Total Commander too unintuitive?

[ts4242]

It was the inspiration (the nicest way of saying it got copied) that created Windows Commander when it ceased being developed and was abandoned by Symantec when Peter Norton sold out. It was very much the same design philosophy that you see in TC today.

There are many other file manger uses the same design philosophy not only TC!

[DRP535]

It was the inspiration (the nicest way of saying it got copied) that created Windows Commander when it ceased being developed and was abandoned by Symantec when Peter Norton sold out. It was very much the same design philosophy that you see in TC today.

There are many other file manger uses the same design philosophy not only TC!

There are now, but there weren't back in pre-internet + pre-Windows 95 days. You had a choice of Xtree Gold or Norton Commander. Subsequent clones of each used similar naming structure - the *tree or *commander nomeclature.

[petermad]

[OT] My favorite DOS Commander was Volkov Commander, which were supported and developed until a much later date than Norton Commander. The latest betas (4.99.x) of Volkov Commander from June 2000 could even handle long filenames.

[tpjaec]

Arguably the worst design choices I've ever seen using modern software over 20 years.

Ctrl+F is universally used as a search in Windows, code editors, office applications, etc but no, it's FTP. D'oh.

The simplest thing like drag & drop is what we usually do and you would naturally expect it to mv (move) file to another folder but no, it's copy.
You have to press shift and drag & drop to actually move.
The author claims because Windows has inconsistent move/copy behavior, Total Commander does it better.
I don't agree. Counterintuitiveness is what kills productivity and annoys people. It's worse than inconsistency.

If only Total Commander had average UI improvements and common sense shortcuts, it would have been universally used but because of these disadvantages, it's only suitable for people who put massive time to master the program and customize 0 to 100 to fit the need.

Some say that it's inevitable because it is to suit all the people and let them customize from the ground up. No. That's the worst design choice you can ever make. Imagine having to pre-set all the shortcuts and settings when using VSCode, Excel, etc.

This is a massive design failure, period.
What's worse is that the community and the author himself does not recognize the problem.

[white]

Arguably the worst design choices I've ever seen using modern software over 20 years.

Ctrl+F is universally used as a search in Windows, code editors, office applications, etc but no, it's FTP. D'oh.

The simplest thing like drag & drop is what we usually do and you would naturally expect it to mv (move) file to another folder but no, it's copy.
You have to press shift and drag & drop to actually move.
The author claims because Windows has inconsistent move/copy behavior, Total Commander does it better.
I don't agree. Counterintuitiveness is what kills productivity and annoys people. It's worse than inconsistency.

If only Total Commander had average UI improvements and common sense shortcuts, it would have been universally used but because of these disadvantages, it's only suitable for people who put massive time to master the program and customize 0 to 100 to fit the need.

Some say that it's inevitable because it is to suit all the people and let them customize from the ground up. No. That's the worst design choice you can ever make. Imagine having to pre-set all the shortcuts and settings when using VSCode, Excel, etc.

This is a massive design failure, period.
What's worse is that the community and the author himself does not recognize the problem.

Welcome to the forum.

Some contradictions:

• You say if only Total Commander had average UI improvements and common sense shortcuts, it would have been universally used. Yet no one can look into the future.
• You say the community does not recognize this problem while you yourself are part of that community and posting in a thread about this very subject. And there are often discussions about things being unintuitive.
• You say the author does not recognize this problem, yet the author numerous times made changes or implemented some kind of a solution. However, his choice is to be very loyal to the people who don't want design changes, but want to keep using TC as they are accustomed to.
• You say this is a massive design failure, period. Yet, to say that Total Commander has been a success story is an understatement.
• You blame the design and the community, but blaming others is simply a way of saying you lack understanding.

Having said that, I personally would love things to be redesigned and the Help to be improved upon. As can be seen from my contributions on this forum. But I also have great respect for the author's hard work, long commitment and wise decisions which has led to the success it has proven to be. This success was solely accomplished by the quality of his product and the service he is providing.

[petermad]

2tpjaec

Ctrl+F is universally used as a search in Windows, code editors, office applications, etc but no, it's FTP. D'oh.

That is not entirely true - it can depend on the locale of your Windows. For example in Wordpad (write.exe) on Danish Windows, Ctrl+F is used to set Bold (Fed) font, and Crtl+B is used for Finding text in the document. It used to be the same for Notepad and Regedit, but in Windows 10 that is now changed to Ctrl+F for search (probably because you cannot use Bold in those two programs anyway).

[norfie²]

Ctrl+F is universally used as a search in Windows, code editors, office applications,

You are wrong. Outlook forward a message with Ctrl+F. If you wanna search you need to press F4 there.

[rus73]

Yes. This is a unique file manager.

[DRP535]

These are the sort of complaints you hear from the Gen Z and millennials who have no knowledge or experience of computing at all before Windows XP. They've never seen, let alone had to use a computer that doesn't use the Microsoft Windows OS. They don't realise that Total Commander via Windows Commander and Norton Commander before it predates Microsoft Windows 95 and I believe even in fact Windows 3.1.

If there are discrepancies between the so-called standards that Microsoft Windows uses and those that TC uses, then a very strong argument could be levelled that it is Microsoft who broke the standard that was set by Norton Commander, not the other way around. Just because you grew up learning Microsoft ways first before you discovered Total Commander doesn't make TC wrong. It just means that you've learnt the more inefficient way of doing it first before you discovered the right tool to use. That's your failing, not a failing of TC.

[norfie²]

Anyone can customise the shortcuts and share them with others.

[HerbieH]

To rus73:

This is a unique file manager.

Support ! The best buy I ever made for my computer .
(Ps. Your avatar needs debugging.)

To norfie:

Anyone can customise the shortcuts and share them with others.

And a lot of people already did that..
Over the years, I have made my own unique TC setup with personal shortcuts, menues, and many other functions, by taking suggestions and ideas from 'nerds' on this forum. (Ps. I love nerds. )

To everybody:
I don't think anybody can give you, exactly, the TC you need. Only you can do that!
So read this forum, and get your brain going
Then you may also end op being a 70 year old person without dementia, like me (..yet )

[goodfileapp]

and forum seems to have alot of toxic unhelpful useless ppl so just avoid entirely. the end

[goodfileapp]

and this is def garbage all around

[white]

Moderator message from: white » 2022-05-03, 07:25 UTC

Deleted last post by user goodfileapp

Reason: Violation of forum rules: contains insults and profanity

Please follow forum rules and be nice to other people.

[ghisler(Author)]

and forum seems to have alot of toxic unhelpful useless ppl so just avoid entirely. the end

Strangely the most toxic one is the one saying that - projection?
So far discussions have been civilized here most of the time, and I would prefer if it remained like that. Thank you all for your understanding.