer/
http://www.explorerxp.com/

Defenetly Total Commander ...

ego: that breadcrumbs is good, thanks for the link

also I love a program called ExplorerXP ... not because its customizable (maybe it is I haven't tried) but because it saved my butt big time, had a ntfs partition, and after messing around a bit I rendered the parition unreadable! but this explorer replacement allowed me to browse all of the directories and copy my stuff. So I keep it handy, plus it shows size of folders in the details and useful in a few other ways

xplorer2 is really nice. It's also a very easy switch if you're comfortable using the default explorer.

I really never liked either one of those ... but that's just me. I found the most minimal file manager on VP, but it wouldn't work on Vista. Of course.

Typical.... nuff said

TotalCmd is still supreme...=|

Pyro, what's that "most minimal file manager" you're talking about?

the cmd :P

It really is .... thats a fact!

Haha, I tried CMD. It was rather annoying typing out long file names. And I tried a DOS file manager, I liked it ... but it wouldn't let me change it's colors.

The Explorer alternative list at VP has a bunch of good ones. PCOpus I couldn't get ahold of. But the rest I tried. And I liked Dimension most, but it wouldn't work on Vista.

EDIT: Well for me the dang stupid links are the same color as the rest ... nice.
http://www.virtualplastic.net/html/alt_explore.html

I know it doesn't answer the original post, but if anyone is looking for an uber uber minimal file explorer, you could do worse than try this MiniExplorer application.
Its about as minimal as it gets - a lot like Dimension that Pyro_ mentioned above (but probably less customizable).
No controls, no buttons. Just clicks. :)

I've just started using bbLean, and I'd like to stop explorer.exe from opening altogether. How do I set CubicExplorer as my default file manager?

Well thanks for the link Bullett, and it'd be quite awesome. EXCEPT that the font doesn't follow the system's font. And it's unreshackable and it's ugly icon has to stay. Also Dimension had the ability to use a background.

I just wish that one would work under Vista, dang it.

Dimension, huh ?
Might give it a try later on

kelim: You'll have to replace the HKCR/Folder shell open key, and rename the ddexec one. See the cubic forum for params and how to do that.