Let's talk about the Listers ...

In short, listers are windows with lists of files in them. The lists can be simple, detailed, or thumbnail collections of the files you wish to look at. In the view below, we see a detailed view of my C: drive in Directory Opus with a SINGLE lister.

You aren't limited to a single lister - you can do a dual view (which makes one lister the SOURCE and one lister the DESTINATION). This allows complex copying, moving, and other file options to happen BETWEEN the two listers. In the image below, we are in DUAL HORIZONTAL style, with two listers - the top in a details mode, and the bottom in IMAGES or thumbnail mode.

As you can see, there are immediate changes to the Listers from Directory Opus v6. We'll talk more about that in a minute.

There are several default 'styles' to flip through different layouts of listers - such as including a film strip, preview window, and more (we'll talk about those later). Tabs along the top allow easy access to them - as well as a 'custom' one that will keep your last configured lister for you.

The major difference with listers in V8 is CONTENT MODE. This shifts the lister into a more favorable view for particular types of files. There are modes for most filetype groups - Music, Movies, Images, and Documents. This means that if you are browsing a folder filled with images, the lister kicks into a thumbnail view. If you're looking at music files, it kicks into a view featuring details about the music files. Below, you can see music and movies shown in a dual lister - showing extra information about the files - sometimes, incredibly useful information like video codecs used.

The real power comes to surface when viewing image files in the lister - especially those shot with a digital camera. In Content Image mode, you get so much data about that picture, its almost not funny. Below, you get not only a thumbnail, but all the camera metadata - it even tells you if the flash fired or not. NICE!

These cool modes automatically turn on each time you shift to a folder with a greater proportion of those files to others. So if you went into a folder with 10 pictures and an MP3 file - it would flip into IMAGES mode. This works for all the content types. OF COURSE, as with everything else in Dopus, this is totally configurable - and easy to turn off temporarily or permanently.

If you deal with a lot of media, the listers are now even more powerful than before.

I know what you're going to say ... "But Shane - Windows Explorer shows a lot of that information." Sure, it shows SOME metadata - but not like Dopus does (check it out). And, these features are only in Windows XP. If you're a Windows 2000 or even Win9x user - you're missing out on a lot.

Besides, Dopus didn't rest on the laurels of what's included in Windows Explorer - they added even more goodies (as we'll see in a minute). Plus, its not JUST the content of the listers that make listers great - its how they interact with each other during common file operations - and, Windows Explorer doesn't have Flat View. Once you learn to use Flat View - you will realize you can never return to Windows Explorer.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Let's talk about how Dopus utilizes the dual lister view to enhance your file operations.