Not a fan of the Midnight Commander-style of UI, but I'll give it a try since anything has got to be better than the mess that is the Finder these days .. I still don't understand why Apple can't push Finder to be a more modern interface for the system without completely screwing it up .. so much to improve, but yet they are ignoring it in favour of sandboxes and "nobody knows what a filesystem is" policies that make us all dumber.
One of my pet peeves with the Finder is that it still can't auto-layout the content to fit in the window - take a list view, open a folder .. and marvel at the fact that its the 21st century, but yet this list view still isn't capable of rendering itself for minimal-fit constraints. (I have to do it manually.) This is very frustrating, and I'd love to know of a solution ..
Can't agree with you more! The other issue I have with macOS is the maximize button which defaults to "fullscreen". I have become used to pressing the Option/Alt button before clicking the green maximize button. It's so obvious that it is a very bad design decision. Even more surprising is that this "feature" has been kept around for 3 versions of macOS. Am I the only one who finds this UX so counter-intuitive? Else why would it stick around for 3 versions of macOS?
Full ack! To fix those issues and many more I started to use Spectacle [1] some months ago which steady improved my workflows. I could not even think about working with macOS without it.
I personally have a utility installed that adds a Windows-esque "snap" functions, including maximization. That green button's behavior is a usability nightmare.
>Not a fan of the Midnight Commander-style of UI, but I'll give it a try since anything has got to be better than the mess that is the Finder these days
What exactly got worse in the Finder "these days"? I don't see anything that changed for the worse since OS X 10.2 If anything, current Finder is much improved in most aspects.
>One of my pet peeves with the Finder is that it still can't auto-layout the content to fit in the window - take a list view, open a folder .. and marvel at the fact that its the 21st century, but yet this list view still isn't capable of rendering itself for minimal-fit constraints.
Not sure what you mean, since the list view seems to work just fine.
Open a Finder window with some files in it. Hit list view (Cmd-2) ... notice that the text labels do not expand to fit/fill the text contents they contain - you have to do this manually by stretching the window, aligning the list columns manually, etc.
This really should be laying itself out automatically - like if you hit Ctrl-Alt-Numpad+ on an Explorer window on a Windows machine, which has had the ability to present the view in a useful, readable auto-layout .. since 1995.
>Open a Finder window with some files in it. Hit list view (Cmd-2) ... notice that the text labels do not expand to fit/fill the text contents they contain
Why should they? I don't want the column sizes to change under me, I want them to stay as they were left. Some text labels (filename, other meta etc) could be too large to display anyway.
That said, you can double click the right divider on any column to have it expand to fit the largest of its contents.
>Why should they? I don't want the column sizes to change under me, I want them to stay as they were left.
Well, I want the window to expand to show me the content of the folder and the file metadata without me having to do anything special - no hotkeys, no special zones to remember.
This would make it actually useful, as a utility, rather than something I have to service, as a user, on a frequent basis in order to get the details I want.
It just seems so obviously broken and such an obvious feature that I can't think why it isn't being done .. nearly every other file-system explorer interface I use, on Linux and occasionally Windows, can show this information properly through auto layout without human intervention .. yet Finder is some kind of special.
When you sort by date it automatically groups them by today, yesterday, last week, etc. which is fine, but then within those grouping they are not sorted by date/time
What you call "sort by date" is not sort by date, it's called "arrangement" and is a grouping (hence the various groups shown).
The reason why the items are not sorted by date inside the groups, is because you have some other column selected as the sort column (e.g. the name, size, or whatever is the default).
You can click the "Date Modified", "Date created" or any date column you want, and then the items will be both grouped by date (into the groups you see, today, yesterday, last week, etc) AND sorted by date within the groups.
The finder could force it so that it always sorts by the item you selected to group by with, but this is more flexible.
Certainly doesn't solve your problem to know this, though, does it? I for one cannot fathom how this sorting arrangement is of use to anyone, personally ..
>Certainly doesn't solve your problem to know this, though, does it?
Of course it does, since now they can click on the date column inside a group, and get the order they want for that group, in addition to the overall grouping into buckets based on date ranges.
>* I for one cannot fathom how this sorting arrangement is of use to anyone, personally ..*
Well, if I just wanted "show everything sorted by date" I could have done it in list view.
Grouped (arrangement) view shows the data in groups. What one might want the grouping to be and what the order to be inside the groups is not necessarily (if ever) the same.
E.g. if I want to look at files of a certain naming scheme that I created last week, I could set to arrange the finder items by date (so I get I nice "past week" group, today group, month group etc) and see the items inside sorted by name.
If I want the items in the groups sorted by date too -- I can just as easily.
If Finder could only use the same column to form groups that it uses to sort inside the group I couldn't do that.
This is the most flexible way -- and analogous to what all and any database systems offer, where group by column is not necessarily the same as the order by column.
My grievances include that it's only sometimes possible to enter in a custom path (e.g., /Users/foo/bar/baz) and that the home directory rarely shows up in the left side bar, making it frustrating to get at non-blessed files and directories in my home folder. Also, the default right-marching-list-view is nigh impossible to use.
No idea. I've never used CMD+SHIFT+G. Why should I need a keyboard shortcut to bring up a text box that every other decent file browser includes by default?
fman is a cross-platform application made with PyQt.
I doubt if it will achieve the native macOS experience someday. And I think the difference is really important.
fman author here. Congrats on the launch. Sublime Text is cross-platform and is great on macOS. I don't see why fman shouldn't be.
I would say people who truly care about 100% macOS may choose Marta, people who care about cross-platform and a Python-based plugin API will choose fman.
Well, the problem is that Sublime Text is the only GUI cross-platform application with the native behavior I know, so it's more like an exception. And it shows that making portable tools right is not that simple.
I don't think we are the direct competitors. fman is a completely another project with its own strong and weak points. I tried fman and didn't like it because of numerous reasons, but it's my own opinion.
The development of Marta started the long before I knew about fman, so it's not any kind of imitation. Actually, in the beginning, I also thought about making the cross-platform file manager, but I quickly realized that the approach with the existing GUI libraries just won't work (and still think so).
I tried the closed alpha of fman (and also the number of other file managers) because of curiosity. I naively hoped that someone has already done what I need. ;)
To be honest, the initial launch of Marta was an important lesson for me. I started with a closed alpha so I could fix the critical bugs until it will become open for everyone – not because I want everyone's emails to send some shitty spam. But lots of people disagreed with me, and I understand them.
I changed some of my plans. Marta will become open much earlier, maybe even the next week. Sorry for the inconvenience.
Well, I just read about powers of VK moderators on Habr and got more convinced that I need Little Snitch or something similar for my desktop apps for sure.
Just if it was not clear: my email is public on many services. I just think that if you require my email to get the installer, how much logging/tracking code will you run once you're on my machine?
Homebrew is not suited well for DMG package distribution (well, at least I don't know examples of such software).
But you can install Marta just as any another macOS GUI software.
Closed alpha allows me to fix the critical bugs until Marta will be available freely. It's not about a subscription to some shitty weekly newspaper. I already got the valuable feedback from alpha users.
But I completely understand you. I hope Marta will be available for everyone quite soon (maybe at the time of 0.2).
That will again require a Twitter handle or Email.
It's the same with me. If I am using a really early stage app and actually helping with testing it the last thing I would want to do is to pretty much sign up for it with my email unless I desperately need that app.
Should "minimalistic" be a goal for a file manager though? Total Commander is great because it's not minimalistic and allows the user to customise it in any way you want. I think that's what users who want more than just Finder or Explorer are looking for. It's the same for text editors, nobody would use a minimalistic one, or they'd just use Notepad.
I call it minimalistic just because the UI is not cluttered by numerous panels and menus. It's not about the functionality. I believe that the functionality/simplicity balance is possible, as I see it done well in Sublime Text.
By the way, Marta supports plugins so the functionality is not limited by what you have out of the box.
I'd recommend putting some more details on the homepage, or at least linking to the introductory blog post which has pertinent information like your plans about pricing (for everyone else, it will be paid). Maybe even list some of the other features like plugins would help sell it too.
Looks like a good start.
I would love to get a full replacement of TotalCommander for macOS. I've tried a few and I'm currently using Forklift 3.
There's still some features that I'm missing in Forklift so I'll keep an eye on this project.
yes mucommander, it could open websites too. it literally parsed html and showed you list of included resources in the panel. how cool is that? :-) which commander has that?
Path Finder is pretty good. I'm still not sure I exactly love it though I should maybe take the time to customize it one of these days. You end up back in Apple's Finder in program dialog boxes in any case.
Way back when, I sold a shareware file manager for DOS. I think the program was something like 32KB. :-) Times have changed.
Well, I was thinking about this. And I actually don't know how to interpret this sentence because there are lots of projects that are announced but don't have anything to show at all.
Marta has – but the difference is that it doesn't provide the direct link.
Well, I think it's fair for projects to submit links when announcing something but if it's under "Show HN" it actually has to be something that people can try. Putting the "trying" being a closed wall I don't think is very fair.
This product doesn't look to me to be compelling enough to switch away from Finder and ranger. I use Finder when I want to browse pictures or other rich media and ranger when I just want to browse source code and other text files from the command line using vim-like hotkeys.
I'm very interested in getting started with this! One question, is there a way to change the key binding for switching active panes? Right now it seems like the only option is to use Tab and is the only key binding that doesn't appear to be configurable.
It looks interesting from the docs but on an average day I would have closed the page without going to the docs section. Some sort of video or animation to boast why it will help me reclaim productivity is all I need to press download and start using it.
You're right: it's the first preview version, not the complete product yet. Please stay tuned :)
But if you have some specific problems with Marta, you can always contact me at mail@yanex[dot]org, or leave the TODO request here: https://quip.com/TOH6Abh8ruxi.
I really like XtraFinder[1] and pretty much can't do without it. I wish it worked w/o that very serious (potentially dangerous) workaround but sadly it doesn't and after OSX upgrade broke it it is not as stable it used to be.
Where does Marta fit in among file managers (esp very serious ones) and Finder plugins for OSX? Are other features (for e.g. FTP or so? Though it says minimal) are planned or already exist?
Just an FYI I wouldn't have realized the Mad Mimi subscription confirmation email was related until I tried another email address and saw the same message.
I think GUI tools like this should use every opportunity to gently introduce users to the conventions used in lower-level tools that they may eventually decide to use. For example, in the top of each pane in the screenshot there is a directory open with a path listed. Perhaps show it with typical path separators (/) so the user gets used to it.
By default, Marta shows file icons that identify directories pretty well. You are free to disable the icons and specify `directoryPrefix` and `directorySuffix` in conf.json.
But it would be an interesting idea to make a "set up wizard" that will suggest users disable the icons.
Thank you, I gave it a try and so far I like it better than Path Finder (which I've been using for last couple of years). Nimble wins for minimalistic UI.
Time prevents me. I still prefer the way Windows Explorer works with it's folder tree sidebar, and yet all equivalents on Linux cut it or have other major flaws to eliminate them from consideration.
One of my pet peeves with the Finder is that it still can't auto-layout the content to fit in the window - take a list view, open a folder .. and marvel at the fact that its the 21st century, but yet this list view still isn't capable of rendering itself for minimal-fit constraints. (I have to do it manually.) This is very frustrating, and I'd love to know of a solution ..