Back in January of 2005 I asked for Windows Explorer replacement recommendations. A number of people stopped by and shared a long list of recommendations, however none of them came close to being acceptable to me.
I was contacted back in June 2006 by Jim Kueneman, a delphi component developer who was interested in piecing together a number of his components to create a full-featured Windows Explorer replacement like the one I was requesting: UltraExplorer.
Jim has just released UltraExplorer version 1.0 and has finally given me the go-ahead to announce it here.
Among the features I wanted:
- Column view (like Mac OS X Finder)
- Favorites panel (not a menu)
- Drop Stack (like Path Finder)
- Tabbed interface (like Path Finder and rumored OS X Finder in Leopard)
- Integrated command line
UltraExplorer has them all.
It’s not going to be perfect for everyone and it’s the first public release, so view it accordingly. But if you’re stuck on a Windows machine you should really check it out.
Popularity: 7% [?]
Don West adds this Comment:
Holy Mackerel! This is total perfection! I’m giddy with happiness!…
Thanks for driving this and helping the developer Alex.
December 19th, 2006 at 11:47 am
Jim Kueneman adds this Comment:
“Holy Mackerel! This is total perfection! I’m giddy with happiness!…
Thanks for driving this and helping the developer Alex.
”
I would not go that far :^). There is SO much more I want to do.
Jim
December 19th, 2006 at 1:17 pm
Deniel adds this Comment:
Holy Mackerel! This is total perfection! I’m giddy with happiness!…
December 19th, 2006 at 2:54 pm
James Smith adds this Comment:
please, try using Total Commander, it has all the things you want, and more, plugins galore (compression, data view, etc), coloring of files by type, customizable columns (ie: you get bitrate column over mp3 files), supports dynamic icons (tortoisecvs/tortoisesvn/mp3ext), works very well with junctions, built it command line interface (very powerfull), supports for tabs, and works well with keyboard…
things to try:
” Favorites panel (not a menu) ”
— try [control+d] for directory bookmark
” Tabbed interface ”
— press ctrl+t, ctrl+pgup/pgdown, ctrl+w (right click on tab to get other properties, like tab locking)
” Column view ”
— this is the default way, you can get extension be joined with filename, or as alternative column… press ctrl-f1 and ctrl-f2 to alternate column mode displays… right click on column header to add other columns… press ctrl-f3 to ctrl-f6 to easily, from keyboard, change sorting of columns… also supports the descript.ion and files.bbs standard for file info..
” Integrated command line ”
— built in, just start typing and you have command line. .. press ctrl-enter to paste currently selected filename into command line…
enjoy
January 9th, 2007 at 7:11 pm
Alex adds this Comment:
You’re misunderstanding what a column view is…
January 9th, 2007 at 7:28 pm
Luke Scammell adds this Comment:
Thought I may as well have a look at this. First thought is “OMG it’s ugly in windows Classic theme”! You may want to take a look at how it looks in windows classic as it certainly ain’t pretty, so much so that it makes TC look like Cinderella!
I shall start looking into how it works now
January 11th, 2007 at 4:02 am
Luke Scammell adds this Comment:
It can’t view Sharepoint shared drives, how disappointing…
January 11th, 2007 at 4:03 am
Martin adds this Comment:
me like!
February 7th, 2007 at 9:41 am
jack adds this Comment:
I want to like it, but it doesn’t feel.. finished.
I want to use it, but it’s too.. unstable.
even at version 1.3.2, it’s still giving me problems.
I can still wait.
April 2nd, 2007 at 5:23 pm
Jim Kueneman Fan adds this Comment:
First of all thanks for learning Delphi and then deciding that you wanted to make a freeware version better than those damn shareware versions. Your site is currently down so I hope you will read my comment here. Anyways…
It needs a resizeable path. My paths are generally very long and the version I have 1.3.0 doesn’t have that option. I would like to see double-click on an empty tabbar area to get a new tab out. Not sure what I’m doing wrong in drop stack but it doesn’t work for me. Oh well your favorites works fine too. Maybe I’m being stupid but I don’t see how to set it up as the default explorer. If that option isn’t in there please put it in. I would also like an option to exit it but have it remain in task tray. Thank you for your great work and good luck with everything!
April 5th, 2007 at 8:27 am
Jim Kueneman Fan adds this Comment:
Oh yeah I forgot to mention to everyone how to set it to startup with your computer.
C
Documents and Settings
Your username
Startmenu
Programs
Startup
Add shortcut to UltraExplorer here
There now it starts up!
April 5th, 2007 at 8:31 am
Glenn Guinto adds this Comment:
This is simply great! Found UE at SnapFiles, googled for a review and got to this site. I just hope this app doesn’t turn into paidware…
April 8th, 2007 at 6:03 pm
Bart adds this Comment:
I understand that this is uncompensated work, so hats off to you Jim for developing a highly useful tool for the community!
That said though, I would be much more impressed with this FM if it had search functionality. As this is a key feature, and for me personally, one of the main reasons I like having the availability of tabs, this cripples the tool tremendously.
May 17th, 2007 at 10:25 am
jojo adds this Comment:
this would be good if i could open folders with it by clicking the folders. I would like it a lot more if I could have some windows open in thumbnail and others in detail, and sometimes the back buttons glitches but otherwise its good.
June 11th, 2007 at 11:47 am
ferg adds this Comment:
open / save folder
is there any software that adds more options
to the windows open / save folder box ?????
November 2nd, 2007 at 8:37 am
Marty Fried adds this Comment:
I’ve read this and the previous post looking for an explorer replacement. UltraExplorer is very nice, but it looks like the author has lost interest; I also didn’t see any links on his site for feedback, questions, etc.
The one killer for me is that the address bar does not have autocompletion like windows explorer; this is something I actually use a lot for network shares. XYplorer does this well, but then, it costs $. Other than that, UE does everything I need.
I’d really like to know if the author plans to add any more to the program, or whether I should go ahead and buy XYplorer, which also seems good.
February 12th, 2008 at 4:49 pm
Jim Kueenman adds this Comment:
“UltraExplorer is very nice, but it looks like the author has lost interest; ”
I am in the middle of a very major rewrite.
“I also didn’t see any links on his site for feedback, questions, etc.”
Look at the message base link on the left.
“he one killer for me is that the address bar does not have autocompletion”
It should….??? Guess I need to look at that.
“I’d really like to know if the author plans to add any more to the program”
Lots, once the rewrite is done.
Jim
February 14th, 2008 at 7:01 pm
john adds this Comment:
I hope somebody continues with the development. I spent a lot of time trying to find an explorer alternative to do everythign I was looking for. It’s finally here.
I do have a problem though with opening folders through a UNC path can take minutes, I’m not sure why.
March 13th, 2008 at 10:08 am
Joao adds this Comment:
Unfortunately UE crashes for me on Vista
Hope it will work in a future release, it looks absolutely great and Vista’s excuse for an explorer is downright terrible.
March 18th, 2008 at 3:19 am
Andre P. Siregar adds this Comment:
I’m glad to see Jim’s post above dated 14 Feb. ‘08. I love UE and I’m happy to see that it’s still being worked on. The only problem I have with UE is stability and responsiveness. Last week UE crashed on me and I couldn’t even re-install (it crashed occasionally before, but this time it would crash on startup every time). So I tried other products like XYplorer and Directory Opus. I was seriously considering to pay for those sharewares, but in the end decided that they were weaker compared to UE. Then I noticed that during uninstall UE does not delete all cfg files in the directory. I deleted those leftover files and did a re-install. Thankfully now it does not crash on startup so I am now back with UE.
March 18th, 2008 at 7:57 am
GizmoJoe adds this Comment:
Been looking all over for a file browser that has the Mac OS columns… please keep the development up on this portion of UE!
March 30th, 2008 at 10:03 am
George Lindemann Jr adds this Comment:
Pros: Plenty of customization, unique organizing features not available in similar applications (try the columns view!)
Cons: It would be nice to see these services completely replace window’s default explorer (Ultraexplorer has to be explicitly opened to view files, rather than opening right when double-clicking on a folder). However, no advanced explorer programs accomplish this, at least at the moment.
April 2nd, 2008 at 12:37 am
Raindog adds this Comment:
Directory Opus can be configured to completely replace explorer so that when you open up “my computer” or any other folders from shortcuts, DO is what opens instead.
June 19th, 2008 at 11:03 am
Skylab adds this Comment:
I’m using Ultra Explorer on my Vista PC. How can I get it to launch my WinZip program when I double click on a Zip file, like regular Explorer will do?
It does show the files within the Zip file in the right pane, just like it would a folder’s, but my files are encrypted with a password. When I try to open one, it says:
“Windows cannot complete the extraction, The destination file could not be created.’ Then “Unspecified error.”
How can I get this to work? I really like UE. Thanks.
August 3rd, 2008 at 6:04 am
Manu adds this Comment:
I have to use it to tell more about it. But it has the most important thing that I was looking for – Column view as in PathFinder or Finder on MacOS/X . The NextSTEP style view speeds ups things…
October 25th, 2008 at 12:55 am