Dual pane file managers such as Commander have always been very popular with the computer users who want to be able to easily manage their files. In Commander, we have the traditional blue user interface of Midnight Commander with the added advantage of an in-built image viewer.
During the installation of Commander file manager on Windows, it asks you to associate some of the file types with Commander. This is when you can associate Commander with image files so that it becomes your default image viewer.
Because of the dual-pane or split-screen interface, we can easily open two directories in the same screen. We can jump from one directory to another easily just by using the Tab key on the keyboard. If you want to open a file using Commander then you can press the F3 key. It supports ZIP, RAR and many popular image file types. If you press F3 for a binary file, then it opens in the hex-view.
If you want to edit any file using Commander, then you can press the F4 key on your keyboard. This will open the text files in an in-built editor. This is a very useful feature when you want to edit configuration files. You can also right-click on a file and choose to open it in the default application assigned by Windows.
Since it has a dual-pane user interface, it is ideal copying, deleting or moving files from one directory to another. We can simply select the files that we want to move and then press F6, it will show the destination as the second directory open in the split-screen view. When you press Enter, the moving is completed.
Commander also comes with many advanced features such as FTP access. We can compare files, compare directories and synchronize the contents of two folders as well.
You can download Commander from http://meesoft.com/Commander/.