Navigating your computer |
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Navigating your computer |
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To manage your files and folders efficiently, it's important to be able to quickly navigate to different folders of your computer. AB Commander offers various tools designed to speed up and simplify the navigation:
Each panel of AB Commander has a title bar that shows the path of the folder currently displayed in the panel. Each component of the path is usually a clickable link: if you hover the mouse over the component it becomes underlined (to indicate that it's clickable), and if you click it, the panel will navigate to that path of the component. You can use this feature to quickly navigate to one of the parent folders.
Another convenient navigation tool is the Jump command: you can select if from the Folder menu, or you have the option to invoke the Jump command by double-clicking the panel title bar. As a result, the title bar becomes an editable box where you can type in the destination path of the folder to navigate to. The Jump box has a history list of the paths that you previously entered there. It also supports the auto-complete navigation: if you type the backslash character after a path, the Jump box will display a list of subfolders you can choose from to complete the path, to save you from unnecessary typing.
You can change the options that affect the display and functionality of the panel title bars by right-clicking on a panel title bar and selecting Options from the menu.
Each panel of AB Commander has a Folder bar attached to the file list on the left side, that lets you browse the hierarchy of folders of your computer. To navigate to a specific folder, simply click on it in the folder bar, and the panel will display the list of objects that the folder contains.
You can also navigate the folder bars using the keyboard: press Shift+Tab to switch the input focus to a folder bar, then use the arrow keys to select the desired folder, and finally press the Enter key to navigate to it.
You can right-click on a folder in a folder bar to display a shortcut menu for that folder, just like Windows Explorer does. If you have Windows Vista or later, you can also drag and drop objects to and from the folder bars (the drag-and-drop operations with folder bars are not supported on Windows XP or Windows 2000).
You can adjust the width of a folder bar by dragging its right edge with the mouse. If you resize the main window of AB Commander, it will adjust the width of each folder bar as well, to keep it proportional with the width of the appropriate panel. (Note that you have the option to turn such automatic resizing off and keep the widths of the folder bars constant.) You can also turn the folder bars on and off for each panel, by right-clicking on an empty space within a folder bar and using the Show Folder bar command on the shortcut menu, by using the same command on the Panel menu.
You can have several folders open in separate tabs, and quickly switch to such folders by clicking on their tabs. To open a folder in a separate tab, right-click on the folder in AB Commander and choose Open In New Tab command from the shortcut menu. Or, just click on the folder with the middle button of the mouse.
Drive bars are convenient tools that let you quickly display the current folder of any drive your computer has access to:
AB Commander offers three drive bars: the main drive bar that belongs to the main frame window, and two panel drive bars, one for each panel. The functionality of each drive bar is identical. You may find that using the panel drive bars is more convenient than the main drive bar, because you can activate a panel and change its folder to a different drive with just one mouse click. With the main drive bar, you have to first activate the panel (if it's not active), before using the buttons on the drive bar.
Of course, you don't have to keep all three drive bars visible on the screen, you can hide those you don't use:
To hide or display the main drive bar, choose the Drive bar - Show command from the View menu. To hide or display a panel drive bar, choose the Drive bar command from the Panel menu. You can also click any button on the drive bar with the alternative (usually, right) mouse button, and choose the appropriate command from the menu shown.
As you move the mouse pointer over the buttons on the drive bar, the current drive labels are shown in the tooltips for each button. In addition, the full path to the current folder for the drive is displayed on the status bar.
To display the current folder of a drive in the active panel, simply click the appropriate button on the drive bar with the left button of the mouse. If you press the Alt key and then click on a button (while the Alt key is pressed), the root folder of the appropriate drive is displayed instead of the current folder. Clicking on a button while the Shift key is pressed makes the passive panel (instead of the active one) display the current folder of the drive. Finally, clicking on a button while pressing both Alt and Shift keys simultaneously displays the root folder of the drive in the passive panel.
If you right-click on a button on the drive bar, a shortcut menu is displayed, letting you perform some common actions, such as eject the removable drives as well as the CD/DVD discs, see their properties, connect or disconnect the mapped network drives, etc.
You can also use the Layout submenu on the right-click menu of the drive bar to change the position of the drive bar relative to the toolbar.
You may also find it convenient to use the Alt+F1 and Alt+F2 keys: Alt+F1 displays the drive menu for the first panel (the left or the top one, depending on the way you split the panels); Alt+F2 displays the drive menu for the second (right or bottom) panel.
Network menu is a tool that lets you quickly display the contents of the Network Neighborhood folder and quickly navigate to a computer on your network.
You can display the Network menu for the active panel using the Folder - Network command (available also on the panel control menu and as a toolbar button).
You may also find it convenient to use the Ctrl+F1 and Ctrl+F2 keys: Ctrl+F1 displays the Network menu for the first panel (the left or the top one, depending on the way you split the panels); Ctrl+F2 displays the Network menu for the second (right or bottom) panel.
You can add the folders you visit often to the Favorites list maintained by AB Commander, by using the Folders - Favorites command. Then you will be able to quickly go to those folders by selecting them from the Favorites list.
You can use the Organize Favorites to modify the items of the Favorites list: you can assign labels to the items, and also make the items set not only the active, but also the passive folder.
Note that although the Favorites list maintained by AB Commander works in almost the same way as the Favorite places feature of Windows Explorer, their contents is completely independent on each other: the changes you make to one of them do not impact the other.
AB Commander maintains the history lists (also known as the Most Recently Visited Folders lists) that keep track of folders you previously displayed in each of the panels. Whenever you display a folder in a panel, its full path is added to the history list, at the current position. If you subsequently decide to go to that folder again, you can do so by displaying the history list for that panel and choosing the folder from this list.
You can display the history list for the active panel using the History command on the Folder menu (available also on the panel control menu and as a toolbar button, both on the panel toolbars and on the main toolbar). The current folder is shown in the list using the bold typeface.
You can also use the Previous and Next commands on the Folder menu to quickly move from one folder to another, according to their positions in the history list.
The default setting for maximum size of each list is 20 items, but you can change this setting to any number between 1 and 100, using the View - Options command.
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