Column view lister request

Have you tried this?

It looks like this:

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Unfortunately I think the closest you can get is saving a lister layout with the folder tree and dual display enabled. It's not really the same though.

For the purposes of viewing all directories, sub-directories, and files for a whole tree, the grouped flat view in my comment above will work. The only difference is that it's not side by side, it's a flat view.

I do use the column drop down that Ixp suggests, but it is not quite as easy to use as an actual column view.
As for the usefulness of a view based on columns, I agree with the other points of view in this thread that we can get to everything with the current options available. But that said, the Mac community has had column view since I can remember many, many, many years, decades back and Apple still provides a column view. It is the view I use the most, when I use my mac. For usefulness, that file viewing style is hard to beat.

And for evernessince: The best example of how column view would work is the Apple MacOS Finder application or the PathFinder application for the Mac from Cocoatech.
There are windows file explorers with column view, but they do not offer anything close to Directory Opus for functionality. The best of the bunch is hard to find and no longer supported, since quite a few years back (sadly).

We're on the same boat, I think Opus is also the best explorer alternative there is, even though there are others that support column view. Just kinda sucks the devs seem to be close minded about this.

Breadcrumbs are only useful to see what folders came before, not any other folders. I can just use the back key a bunch of times too and it'll be the same as the breadcrumbs. Column view is much more powerful

The menus between the breadcrumbs give you all the other folders that columns view would (at least as I understand it), without having them taking up space all the time when you aren't using them.

Alternatively, the folder tree and/or flat-view provide all the folders (and others) you might want to access in a single column without taking up another column every time you go down a level. (IMO, that is the main issue with the proposed feature; it simply does not scale well beyond a very small number of folder levels, and doesn't really do anything you can't do already via other things which do.)

Hey Leo,

That's still too many clicks to just LOOK at other folders I might want to go into. Column view not only lets you 1 click into any folder in any of the previous hierarchy, but lets you view everything effortlessly. The problem with tree and flat-view is that it expands e v e r y t h i n g and it's hard to even look for what you need. Like I mentioned before, for someone that deals with hundreds of files every single day using tree view and flat-view (which I tried once when I first got Opus and never again) is hell-ish.

I think that assessment is flawed, it scales very well because macOS just adds a bar at the bottom when you go in too deep, and I never had an issue or got frustrated when using column view to go into a million folders. With Explorer (main reason why I even found Opus to begin with) I got super frustrated because I had to double click into everything then go up a bunch of levels to look for other folders/files. Opus still doesn't fix my main issue but it fixes other smaller issues which is why i'm still using it, but here's to hope!

image
Bar under


Somebody's review as to why it's so useful

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We'll have to agree to disagree, I think.

I mean sure, but in the creative field there's no disagreement.
That includes: Graphic designers, motion designers, 3D artists, animators, VFX artists, storyboarders, creative directors, art directors, video editors, audio editors, architects, engineers, digital illustrators, multimedia artists, and I could go on forever. We all have similar workflows, I'm sure a chunk of them use MacOS anyway so they don't have this issue.

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I think any view mode which doesn't show any detail beyond filenames, unless it's showing thumbnails instead, is fundamentally against what I feel a file manager should do. (That includes List view.)

If you only care about file names and not even sizes and dates (other than for one selected file, with no way to scan down a list comparing files or finding the old and new or large and small ones), then I don't really understand, I guess. It makes me wonder why a complex file manager is needed at all.

Things that force horizontal scrolling (or, worse, a mix of the two directions) just to see or navigate to files and folders are also generally against the design direction we want to head in.

Not everything Apple have done is good, at least in our opinion.

Who knows, we may change our minds one day (it has happened before with ideas we didn't feel worked), but not in the near future with this one. It's both a huge amount of work and structural changes, and not an idea we like.

(As an aside, please link your account.)

It does show thumbnails in the preview panel, which is awesome.
I think you're missing the point though, we're talking about quickly going in and out of folders that each contain dozens of other folders and in each of those folders, dozens of files. Tree/flat view are HELL with so many files, the only other option is column view which is a much much better solution to anything else that currently exists. Single panel view, breadcrumbs, tree view, flat view, dual view, they're all terrible solutions for large quantity of files.

Apple sucks, but if there's one thing they did right is file management. Not only is column view awesome but also the way mac OS has thumbnails for seemingly everything is something Windows can't compete with, not even with sagethumbs. Stacks of files, masterpiece. Spacebar to view things, masterpiece (I use quicklook to mimic that in windows)

I mean why can't it just be another option to what already exists? I'm sure the team would make it even better than macOS. I think one commander just shrinks the columns to the left which I think is a good implementation too.

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This whole thread is just a huge pile of fail. Multiple paying customers (like me) asking for a feature and the devs rejecting it because they don't like macs.

I guess we can put this idea in the trash bin along with the mac version that's been requested for almost 15 years now.

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It's not that we don't like Macs; it's that we don't like the particular feature being requested, at least not enough to turn the program upside down in order to implement it, at the cost of a vast number of other features we could implement in the same time.

We only have finite resources. Just because people want it, doesn't mean we're physically able to make it. Sorry that upsets you, but that's the reality.

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I've been using Directory Opus since 1990 in the Amiga days and I have seen an enormous amount of features added in that time. Some features I didn't even think were possible.

When you say it's not a reasonable request or you can't do it, I just don't believe you. The Directory Opus changelog proves that.

I understand I'm swimming in a Windows shark tank here but column view is just a straight up good idea that would attract paying customers, regardless of your Cupertino opinions.

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Facts. I ended up buying onecommander for like... $5?, the dev actually replies to you on twitter and helps you if you have inquiries and takes recommendations into consideration for future patches. I don't think the implementation is as clean as opus, but it does its job (replaces explorer and everything)
and it has column view :slight_smile: works fantastic.
BUT, if opus ever implements this, I'm switching.

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And we don't? This forum says otherwise. :slight_smile:

Not every developer is going to want or be able to implement every feature, but that doesn't mean they aren't doing lots of others.

I was just informing, not comparing. Obviously you guys reply.

Although I have no Mac experience, I also purchased OneCommander for the Miller columns view and agree the developer is fairly responsive. The DOpus team are just as responsive, if not more so, given the disparate forum volume.

I have found OneCommander's Miller column view valuable in some instances. Unfortunately, its tools and options pale in comparison to DOpus. In fact, I rarely use OneCommander precisely because of DOpus' flexibility and power. DOpus fits my workflow and, I suspect many more people as well.

While I would not mind seeing a Miller column option in DOpus, it is not high on my priority list.

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I signed up simply to reply this thread alone. Been a Dopus user since 5 years. I agree with everything gianflavio said, being a creative professional myself. I keep having to rapidly jump between folders made between programs like Blender, Adobe Suit, C4D, TVPaint etc.

I recently used Mac for the first time (dont@me) at the uni where I did my masters and immediately fell in love with how Finder handled navigation. gianflavio is right in saying that its such a boon for people like us. I immediately set off to find if Dopus had it, which was sadly no. I tried all the other major file managers out there only to be disappointed over and over.

I tried One Commander based on gianflavio's recommendation and was happy to see that it had column view out of the box. Short lived happiness though, once I met the convoluted and non-standard horror that the rest of the software was.

It's not that we don't like Macs; it's that we don't like the particular feature being requested, at least not enough to turn the program upside down in order to implement it, at the cost of a vast number of other features we could implement in the same time.

Trust me, this a big feature that a lot of us would LOVE to have. I don't use 95% of whatever other crazy advanced features that pro Dopus users use- I use it primarily for the tabbed browsing, nav tree and whatever other basic things that's just absolutely necessary. Also appreciate how native it feels a modern Windows OS unlike most alternatives.

Flat view is not an alternative. In say, a short animation project ad that make have tens of thousands of files with hundreds of folders, splatting them wide open in a list is of no help to anyone. And we handle multiple such projects at a time. It would be great if instead Flat view acted like the navigation tree, with expanding folders and such.

It would at the very least seem like something doable for you guys unlike the major overhaul that you feel implementing a Column view would be.

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