As this is my first post - I'll give a bit of background
I'm considering using Directory Opus as my primary file manager. I've been using a competitor product for about 7 years. For various reasons I'm looking to replace it, one reason is that in order to get its latest features I have to pay almost twice as much for an upgrade as I would pay for Dopus-Lite which has those same features.
I cannot imagine I will ever replace Windows Explorer (WE) with any 3rd party file manager. I prefer and I actually like having WE as a secondary lightweight file manager. And its what other application expect - e.g. the Calibre eBook manager has a Path : Click to Open on its Book details panel, which opens the book's folder. These are not locations in which one would spend and time and WE is more than adequate to do what I might want to do - e.g. edit the cover with The Gimp. And if anything were to go awry then Calibre and/or The Gimp developers would ask - what happens with Windows Explorer.
And finally by way of introduction, I am addicted to context menus - not via mouse right clicks - but via the keyboard menu key.
Is there some way to have exactly the same context menu in Directory Opus that I get in Windows Explorer - in particular Shelltoys Menu Customisation (SCM) - which is covered at some length in this thread ShellToys - so I wont repeat all that here.
My references to SCM sub menus are not related to the Shelltoys functions,that all works fine, SCM refers to the feature in Shelltoys that allows the grouping of context menu entries from other programs (eg MalwareBytes, VLC, WMP, FastPictureViewer etc) into sub menus. Without the SCM sub menus my context menu has up to 60+ items, which is too long to fit on my 1200 pixel high monitor.
I appreciate that Dopus has its own menu customisation facilities. But I assume they would only be available from within Dopus itself, and not from within WE nor the standard file/folder dialogues used by many applications. I often use the context menu on file/folders listed in these dialogues, I appreciate most other people never do that. However I've been doing it for probably closer to 30 years than 20 - old habits die hard, and IMO its a good habit.
I could live with Dopus not being compatible with SCM, provided the Shift/Menu Key(Shift/Right Click) feature delivered the context menu I see Windows Explorer - with the SCM sub menus. But what I get is the same long menu I see in Dopus, with the addition of the extra items from Explorer (print directory, open in another process etc), but no SCM sub menus.
I also use the idImager software (Digital image Manager), it has its own context menu's, and it uses Shift/Menu Key(Shift/Right Click) to invoke the native Windows context menu, But when I use Shift/Menu Key in idImager I get the the standard Windows context menu including the SCM sub-menus, i.e. exactly what I see in WE.
I have just uninstalled another file manager that I was 'evaluating' it too had context menu issues, amongst other things. One of the things I learned is that having very long context menu is a real pain if your keyboard centric (its is one of the reasons I purchased Shelltoys) and having different context menus in my main file manager and WE is a a darn nuisance.
Ideally what I'd like is a Directory Opus submenu within the native context menu into which I could put any Dopus specific context menu customisations. I would only expect the sub menu to be be available when I'm in Dopus. Interestingly one of the 'new' features of the file manager I'm currently using implements this approach.
There's a context menu organiser called Mmm+ (from Hace) that I used before I got Shelltoys, it provides very similar functionality to SCM and via a similar drag/drop UI; sadly it never made it beyond XP. If anyone knows of anything similar that works with Windows 7, i.e. is easy to use and compatible with Dopus I'd be happy to ditch SCM in its favour. I estimate that I use the SCM configuration dialogue at least 1 or 2 times a month - so for me this is not a set and forget issue.
I tried some other context menu utilities. Glary Utilities, Moo0 Right Clicker and Context Menu Organiser. But they are all awkward to use (ie they rely on Guid cut & paste etc), cost too much or carry too much baggage. Essentially they're all Nirsoft Shellmenu utility clones - nothing wrong with Nirsoft, they do good stuff - but why would I pay for a clone when Nirsoft is free. And it grieves me that after almost 10 years of having a drag/drop solution (Mmm+ and then SCM) that I might have to resort to cut & paste of GUIDs etc and I'm not even sure that these things can create flyout sub menus.
Sorry this is so long - in every other respect I think Directory Opus would be more than I need. But for this one issue, which is, pardon my language - bloody annoying.
BR