About. Ac Browser Plus is a MDI application. Generally, it means that
you can have many windows open, and operate on all of them using both mouse
and keyboard.
Press Ctrl+Enter when cursor is on a directory in current window.
Double click a directory with Ctrl pressed.
One click the icon of a directory with Ctrl pressed.
Right-left click in the vertical title bar.
Drag&Drop a folder from any application (e.g. from the system desktop) to
the title bar of ACB. This folder will be open.
Actually always when you tell ACB to open a location, and you
keep Ctrl down, then a new window is created. E.g. when you choose a folder from
your favorites, and keep Ctrl down, then ACB will open a new window and this
window will show the folder you wanted.
All of the above will create standard window. But you can
also create ACL and
Temporary
directory.
To tile all the windows, press Alt+S, to tile
horizontally, Alt+Shift+S. Note that window which are minimized will not be
tiled, so if you want to tile only chosen two windows, and you have more
open, then minimize the rest, and tile the chosen.
To activate next window, press Tab, to activate previous
window (previously active) press Shift+Tab.
To maximize\restore window press Alt+Q.
To activate target
window, press Ctrl+Q - the target window
will become Source, and the previous window will become Target window.
To close window, press Alt+X, to close all window, choose
menu window\close all.
If you have many windows open, then Alt+G may be useful to
find the one (dialog will appear with all the windows listed).
You can save current windows' layout, and then load it. To
save, choose menu "tools\save workspace as". To load, choose menu
"tools\load workspace". You can also ADD workspace to current one,
simply select "load workspace" with Ctrl pressed, then windows in this
loaded workspace will be added to the current ones. Note, that if you load a
workspace, it will be saved to "defaulf.aws", when you'll close AC
Browser. So if you made changes to the workspace you loaded, and you want to
keep it, choose "save workspace".
Here is the contents of current folder listed.
Double click an icon to execute (or enter a folder). You can also click (once)
the icon of the item to do the same. Right click to show the context menu. Right
- left
click to show the shell context menu (the same as Ctrl+right click).
The structure of folders. You can Drag&Drop files and
folders to and from this window, change the current location by clicking the
folders. If Ctrl will be pressed, then a new window will be created.
Keyboard shortcut - Alt+F1. Shows all drives in your
system, as well as the parent folders of current folder. Choosing the location
from here with Ctrl down opens a new window.
Shows the title of current folder. Also - in brackets,
shows if this is a source window (active one) or target window (the previously
active). Also : if this is normal folder, Zip folder, and if this window is in
Counting directories' sizes mode.
Double click - Go Up. Right-left click
- create a new window.
The icon on the top of vertical title bar means: the current folder, you
can drag&drop it for example. More.
Showed when list header clicked with right mouse button.
This is a quicker way than sorting items. If, e.g. "Extension" header
clicked, then menu shows up, with items classified by the extension, sorted alphabetically.
When "Size" header clicked, then menu with files sorted by size shows
up. So, if you only want to find out the biggest file, you don't have sort all
files to do that. The same with "Date" header.
First of all, there is the history of the visited
locations, you can choose one of them to go there. If, you'll do that with Ctrl
down, then a new window will be open.
Another use is that you can drop files\directories here, and ACB will go
there. You can also run programs from here. More.
From left to right - Go backward (the same as Alt+left
arrow) , go forward (Alt+right arrow), go up (to the parent folder, backspace),
go to the root of current drive (Shift+backspace). If the button is pressed and
the Ctrl is pressed too, then the new window will be open in the desired
location.
The "vertical title bar Icon" (marked on the picture) has a
special meaning: it is the current directory. You can bring a context
menu (right mouse click), or drag&drop. In both cases the operation will be
performed on current folder. Note: in previous versions of ACB the ".." line being in each
folder was supposed to do that. While it still works, now I rather suggest to
use the icon.
Dragging and Dropping to the browser windows
You can drop files and folders to various places of
browser windows. Read
more.
With files dropped to the title bar of main window of
application, ACB proceeds differently than with files dropped to the browser
windows. Nothing is copied\moved. ACB will open the location of the dropped
object.
- If this is an archive (archive.zip) , then ACB will open that archive.
Note that it cannot be a folder inside archive.
- If this is ACL then ACB will open
that ACL in a new window.
- If any other files or directories are dropped, then ACB will open a new window so
you can browse this (those) folders. Note that you can drop those folders from
anywhere - from Explorer, Desktop or from ACB itself. You can drop many folders.
So there is one trick you can do thanks to this feature - if you want to open
more than one folder in a new window, then select those folders in ACB's window
and drag&drop them to the main app's title bar.
You can also drop an image file to the background of ACB.
Then the background will be changed to that image.
By the way
Having an always open window with links to the most
frequently used programs is a quite good idea. You can then Drag&Drop files
(usually documents) to these links.
The Quick Acess Bar (usually on the left of the main window) has three windows. The first one, on the top,
is a “Quick filter”. Then we have "Other locations" and finally, at the bottom
shows basic file properties as well as a comment.
Quick Filter
It is there to provide an easy way to filter files, but not in the main window, but just there,
on this window itself. The files can be filtered using three buttons. You can
select one or more of the files listed in this window and the corresponding file will be selected in the current directory. The three buttons are:
With Quick Filter edit box you can supply your own filter, or filters (separated with semicolon - ; ). By entering just letters, like ‘my’ or ‘help’ files having these letters will be shown. You can use all the possibilities of Regular Expression searching provided by Ac Browser
Plus. For example – ‘[0-9]’ will show files with numbers in their names. *.jp? will show jpg and jpe
files too. See also: Regular
Expression in AcB.
The ‘Copied\Moved’ button shows the files\directories which were
copied\moved to or from the current directory.
Some technical notes about the ‘Copied\Moved’ button :
- Both, source and target files are showed. It means that when you copy file c:\a\data.txt to
c:\b\data.txt, the data.txt file will be showed in this filter in both directories.
"Other locations"
Here, ACB shows you most visited
folders in the context of current location. After a few days of working with ACB,
in this list you
should see folders and files you most frequently use. More:
address bar,
options
"Tree"
A global tree of folders. Right - clicking it will show a menu with 'refresh'
and 'sync' commands.
in the vertical title bar.
