Introduction

A new fileBrowser can be either started via the Launcher, or by evaluating the Smalltalk expression:

    FileBrowserV2 open

    FileBrowser default open

The above starts the browser in the last visited directory. To start a browser on some other directory, evaluate:

    FileBrowserV2 openOn:'someDirectory'

Typically, after startup, it looks like:

It consists of 3 main subviews plus a variety of menu panels and fields. These components are:

1. Toolbar Menu
   Provides buttons for the most frequently used (menu-) functions.

2. Path Field
   shows the name of the current file/directory and (via a pulldown list) a history of previously visited directories. Also allows changing the directory.

3. Filter Field
   allows a file name match pattern to be entered. Only files whose name matches the pattern are shown in the directory-contents-filelist.

4. Directory Tree
   displays the directory hierarchy.

5. Directory Contents
   shows the selected directory's contents.

6. Tag List View (not shown in the above image)
   displays a tag list for the selected file. This is contents specific; for example, for a C-source code file, a list of functions is shown. For an html document, a list if header tags is presented. This list allows for fast navigation within a file.

7. Contents View
   displays the selected file's contents.

8. Info Fields
   displays information related to the last operation, the currently edited file and the currently shown directory. In addition, it shows the encoding of the file being edited, the cursor position and the editing mode.

To see the contents of a file, simply double-click on the corresponding name entry in the directory contents list. If the selected item is a text file, its contents is shown in the contents-view.
The contents view knows how to present certain files; for example, if you select a bitmap file, the bitmap image is shown.

All of the above mentioned subviews provide a popup menu, which is activated by the middle mouse button (or the right button, if you use a 2-button mouse).

By the way:

pressing an alphabetic key in the fileList will make it scroll to the next entry whose name starts with that character.

If you press "SHIFT" at the same time, it finds the previous entry starting with that character.

Typing "RETURN" executes the double click function on the selected entry.

Also notice that "CURSOR_UP", "CURSOR_DOWN" "HOME" and "END" keys too can be used to change the selection, while "PAGE_UP" and "PAGE_DOWN" scroll the list.

This is true for all views which show a list to select entries from.

Copyright © 2002 eXept Software AG, all rights reserved