If you open Windows Explorer under Windows 7, you will notice a toolbar sitting between the navigation and search, and the sidebar and file listings in Windows Explorer. It contains items such as Organize, Open, Share With or New Folder.

Custom Explorer Toolbar offers customization options for that toolbar in Explorer.

When you first start the portable software, you will notice that everything is configured on one screen. A list of available buttons has been placed prominently in the interface. These functions can be selected via checkboxes. Each item is listed with its title and a description of its functionality.

Next to the items are folder types which define under which folder types the buttons are displayed. An example would be the slide show button which makes only sense when a picture folder is opened.

The Action pulldown menu defines whether the selected buttons are added to the Windows Explorer toolbar or removed from it. Just select Remove the specified toolbar buttons or add the specified toolbar buttons to do so.

The Toolbar mode pulldown menu defines when the selected buttons should be displayed in Windows Explorer. The buttons can either be configured to show up when one or more items are selected, or none.

A clcik on the Do It button sets the values in the Windows Registry. The changes are effective immediately, you may need to close all Explorer windows before they become visible.

Here is a list of all buttons that can be added to Windows Explorer this way:

• Burn, burn the selected files and folders to disc
• Close, close the active window
• Layout, configure this folder’s layout
• Copy, copy the selected items to the Windows clipboard
• New Folder, create a new, empty folder
• Slide show, display all of the selected videos and pictures in a slideshow
• Include in library, include the selected folder in a library
• Nobody, Makes the selected items private so that other people cannot access them
• Delete, deletes the selected files and folders.
• Cut, moves the selected items to the Clipboard
• Search on website, open the website to view all search results
• Organize, organize the selected folder’s contents
• Paste, paste the contents of the clipboard
• Redo, redo the last action
• Remove Properties, remove properties from the selected file
• Rename, rename files and folders
• Select all, select all items in the folder
• Email, send selected files as attachments in the default email client.
• Print, send the selected files to the default printer
• Share with, share the selected items with other people on the network
• Details, Library, Navigation pane, preview pane, menu bar, hide or show
• Properties, display the properties menu for the selected file or folder
• Sync, Sync files with your computer
• Undo, undo the last action

Windows 7 users can download Custom Explorer Toolbar from the official Nirsoft website.

That was a huge problem for users who came to rely on the program’s functionality in previous Windows editions. Finally, after a year of inactivity, Paul Accisano decided to continue the project. The main goal of the project is to make QTTabBar compatible with Windows 7.

The recently released alpha 4 of QTTabBar 1.5 already works under Windows 7, and while it is still an alpha version with bugs that need to be sorted out it works reasonably well already.

The program is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Windows operating system. It automatically offers to kill and restart the explorer.exe process after installation. Users who do not want to do that need to restart the computer, or log off and on again to see the changes.

Windows 7 users need to enable the tabbar by clicking on View > Toolbars > QTTabBar.

qttabbar

This displays tabs in Windows Explorer. Folders can be opened in tabs by dragging and dropping them into the tabbar. It is then possible to switch between tabs with the mouse.

A right-click on a tab displays a context menu with various options, including the ability to lock tabs, create groups, close and clone tabs, copy the path and to change the tab order.

The Explorer plugin works reasonably well, it does however have a few bugs that need to be sorted out. Saving files for instance did display “file does not exist” warnings after the process, even though the files have been saved properly in the location. The error messages went away after uninstalling QTTabBar, and appeared again after installing it for a second time.

QTTabBar in its current form needs some work done. The developer however has achieved several milestones so far, with the most important one being compatibility with the Windows 7 operating system. The program can once again become a must have for many Windows users, if the bugs are sorted out. Lets wait for the beta and final versions before a verdict on that though.

Most launch a new Windows Explorer window and navigate to the folder they want to view in the new window. Some launch the new instance from the taskbar, some use the keyboard shortcut Windows-E to do so.

Both methods have the problem that the user needs to manually navigate to the folder first before work can be continued.

There are actually two ways to open a new Windows Explorer window directly in the program, with the selected folder as the starting folder.

A right-click on any folder in Windows Explorer displays a context menu, this is true for the standard display but also the sidebar if it is enabled and available in the Windows operating system. Among the items in the context menu is the option to spawn the selected folder in a new window.

open in new window

That’s however not the fastest option to spawn a new Windows Explorer window. Holding down CTRL while double-clicking a folder will open the contents of that folder in a new Windows Explorer window.

This is the fastest way to open a new window in Windows Explorer from another Windows Explorer window, providing that the default setting has been set to display all folders in the same Explorer instance.

Got more handy Windows Explorer tips to share? Let us know in the comments.

The jump to version 2 of the web browser backup software brings support for Opera 10 and Flock 2.5 (next to the already existing support for Internet Explorer 6 to Internet Explorer 8, Firefox 2.9 to Firefox 3.6, Google Chrome 1 to Google Chrome 4, Safari 3 and 4, Opera 9 and Flock 3). This should cover the most used web browsers in the Windows operating system.

One of the great additions in FavBackup 2 is support for portable web browsers. It is now possible to select a custom location for the user profile for Firefox, Opera, Google Chrome, Safari and Flock. It is furthermore possible to select any of the identified profiles of the supported web browsers directly.

Other changes in this release are the new ribbon interface, a progress bar, different themes for the backup program, 40% less computer memory usage and minor bug fixes. The new additions make FavBackup 2 a recommended program for web browser backups, especially if multiple different web browsers are installed and used in a computing environment.

The interface of the computer program has been divided into three areas. The header area containing menus and the breadcrumb navigation, the left sidebar that contains a list of all local and network drives including their folders and the main area that displays the files and folders that are located in the current directory level.

Some might say that this does not sound exciting enough to give it a try. Snowbird comes with an advanced feature set that might entice some users to give it a try though.

The Windows Explorer alternative offers a search form right in the interface which can search for files, folders and even file contents. It is furthermore possible to navigate with mouse gestures which can speed up folder navigation quite a bit.

The overall speed of Snowbird is fast, faster than that of Windows Explorer especially when navigating in network shares and large local folders. There is however one aspect that is not well designed. The only way to copy or move files is to mark them, right-click and select the appropriate option from the menu. In other words: Drag and drop is not supported.

One of the reasons you should take a moment to get to know this tool is that it is quite different from Explorer. Although fundamentally you tackle the same tasks with both tools there are enough differences to confuse the new user. To this end, let’s examine the ins and outs of the Nautilus file manager.

Layout

Nautilus Main Window

Unlike Explorer (and many other File Managers), Nautilus is a single-pane file manager. You can not change the view to split-pane mode or dual-pane mode. You get what you get…a single window showing you files and directories.

As you can see (in the image to the right) the Nautilus interface is very clean and simple. But your first thought might be, “How do I drag and drop a file into another directory?” We’ll get to that in a moment.

Each time you double click on a directory a new window will open to that directory. You will then have two windows open. This makes dragging and dropping simple. Careful though, the default drag and drop action is not to copy but to move. So if you plan on copying a file from one window to the next you will have to right click the file (or directory) and select “Copy”. To paste the file (or directory) you will go to the target directory and either click Edit and then click Paste or right click within the directory and select “Paste”.

Nautilus List View

You can also switch from Icon or List view. In the image above you can see Nautilus in Icon mode. The image to the left shows Nautilus in List View mode. As you can see each directory can be expanded to reveal its contents.

But what about navigating directories? Normally, in Linux, you would scroll to the top of a directory and see an entry that was either “..” or “./” and you knew you could click (or double click) on this to navigate up one directory. In Nautilus you won’t see this. Instead you will notice, in the bottom left corner, an dropdown that shows your current working directory. If you click that dropdown it will reveal all directories above the current working directory.The Image below and to the right shows this dropdown in action.

Directory Dropdown

As you can see the gHacks directory is found in the /home/jlwallen/Pictures directory. You can open a new Nautilus window in any one of these directories by selecting the target from the dropdown.

Another way of quick navigation is the Places menu. If you click on that menu you will see a number of various directories. You can also add bookmarks to this menu by selecting the Add Bookmark entry from within the current working directory.

The Bookmarks Menu

The nice thing about adding bookmarks is that they are then added to the Bookmark submenu in the Places menu on the GNOME Panel.

You can also edit your bookmarks by selecting Edit Bookmarks from within the “Places” Nautilus menu.

Configurations

And of course there are plenty of configurations to undertake with Nautilus.

If you click the Edit menu you will see the Preferences entry. Click that to open the Preferences window where you will see six tabs: View, Behavior, Display, List Columns, Preview, and Media. One of the more important tabs is the Media tab. This is where you configure which applications will open different types of files.

Final Thoughts

The Nautilus file manager is an outstanding tool to manage your files and directories. Once you get used to the differences between this tool and your previous file manager, you will come to find Nautilus to be one outstanding utility.

Both features are disabled by default and the user has to check the corresponding boxes to activate them. The changes become visible immediately in Windows Explorer. The checkboxes will be visible in every view mode available while highlighting the rows will only have a (visible) effect in Details view.

The Tray Prodder interface comes with additional buttons that can be used to select, check or clear the current items in Windows Explorer.

Users who have to work with Windows Explorer regularly might like Tray Prodder. Everyone else will probably not see a reason to have it running in the background all the time as it uses about 10 Megabytes of computer memory while running in the system tray.

The interface itself has been streamlined for ease of use. Each of the three options can be configured in their own tabs by checking or unchecking checkboxes. All of the 27 new functions are added by default after installation. They range from deleting locked files over displaying information about the size of folders to synchronizing directories. Most users will probably stick with a basic set of functions and disable the ones that they do not need. Another option would be to add all functions to a submenu for a better overview.

The commands of other applications that show up when a file or folder is right-clicked that is triggering the event are shown as well. They are divided into submenus like Drives, Folders or Printers. A click on an entry will display the context menu entries that have been added by third party applications.

Each entry can be removed to optimize the menus.

File Menu Tools provide access to separators and folders that can be added to further optimize the display of the context menu entries. It is furthermore possible to move the entries around.

File Menu Tools provide an easy way to configure and optimize the Windnows Explorer context menu entries.

The first noticeable aspect about Explorer++ is that it is a fully portable application, it can be executed from anywhere. The memory footprint is acceptable with roughly 6 Megabytes of computer memory and 3 Megabytes of virtual memory.

Explorer++ supports tabbed browsing making use of the same keyboard shortcuts that Firefox uses. CTRL T opens a new tab which effectively means that only one explorer window has to be opened all the time for all file and folder operations.

Tabs can be bookmarked for future access which is another much needed feature for every Windows Explorer replacement.

It supports filters and splitting and merging of files. As I said before it is no match for the heavy weight Total Commander like applications which support so many features that it is hard to keep an overview.

It would have been nice if you could divide the main explorer window into two panes which would both show the contents of a folder or drive. That would make file operations much easier in my opinion. One has to consider that Explorer++ was released as alpha and that the software developer will surely add functionality to his software program, we just have to wait a bit longer.