It may sound odd but one of the things keeping me on Windows is a drag-and-drop friendly file, folder, and link manager that works like a smart local bookmarking system. Essentially what's contained in CubicExplorer's (now about 8 years old) favorites menu. I find it absolutely indispensable, and CubicExplorer is my portable launcher of choice, in addition to being a file manager. The customizability and the transparency this program delivers is hard to replace:
This is my view of my desktop
I've looked into some options to possibly restart development but that doesn't seem to be happening. Worse, it's possible that some future Windows update is going to kill the drag-and-drop functionality like what happened with ExcelPass. So I've decided to spend some time on some tools that come close.
Alternatives
- Freeplane - Mindmap program supports drag-and-drop (local file management)
- FreeCommanderXE - actively developed and comes close to what I'm looking for in many areas, but is missing some flexibility.
- Asuite launcher - Launcher programs like this one are definitely an option, but sometimes linking to non-executable files or direct links to folders can be confusing for these programs. Asuite in particular seems to have an issue where it dumps file icons, which as put me off it's use.
- Dashy - discussed here
- StorURL - it's for webpages only, but it's also solid local bookmark manager that works independent of browsers.
New development
It's been on my todolist for a long time to find someone that's willing to take over the CubicExplorer project. Discussions with one dev seemed to dissolve because some of the key libraries would need to get moved to FreePascal, which is a task all it's own. Anyway, it doesn't have to be specifically a fork or restart of CubicExplorer. I've listed some basic requirements so if anyone knows someone looking for a project, I'd be glad to help out.
Requirements
- Minimum
- Drag and drop add, rearrange/modify, and add to other items as a sub-group
- Allows both virtual and actual folder branches (meaning you can create a root folder that's either just a box to put stuff in or links to an actual folder)
- Similar to the above requirement, any item can be the root of a tree object, whether a web link, folder, virtual folder, etc.
- Cross-platform with an open license
- Low resource usage - really just addressing the tendency towards 400 meg monsters for a calculator program.
- Portable with optional relative file linking (so ..\programname.exe and not c:\temp\programname.exe