Folders Can Suck

Time for more straight talk. Folders are designed for two purposes; organizing your files and HIDING your files from you. You get a complex directory structure 20 folders deep - and yeah, you're organized. But you're also separating your common files to the nTH degree. Chances are likely you can't find what you want. Sure, you know its on the C drive. You might even know its in the MUSIC folder. But after that ... Is that Barry Manilow song under the B folder for BARRY, or is it under the M folder for MANILOW? Or is that song you want still in your UNSORTED folder? Or NEW folder? Oh sure, you can SEARCH. That's one solution.

Or, you can use Flat View to collapse all those subfolders into your current lister - group by folder for a total visual view. Or, collapse them all as there were no folder structure at all.

Make sense? Umm .. kinda, huh? You need to see it. Let's show you what I mean.

Let's say that your MP3 folder is WELL organized. You have a folder hierarchy that goes like this: Letter, Group, Album, then the files. Something like this:

Now this is VERY simple - we have a MUSIC folder, with A inside, with A-Teens under it, with Pop Til You Drop under that - and inside that folder are the music files. Inside other folders are music files not so well organized - but you really want an overview look at your files - maybe find where you put one - maybe, you just want to enqueue a nice diversity of specific songs into WinAmp. The possible reasons for Flat View are endless; we won't debate the NEED at this time - we have a small scenario, so let's see how it works. First, in regular lister view:

If we want to see ALL our MP3s, we have a LOT of drilling to do. Click .. click ... click ... click ... click ... OR ... let's shift to Flat View's GROUP BY FOLDERS mode:

As you can see, we can now see ALL files in the MUSIC folder, regardless if they are in a folder, sub-folder, sub-sub-folder, etc. The path is shown with indenting (so you can identify where they are). Now what's great is - this isn't just a 'view'. You can select, copy, move, etc. from this view. As if it were just one big folder. When you copy/move, you can either PRESERVE the file structure where the file is, or choose to just flatten the files copied to the destination folder. Oh yeah ... that's cool.

You can also do some other Flat Views. The other one I want to show you is MIXED with no folders. This is like having NO FOLDER STRUCTURE AT ALL. The files are just .. there.

Ain't this groovy? You can see all your files, just like you like (including sorted by whatever you want) and all the lister stuff you love works natively (see the infoitp showing the MP3 info?) The Location field shows you where the file REALLY is. Your MP3 list ... your pictures ... your files ... one nice, neat place. You can only begin to imagine what useful stuff you can do with these views.

This engine allows you to do some other great stuff. Like File Collections. Dopus is renowned for its powerful searching tool (see the Dopus v6 review). Now, you can do something with the results of your search - turn them into a File Collection!

The File Collection
Almost every program that displays information is using this new technique to help sort through the MASSES of information that people have. If you use THE BAT as an email client, they have VIRTUAL FOLDERS that can contain 'links' to mail in other folders. It just makes it easier to see only the NEW mail from all your inboxes if its in a single, virtual folder. If you use Opera's M2 client, they call them VIEWS. If you want to see mail from just Shane R. Monroe, you can create a VIEW that will show mail from me in a single list REGARDLESS of what folder the mail resides in. You get the idea.

The File Collection is a way of doing the same thing with your files. You create a new collection, then just copy things into them. The File Collection acts like ANY OTHER FOLDER - so searching, Flat Viewing, selecting, etc. all work just the same as if all the files were in a REAL folder. You choose what goes in it. And here is the best part - it works across drives and even your network. That's right - if you want to group ALL your MP3s from around your LAN into a SINGLE FOLDER, you can with a File Collection. Browse to each location, add the MP3s to your collection - poof, you're done. Now, you have access to all the files from a single folder. Some might be on your C drive. Some on your E drive. Some on your WIFE'S C drive - some from your file server's F drive. But you get them all in one place.

In the image below, you see I've gathered files from ALL over my LAN and created a file collection called MISC FROM LAN. You can see all the cool lister stuff works (like the infotip thumbnail). You can also see the location, type, and other information as you would expect. Its like they are REALLY on your system - but they aren't. You can delete from this screen, or right click and REMOVE FROM COLLECTION. You can delete the collection itself from the folder tree at any time without deleting the files inside.

In the words of Gladiator "ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED!???". I know I am. There are 101 uses for file collections. Especially if you're on a LAN.

You can also send the results from a FIND operation to a File Collection. Don't tell me that doesn't have your brain spinning with possibilities ...

That's about enough on the whole Flat View/Collection thing. You get the idea. Tons of uses - very cutting edge stuff - and no, you can't do that in Windows Explorer. :)