Navigating your computer

To manage your files and folders efficiently, it's important to be able to quickly navigate to different folders of your computer. AB Commander offers various tools designed to speed up and simplify the navigation:

Drive bars

Drive bars are convenient tools that let you quickly display the current folder of any drive your computer has access to:

AB Commander offers three drive bars: the main drive bar that belongs to the main frame window, and two panel drive bars, one for each panel. The functionality of each drive bar is identical. You may find that using the panel drive bars is more convenient than the main drive bar, because you can activate a panel and change its folder to a different drive with just one mouse click. With the main drive bar, you have to fist activate the panel (if it's not active), before using the buttons on the drive bar.

Of course, you don't have to keep all three drive bars visible on the screen, you can hide those you don't use:

To hide or display the main drive bar, choose the Drive bar - Show command from the View menu. To hide or display a panel drive bar, choose the Drive bar command from the Panel menu. You can also click any button on the drive bar with the alternative (usually, right) mouse button, and choose the appropriate command from the menu shown.

You can also drag the drive bar with the mouse to any place on the screen.

As you move the mouse pointer over the buttons on the drive bar, the current drive labels are shown in the tooltips for each button. In addition, the full path to the current folder for the drive is displayed on the status bar (provided that the Show descriptions of commands option is turned on).

To display the current folder of a drive in the active panel, simply click the appropriate button on the drive bar with the left button of the mouse. If you press the Alt key and then click on a button (while the Alt key is pressed), the root folder of the appropriate drive is displayed instead of the current folder. Clicking on a button while the Shift key is pressed makes the passive panel (instead of the active one) display the current folder of the drive. Finally, clicking on a button while pressing both Alt and Shift keys simultaneously displays the root folder of the drive in the passive panel.

Drive menu

Drive menu is another convenient tool that lets you quickly display the current folder of any drive your computer can access.

You can display the drive menu for the active panel using the Folder - Drive command (available also on the panel control menu and as a toolbar button).

You may also find it convenient to use the Alt+F1 and Alt+F2 keys: Alt+F1 displays the drive menu for the first panel (the left or the top one, depending on the way you split the panels); Alt+F2 displays the drive menu for the second (right or bottom) panel.

Network menu

Network menu is a tool that lets you quickly display the contents of the Network Neighborhood folder and quickly navigate to a computer on your network.

You can display the Network menu for the active panel using the Folder - Network command (available also on the panel control menu and as a toolbar button).

You may also find it convenient to use the Ctrl+F1 and Ctrl+F2 keys: Ctrl+F1 displays the Network menu for the first panel (the left or the top one, depending on the way you split the panels); Ctrl+F2 displays the Network menu for the second (right or bottom) panel.

Favorites

You can add the folders you visit often to the Favorites list maintained by AB Commander, by using the Folders - Favorites command. Then you will be able to quickly go to those folders by selecting them from the Favorites list.

You can use the Organize Favorites to modify the items of the Favorites list: you can assign labels to the items, and also make the items set not only the active, but also the passive folder.

Note that although the Favorites list maintained by AB Commander works in almost the same way as the Favorite places feature of Windows Explorer, their contents is completely independent on each other: the changes you make to one of them do not impact the other.

Folder History lists

AB Commander maintains the history lists (also known as the Most Recently Visited Folders lists) that keep track of folders you previously displayed in each of the panels. Whenever you display a contents of a folder in a panel, its full path is added to the history list, at the current position. If you subsequently decide to go to that folder again, you can do so by displaying the history list for that panel and choosing the folder from this list.

You can display the history list for the active panel using the History command on the Folder menu (available also on the panel control menu and as a toolbar button, both on the panel toolbars and on the main toolbar). The current folder is shown in the list using the bold typeface.

You can also use the Previous and Next commands on the Folder menu to quickly move from one folder to another, according to their positions in the history list.

The default setting for maximum size of each list is 20 items, but you can change this setting to any number between 1 and 100, using the View - Options command.

Folder Tree

The Folder Tree window lets you browse the hierarchy of folders of your computer. You can display this window by choosing the Tree command on the Folder menu.

Unlike Windows Explorer, AB Commander lets you control the auto-synchronize mode of the Folder Tree window. For more information on using the Folder Tree window, click here.