XYplorer Beta Club

After using XYplorer for more than 13 years you take the time to write an elaborate post just to diss it and praise others? What went wrong? Angry?

Lare2 wrote: ↑19 Mar 2020 07:28 As a paid Customer of Total Commander (Since what seems a lifetime LOL), XYplorer (Lifetime Licence) and Directory Opus.

I want to give my two cents on all of them.

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https://www.thurrott.com/dev/232268/mic ... sual-basic

https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft ... -to-net-5/

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I want to comment on that.

Regarding Total Commander, I don't know Total Commander as well. So can't say much about it. My impression is: A veteran of file management. Probably stable, as you mentioned. But IMHO archaic user interface. I tried it some times but never could handle it quite the way that it made sense to me.

Regarding Directory Opus, here I really have to comment on what you wrote. Especially regarding stability/reliability, not saying that DO is particularly unstable, but I had more crashes with DO than with XY, as far as I can remember. What is more, this so praised Leo of yours, Lare2, and his colleagues are literally among the *most* unfriendly and "hiding the truth under the carpet"-people I have ever had personal contact (in this case in their forum) with in my life and by now I am over 40 years old. Would prefer to never have contact with them again.

Regarding XYplorer, XY certainly is unique in many ways. Like most apps, though, it too has its pros and cons. That said, stability, as you, Lare2, meant it would be an issue, IMHO certainly is *not* one of its issues. In my experience XY is super stable and has always treated my data in a friendly way. It does have its little bugs or places of potential improvement, e.g. every now and then some feature all of a sudden does not work the way it did in the past or as you would expect for other reasons. Often Don, the developer, is very quick to fix it, sometimes it won't get fixed for any kind of reason. I had my problems with the latter for a while but eventually came to accept that this is how it is (and therefore have mostly stopped reporting non-essential bugs). Overall, considering that the bugs not fixed are always side issues (and bugs not getting fixed is also true of most other apps I know, including DO) and XY doing its core job very nicely and mostly fast, then also considering how one is treated over at the DO forum and comparing the cost-benefit relation, I personally came to the conclusion that I am better off with XY.

Of course, everybody is entitled to his/her personal opinion and so are you, Lare2. Still, since your post almost reads like a commercial for DO and an anti-commercial for XY, I had to comment on that to give also a different, balancing opinion. (BTW, for such a post, as you, Lare2, wrote it, you would already get banned from the DO forum. Glad to know, that Don is not like that.)

BTW, about these 2 links at the bottom of your post: While it is true, that the one big super-old-old-archaic screenshot from 1995 on one of these 2 sites is misleading, as far as I can see it, both articles only talk about .NET, but *not* about VB6 at all, wich is the language XY is written in. That said, there are enough threads on this forum about XY being only 32 bit. So, no need to elaborate about this here any further.

Regards, S.

Yes ... But, about an essential feature : double tree for double pane :
- Total Commander : OK
- Dopus : OK
- QDir : OK
- XYplorer : NOK

Don used to describe XY as an "explorer style file manager with a second pane". I suspect the way he has implemented the second pane makes it difficult, perhaps impossible, to add a second tree.

I use Everything as a search utility through the many project folders that I use on a daily basis; I also use Listary as another search utility and app launcher. If I can scan through project directories with those three programs and not find what I am looking for, then it isn't there.

Since Autocart is slandering me above, I'd just like to state for the record he was banned from our forum (a VERY rare occurrence, maybe 1 or 2 people per year) for a series of rude posts, culminating in:

"And Jon, calm down, you act too much offended, just like a woman."

Make of it what you will. Just wanted to put our side here, since we've being discussed above.

I reported a bug to DOpus.
They denied it existed.
They then fixed it, claiming to have discovered it themselves.
I complained.
THEY BANNED ME FOR COMPLAINING.

BUT...
They continued to e-mail me demanding money to renew my licence.

Assuming you use the same name, The Gandalf account on our forum is not banned and I can't see anything even controversial in any of the threads. If you're someone else, I'm not sure what you're referring to, but we only ban people who are extremely, repeatedly rude, or who repeatedly spread disinformation or hassle us or other users to get their way over some pet issue, or who turn out to be pirates.

Our forum and release notes speak for themselves in terms of responding to things people report. Some things fall through the cracks or only get fixed when rediscovered by us or someone else, I'm sure, but that's going to be normal, and we'd never ban someone just for reporting a bug. If we didn't want people to report bugs, we wouldn't run a forum at all, and wouldn't respond so fast in general that people get used to it and complain if they don't get an answer within a few hours.

We only have FIVE banned users, since changing forum software in 2017, for the record. One of those was a spammer, another a pirate, the other three were repeatedly and extremely rude or causing trouble in multiple threads.

You can't read. The user name is Gandolf, not Gandalf.
Furthermore, read again why you banned me. It was because I dared to challenge your claim that YOU had discovered the bug, not me.

It was pre-2007, I know that because I remember that my wife was disgusted with your attitude, and she died in 2007. A friend, who posted a complaint about your attitude, was also banned from the forum. I've just spoken to her and she thought your reason for banning her was something like "interfering in matters that did not concern her".

Basically, you don't want people on your forum who don't toe-the-line.

admin wrote: ↑21 Mar 2020 19:52 After using XYplorer for more than 13 years you take the time to write an elaborate post just to diss it and praise others? What went wrong? Angry?

Not really, just posting a personal opinion on file managers, on a thread about File Mnagers under a section about Discussion.

I owned a License for that long, not used the app for that long. I have a bad tendency to purchase apps that I want to try (Also purchased Listary and only used it twice.. LOL). That's what I did with XYPlorer. Purchased it, Gave it a Try for a couple months, then Purchased a License for Total Commander and stayed there until very recently. Made the Jump to DO due to the archaic way that TC handle plug-ins, thats all.

I do come every once in a while and download XYPlorer once a year or so to see what's new and what not. That's why I was around this forums, reading what was going on with it.

I own Dopus and XY - both lifetime licenses.

I used to use Dopus daily and poked around XY. Lately I have had to search many files and directories for files with text content inside. Dopus crashes right away. XY doesn’t crash. Same searches same files.

I have a lot to learn with XY to use it to its potential. But I have to say there are good features in Dopus I would like to see in XY. Double click desktop to launch. Very detailed control of how the columns collapse and fill. Live filters. I am sure some of this is possible in XY but I need to learn a bit more.

Interesting -- if occasionally a little flamey -- thread.

For what little it's worth, I've used several file managers over the last quarter century or so.

Back in DOS days -- no, let's not. Of historic interest only, although I would say that the one everyone still remembers I really, really disliked the ergonomics of and wouldn't use it. But I'd come to DOS from CP/M and was mostly fine at the commandline...

The first Windows file manager I remember liking enough that I bought it was Ontrack's PowerDesk. The dual-pane thing just made sense to me, and I stuck with it for ages. But it got bought out by some other outfit who didn't support it very well (or possibly at all) and I seem to remember discovering a catastrophic bug that made me dubious about its reliability.

So I lived with PD when I needed it and Windows native functionality when I didn't, and then got a trial of Directory Opus 6 on a magazine cover CD, I think, in about 2006 and that was me sorted for a few years.

Useful though it was -- I even persuaded my workplace to buy me a licence so I could use it at work, I liked it that much -- there was a lot I was a little less than happy about. XYPlorer took over via a deal on BitsDuJour, I think, nearly 10 years ago now.

There are definitely things I miss about DO but XY feels -- and has always felt -- faster, more responsive, more capable of fitting in with my workflow and of letting me do what I want, how I want, when I want. I grant some of that got opened up significantly with one of the best scripts available -- Session Manager -- but then, DO needed Dear Opus to get reasonably usable...

I like XY enough that I own not one but two lifetime licences for it. Which, if a recommendation can be said to be measured on such things, is definitely a recommendation.

I won't say I'll never change again. I said that about Opus and I was wrong! But it's been in daily use for nearly a decade now and the others are going to have to come up with something pretty special to move me away.

Even if I still haven't really got to grips with scripting.

Some days ago I decided to try XYplorer and even own a life-time license now.
I like it but it has some disadvantages compared to my primary file manager Total Commander (TC).

These are the main problems I see compared to TC:

1. Dual pane support is bad and looks not integrated as it should be.
Try to find how you can refer to anything in the other pane for example.
I only found <previtem> to make a simple program start with the current item from both panes.

2. Its much to complicated to make a button to start some tool with its parameters.
Also it looks like the amount of User defined buttons is limited to 64.
In TC I just drag and drop the item to executed onto the button bar and add any parameters to this button.
The parameters can refer to a huge amount of selections for both panes and there is no limit for the number of buttons or tool bars.

3. TC has integrated Everything search engine for all its functions.
In XY I was at least able to simulate that by a liitle script which stores the results in a Paper Folder.

4. Not so importand but Archive handling is missing almost completedly in XY
while in TC i can browse all formats and create archives directly from the file panes.

What I like most in XY is:
Scripting support for which I have to rely on Autohotkey in TC.
Also its very good to customize in many of its functions.

Currently I use TC and XY depending on what I want to acomplish.
I also have tried almost any file manager on the market because that was one of my job assignments years ago for a large company.

Try to find how you can refer to anything in the other pane for example

E.g.: <get selectedItemsPathNames <crlf> i>;

Horst wrote: ↑01 Feb 2021 19:45 These are the main problems I see compared to TC:
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Hi and welcome to the club,

I suggest you post your wishes in the Wishes forum and your questions in the Tips & Tricks, Questions & Answers forum. That way it's easier for us to help you with your concerns.

Don