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File Pilot: A file explorer built for speed with a modern, robust interface

filepilot.tech

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Re: File Pilot: A file explorer built for speed with a modern, robust interface

#191

Post by marticode »

egeozcan wrote: post #68
keyle wrote: post #67

I've followed this developer for a while, I'm glad to see it finally out in the open. Then I looked at the pricing... wow, you really gotta dislike explorer.exe.

It's a one-time purchase of 40 bucks. 200 for priority support. It's not peanuts for many people but far from overpriced IMHO.

40 bucks feels alright but 200 (five times as much !) feels excessive. How much priority support does one need for a file explorer?

Also yes 200 gives you free upgrades but you have to assume there'll be many years of development and many upgrades to recoup the cost vs buying the regular license.

Re: File Pilot: A file explorer built for speed with a modern, robust interface

#192

Post by eviks »

pjc50 wrote: post #102
yoyohello13 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I just hope Microsoft can do something like that with current Explorer app They can start by making explorer startup in less than 5 seconds. Let's face it, Microsoft devs don't care about performance and probably never will.

Explorer is slow because it's extensible. All the thumbnails and extra stuff in the context menu is what slows it down. There's some pathological cases like "opening a folder with an MP3 file in" which puts it into scanning all the files for ID3 tags. Fpilot is a great example of how it's possible to make something MUCH faster by limiting the feature set. (also some of the NTFS APIs are horribly slow for extended inf…

> There's some pathological cases like "opening a folder with an MP3 file in" which puts it into scanning all the files for ID3 tags

Why would this parallel background task have any impact on Explorer's startup time or UI responsiveness?

Re: File Pilot: A file explorer built for speed with a modern, robust interface

#193

Post by eviks »

vjekoslav wrote: post #118
eviks wrote: post #46

Does it integrate with Everything allowing for instant search results for any file anywhere? Plans to have extensions? A detailed comparison with Directory Opus would be welcome

It does not integrate with Everything. It's already blazingly fast with the regular WinAPI for indexing. However, MFT indexing (which Everything uses) will be added as built-in support in the near future. It will be an opt-in option for users. There are a couple of reasons why I didn't want to make MFT the default. a) It requires admin access. b) It's NTFS specific, which means you need to write different logic for o…

There is "blazingly fast" where you also have to only include SSDs, still see your root drive taking seconds to populate data for, and still requiring admin for the whole app with those ugly underlines otherwise..

And then there is literally instant, for literally everything, while the app itself is in normal mode and thus preserves the non-admin benefits.

a) Not for the app, only for Everything

b) Those other file systems could also be indexed by Everything (though via a slower mechanism). Also given the primacy of NTFS, I'd definitely trade the ability to have folder sizes for drives I rarely use for the instant calculations on drives I use all the time

c) Good. Waiting for MS docs could mean a few more decades of wasted potential

Re: File Pilot: A file explorer built for speed with a modern, robust interface

#194

Post by deramboss »

mherrmann wrote: post #138

I once devoted 2 years of my life to developing a file manager called fman [1]. In total, it generated probably 35,000$ in profits, so my income from the project is somewhere around 10 $/h. As software developers, our opportunity costs are high. I use my file manager to this day and love it. But I regret spending so much time on it. Congratulations on your launch. I wish you more success than I've had. Failing that,…

Without your OpenSource Promise Scam you wouldn't have earned nearly as much with fman.

Re: File Pilot: A file explorer built for speed with a modern, robust interface

#195

Post by wink »

As I see a lot of talk about people seemingly happy to pay for this, apparently because they think they will gain something out of it.

Backstory: My main machine at home is Windows (for games) and all other computers I have used since about 2010 have had Linux or FreeBSD on them (unless employer provided).

As I'm a bit of a distro and DE hopper it happened to me more than once than I couldn't remember how my current GUI file manager was called... simply because I hadn't started it for half a year or longer. (Since then I've installed thunar most of the time).

And I find this so fascinating because I use the Windows Explorer all the time. So either I am simply doing different things on Linux (while working and coding in my spare time) - or I use the shell so much that I don't even think about using a GUI file manager, if I have a proper shell available (not a fan of WSL). I plan to switch to Linux even on my gaming PC this year, we'll see if it works out...

Long story short: I am not averse to paying for good software (although I prefer it to be FLOSS and I contribute in a miniscule way by reporting bugs, sometimes fixing them) - but if I'm not on Windows I am not the target audience _at all_. And I find it kinda surprising.

Anyway, I wish the author good luck.

Re: File Pilot: A file explorer built for speed with a modern, robust interface

#196

Post by Sweepi »

Quick questions/observations:

  1. Is there a way to reassign/set keyboard shortcuts?
  2. Is there a keyboard shortcut for opening the "hamburger/3-dots" menu?
  3. In the "hamburger/3-dots" menu, there is an option the open a cmd shell, but there seems to be no shortcut for it.
  4. While in "quick filter mode" the context menu key does not work (but the context menu does when using right mouse button) [1]
In windows explorer and File Pilot, you can access the "breadcrumbs" bar with ALT+D. In Windows explorer you then can enter "cmd" to get a cmd shell at the current location. This does not work in File Pilot.

[1] If this does work for other people: My keyboard does not have a context menu key, therefore I use the following AutoHotkeyScript to rebind F13 (labeled mute/unmute on the keycap) to "open context menu", which so far has work everywhere, but I still wanted to mention.

  F13::AppsKey
  return

Re: File Pilot: A file explorer built for speed with a modern, robust interface

#197

Post by enoch2090 »

vjekoslav wrote: post #108
enoch2090 wrote: post #96

Looks pretty good but all CJK characters are displayed as questionmarks (???) and switching to a CJK native font does no help. So my user folder is now crowded with ???????? which makes it hard to navigate :(

Unfortunately, I only support Latin and Cyrillic for now. But full unicode support will come in the future.

Can't wait to replace my explorer with this, hope the support will come soon

Re: File Pilot: A file explorer built for speed with a modern, robust interface

#198

Post by semantecture »

vjekoslav wrote: post #104
semantecture wrote: post #72

Nice work, really snappy, love the "speed at the your fingertips" approach. I absolutly am willing to shell out some EUR for such life-altering tools. I have been entrenched in the https://www.ghisler.com/ camp for 20+ years for three main reasons: 1. function keys for copy/move etc. like in mc, norton etc. 2. navigate (even larger) archive files in every format under the sun as if it were an extension of the file sy…

Thanks for trying it out! I was a long-time TC user too. 1) Those are not assigned by default, but all hotkeys in FP are reassignable, so you can create a setup very similar to TC. 2) This is a planned feature. 3) Not currently on the roadmap, but it's a possibility.

Thank you for the reply.

Really looking forward to the archive file navigation, and will use your tool. I am already sensing that the snappiness is pretty addictive, and it will be hard to go back to anything slower...

Keeping my fingers crossed for your product!

Re: File Pilot: A file explorer built for speed with a modern, robust interface

#199

Post by mexicocitinluez »

nanna wrote: post #166
mexicocitinluez wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. A file manager tied to Emacs is completely unrelated to a Windows-based file system app. You're trying to make your video relevant and it's not.

You do realise that Emacs runs in Windows?

You do realize that Windows already has a file explorer.

How stupid is it to have to argue with someone that "No, your ancient IDE's file explorer is not the same as Windows file exploerer and no one is going to download EMACS so that they can browse windows files easier"

Re: File Pilot: A file explorer built for speed with a modern, robust interface

#200

Post by zerr »

vjekoslav wrote: post #163
zerr wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean all those complex UI stuff code is written in immediate GUI? How maintainable/readable is the resulting code?

Way more maintainable than anything from MS that I'd have to deal with.

How about the CPU usage? Running a main loop at 60hz for a file manager sounds bit overkill.

Agree about the MS offerings. That's why I use cross-platform frameworks (wx, qt) even for the Win-only apps.

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