Total Commander is a modern interpretation of the popular Norton Commander. It comes with a new approach on Windows, relying on a two-panel interface that allows users to handle files in two folders at the same time, just like with the MS-DOS-based tool.
The way files are listed vary according to each user\'s preferences, with shortcuts for every single operation, starting with the common cut, copy and paste tools and ending with edit, create a new folder and rename.
But Total Commander has to offer much more than that. It has a FTP client for accessing servers in a matter of seconds, a multi-rename tool just in case you want to keep things organized, multiple network tools plus a gigantic settings menu that allows you to configure every single bit of the application.
As you would expect, Total Commander is able to handle archives too, so it can pack and unpack files in a matter of seconds, as we\'ve learned during our tests. However, probably the best thing about it is the speed of operation. This piece of software is so fast that won’t even notice the difference between opening a folder with 2 files and one with 300 files.
With its great feature pack and extensive customization possibilities, Total Commander sets the bar high for all file managers. Working with it is not difficult and once you get the hang of it, you may find it is an indispensable tool.
Here are some key features of "Total Commander":
- Direct access to Network Neighbourhood
- Supports Drag & Drop with Explorer/the Desktop etc.
- Command line for starting of programs with parameters, simply by typing the program name or by pressing CTRL+ENTER or CTRL+SHIFT+ENTER.
- Configurable button bar and Start menu (User-defined commands) to place your frequently used DOS or Windows programs into a drop-down menu. The actual directory and/or the file under the cursor can be delivered to the application.
- Configurable main menu.
- Built in file viewer (Lister) to view files of ANY SIZE in hex, binary or text format, using either the ASCII- (DOS) or the ANSI- (Windows) character set. The line width and font size can now be changed. You can even view files inside archives! New: Support for Unicode UTF-8 format.
- Bitmap viewer in Lister, additional formats through Irfanview
- HTML- and Unicode-Viewer in Lister.
- Parallel port transfer function (direct cable connection), works between Win95/98/NT/2000/3.1 and DOS!
- Thumnbails view shows preview images in file lists.
- Custom columns view allow to show additional file details.
- Total Commander comes in the following languages: English, German, French, Italian, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Dutch, Spanish, Czech, Russian, Polish, Hungarian, and now also Hebrew, Greek, Afrikaans, Catalan, Turkish and Ukrainian!
- The help is available in English, German and French
File handling:
- Extended copying, moving, renaming and deleting of entire trees (Enables deleting "full" directories).
- Compare files by content.
- Synchronize directories (with subdirs), or a directory with a ZIP file.
- Encode/Decode files in UUE, XXE and MIME format.
- Split/Combine big files.
- Search for duplicate files.
- Show/select files with specific search pattern, size, date or contents.
- Restore selection as it was before the last file operation (NUM /).
- Enhanced search function with full text search in any files across multiple drives, even inside archives.
- Multi-rename tool: Allows to rename multiple files in one step (Hotkey: Ctrl+M)
FTP client:
- Built-in FTP client supports most public FTP servers, and some mainframes
- FTP and WWW proxies for FTP connections; new also SOCKS4+5.
- FXP: Send files directly from one remote server to another.
- Resume aborted downloads.
- Add files to download list (through context menu) and download later.
- Download in the background (separate thread)
Archive handling:
- Archives are handled like subdirectories. You can easily copy files to and from archives. The appropriate archiving program is automatically called. pkzip, arj, lha, rar, ace and uc2 are all supported.
- Built-in ZIP-compatible packer, supports long filenames! This packer is based on ZLIB by Info-Zip .
- Internal unpackers for ZIP, ARJ, LZH, TAR, GZ,CAB, RAR and ACE formats.
- Additional packers can be added as plugins.
- Pack large archives in the background (separate thread).
- Copy files directly from one archive to another.