multi-tabbed-multi-framed-file-manager

Recently I have switched from the default Explorer to Q-Dir on my Windows desktop and I was surprised by the fact that just in a few days I have improved my productivity up to three times. Within its own window Q-Dir puts few frames (I prefer 4 frames) for the Explorer File Manager. And in each frame you may create as many tabs as you would like to. So you don’t have to manage multiple File Manager windows anymore. All the files and all the folders are within one single Window now. After you exit Q-Dir it saves its state, so you don’t have to start your work from scratch again.

However as far as I know on Linux there are only dual-panel file managers and Unity File Manager in Ubuntu does not support even dual-panel navigation right now. Only Dolphin does. What I suggest is to make Unity File Manager being able to handle up to four frames within its single window. And within each frame – support tabs.

Unity has not got a taskbar, and all FM windows are binded to a file manager icon. If you work with many FM-windows, you always have to do an additional click to view available windows, then read they headers, then choose one, understand it was wrong, click on FM-icon again, select another and finally get where you wanted to. To many clicks, too many attention for such a simple action. Eliminating multiple windows in FM and sticking all the windows as frames to a single window will balance the lack of multiple icons for each windows in Unity’s “taskbar” and will make it actually usable for those who work with multiple FM-windows.

Summary:
- One single window except multiple file manager windows - removes the necessarily to seek the desired FM-windows among opened ones
- Multiple tabs within multiple frames to make sure user have plenty of space to keep everything he or she wants always opened
- AutoSaving the state and bookmarking the state to make sure user won’t have to open all the folders again after system restart. Bookmarking the state – is optional
- Its own type of view in each tab – Simple List, List, Large Thumbnails, Small Thumbnails e.t.c.
- Integration into system and always opening new folders from desktop/start menu in recently used frame - to make sure there won’t be Unity File Manager’s window duplicates.
- Making things simple for those who actually work with multiple windows and keeping them as is for those who don’t. Ergonomics teaches us to minimize the amount of steps we need to make before reaching our goals, it also teaches us to keep everything important there where we can see it. I believe “quad-frame” (or “quad-panels”) file managers are all about this.

One distributive. One environment. One file manager window.

UPD: there is SpaceFM file manager which actually does multipanelling: http://ignorantguru.github.com/spacefm/