Directory and File Explorer

This essay does not describe an existing computer program, just one that should exist. This essay is about a suggested student project in Java programming. This essay gives a rough overview of how it might work. I have no source, object, specifications, file layouts or anything else useful to implementing this project.

This project outline is not like the artificial tidy problems you are spoon-fed in school, when all the facts you need are included, nothing extraneous is mentioned, the answer is fully specified, along with hints to nudge you toward a single expected canonical solution. This project is much more like the real world of messy problems where it is up to you to fully the define the end point, or a series of ever more difficult versions of this project, and research the information yourself to solve them.

Everything I have to say to help you with this project is written below. I am not prepared to help you implement it; or give you any additional materials. I have too many other projects of my own.

Though I am a programmer, I don’t do people’s homework for them. That just robs them of an education.

You have my full permission to implement this project in any way you please and to keep all the profits from your endeavor.

Introduction

It has hundreds of quick viewers for many file types so you don’t need to launch an application just get a rough look at a file. The quick viewers don’t allow edit, just viewing and scrolling and text search.

You can rapidly navigate to spots on your disk in your favourites list, just like a browser, with bookmarks. There are three bookmark icons called source, target and place. You can assign them to directories or files or places in files with a single right click to say “from now on, until I tell you otherwise, this button means jump here” The three buttons are always accessible so you can jump to those places. The source and target bookmarks act as default directories for any copy or move operations. There are also some long term bookmarks with assignable icons, that can’t be quite so casually reassigned. Perhaps two clicks.

There is a history stack of places you have visited, (not usually counting places just passed through).

It indexes file content for rapid searching much the way Magellan did. You can give a search expression of file names, wildcards, extensions and content words you want to see, and bang, there is a list of files matching that criteria. Hitting Down Arrow lets you view the contents of each matching file in turn.

You can navigate to a directory by typing part of the name, and selecting from potential matches.

Different parts of your disk can have a different decor. That helps orient you, especially when there are similarly named files and directories on your disk. You customise directory trees with background wallpaper, colour schemes, icons.

There is a history stack of where you have been, so you can always get back to where you just were, even if you have closed that window.

If you are feeling very clever, try to make everything undoable.

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You can get the freshest copy of this page from:

or possibly from your local J: drive (Java virtual drive/mindprod.com website mirror)

http://mindprod.com/project/explorer.html

J:\mindprod\project\explorer.html

Please email your feedback for publication, errors, omissions, typos, formatting errors, ambiguities, unclear wording, broken/redirected link reports, suggestions to improve this page or comments to Roedy Green :

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Directory and File Explorer

Introduction

Implementation

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