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Directory editorsEdit

A term that predates the usage of file manager is directory editor. The first directory editor, DIRED, was invented circa 1974 at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab by Stan Kugell[1][2]


File-list file managerEdit


One such file manager is flist, which was first used in 1981 on the Conversational Monitor System.[5][6] This is a variant of fulist, which originated before late 1978, according to comments by its author, Theo Alkema.[7]

The flist program provided a list of files in the user's minidisk,[8] and allowed sorting by any file attribute. The file attributes could be passed to scripts or function-key definitions, making it simple to use flist as part of CMS EXEC, EXEC 2 or XEDIT scripts.

This program ran only on IBM VM/SP CMS, but was the inspiration for other programs, including filelist[9][10][11] (a script run via the Xedit editor), and programs running on other operating systems, including a program also called flist, which ran on OpenVMS,[12] and fulist (from the name of the corresponding internal IBM program),[13] which runs on Unix.[14]

Orthodox file managersEdit

Midnight Commander, an orthodox file manager with a text-based user interface

Orthodox file managers (OFM) or command-based file managers are text-menu based file managers, that commonly have three windows (two panels and one command line window). Orthodox file managers are one of the longest running families of file managers, preceding Graphical User Interface-based types. Developers create applications that duplicate and extend the manager that was introduced by PathMinder and John Socha's famous Norton Commander for DOS.[citation needed] The concept is more than thirty years old—PathMinder was released in 1984, and Norton Commander version 1.0 was released in 1986. Despite the age of this concept, file managers based on Norton Commander are actively developed, and dozens of implementations exist for DOS, Unix, and Microsoft Windows. Nikolai Bezroukov publishes his own set of criteria for an OFM standard (version 1.2 dated June 1997).[15]



The following features describe the class of orthodox file managers.

  • They provide the user with extensive keyboard shortcuts.
  • Users can extend the functionality of the manager via a so-called User menu or Start menu and extensions menu.

Other common features include:

  • They often have the word commander in the name, after Norton Commander.
  • Tabbed interface (usually GUI file managers)

Tabbed panelsEdit



Orthodox file managers[16] are among the most portable file managers. Examples are available on almost any platform, with both command-line and graphical interfaces. This is unusual among command line managers in that something purporting to be a standard for the interface is published. They are also actively supported by developers. This makes it possible to do the same work on different platforms without much relearning of the interface.

Dual-pane managersEdit

Sometimes they are called dual-pane managers, a term that is typically used for programs such as the Windows File Explorer (see below). But they have three panes including a command line pane below (or hidden behind) two symmetric panes. Furthermore, most of these programs allow using just one of the two larger panes with the second hidden. Some also add an item to the Context Menu in Windows to "Open two Explorers, side by side".

Notable ones include:

Navigational file managerEdit

A navigational file manager is a newer type of file manager. Since the advent of GUIs, it has become the dominant type of file manager for desktop computers.[citation needed]

Typically, it has two panes, with the filesystem tree in the left pane and the contents of the current directory in the right pane. For macOS, the miller columns view in Finder (originating in NeXTStep) is a variation on the navigational file manager theme.[dubious ]



  • The window displays the location currently being viewed.
  • Icons represent files, programs, and directories.






Notable examples of navigational file managers include:

Spatial file managerEdit

The Nautilus file manager had a spatial mode, which was removed with the arrival of GNOME (and with it Nautilus) version 3.x. Each of these windows displays an open directory.


Some ideas behind the concept of a spatial file manager are:

  1. A single window represents each opened directory



Dysfunctional spatial file managers:

  • Apple's Finder in macOS was designed with a similar integration of spatial and navigational modes, meaning that the spatial mode did not actually work.[19]

3D file managersEdit

File System Visualizer, one example of a 3D file manager
In Cubix, files sharing the same attributes are represented by cubes in a 3D environment.


Examples of three-dimensional file managers include:

  • File System Visualizer, or fsv, an open-source clone of fsn for modern Unix-like systems.
  • tdfsb,[20] an open-source 3D file browser, where one enters directories by flying into them (using WASD). Runs on Linux, FreeBSD and BeOS.
  • Real Desktop,[21] a desktop replacement with similarities to BumpTop.
  • Cubix 3D Filer [22] is a Windows file manager which organizes files according to different attributes.
  • GopherVR, a 3D visualisation of networked Gopher resources.

Web-based file managersEdit





An example is net2ftp, a PHP- and JavaScript-based FTP client.

See alsoEdit


External linksEdit