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Classic Explorer is a plugin for Windows Explorer that:

New copy UI (Windows 7 only)

In Vista when you copy files and there is a conflict you are presented with this:

Before

What’s wrong with it?

Well, for starters it is half a screen full of text that you have to read. Also it is not immediately clear what parts of it are clickable. You have to move the mouse around to discover the UI like in a Lucas Arts adventure game. And finally the keyboard usability is awful. To tell it “yes, I know what I’m doing, I want to overwrite all files” you have to press Alt+D, up, up, up, Space! It is harder than performing the Akuma Kara Demon move in Street Fighter 3. There is a time and a place for that stuff and copying files is not it.

The Classic Explorer plugin brings back the simpler dialog box from Windows XP:

After

It is immediately clear what is clickable (clue – the buttons at the bottom), there is easy keyboard navigation (press Y for “Yes”, A to copy all files) and you can still see which file is newer and which is larger. And of course just like in Windows XP, holding down Shift while clicking on the No button means "No to All" (or just press Shift+N).

If you click on More… you will get the original dialog from Windows. From there you will see all the details and you’ll get an extra option to “Copy, but keep both files”.

Important Note: Only the UI is replaced. The underlying system that does the actual copying is not affected.


Alt+Enter in the folder panel

Alt+Enter is universal shortcut across Windows to bring up the properties of the selection. But newer versions of Windows it doesn’t work in the left panel that shows the folders. It works fine on the right where the files are. This is broken compared to Windows XP where Alt+Enter works in both places.

To solve the problem, the Classic Explorer plugin detects when you press Alt+Enter and shows the properties for the currently selected folder.


Toolbar for Windows Explorer

Windows Explorer in Vista doesn’t have a toolbar like the one in Windows XP. If you want to go to the parent folder you have to use the breadcrumbs bar. If you want to copy or delete a file with the mouse you have to right-click and look for the Delete command. The right-click menu gets bigger and bigger the more shell extensions you have installed, and finding the right command can take a while.

To solve the problem, the Classic Explorer plugin adds a new toolbar:

 Explorer Toolbar

The available button are: Go Up, Cut, Copy, Paste, Delete, Properties, Email, Settings. More buttons can be added from the Settings dialog.

Hints:
    - Hold the Control key when clicking the Up button to open the parent folder in a new Explorer window.
    - Hold the Shift key when clicking the Delete button to permanently delete a file

The new toolbar doesn’t show up in Explorer automatically after installation. You have to do a few things before you can use it:
  1. Open a new Windows Explorer window (Win key+E)
  2. Turn on the menu in Explorer – Go to Tools (Alt+T), Folder Options, the View tab, and make sure “Always show menus” is checked.
  3. Right click on the menu bar and select “Classic Explorer Bar” to show the toolbar.
  4. If that option is not available (you only see “Lock the Toolbars”) you may have to enable the plugin from Internet Explorer. Run IE, right click on its toolbar and select “Classic Explorer Bar”. It will ask you if you want to enable this add-on. Select “Enable”, then repeat steps 1 through 3 again.
  5. If even then you don't see the toolbar, maybe the browser extensions are disabled on your system. This is usually the default for servers. Open the "Internet Options", go to the "Advanced" tab, and check the option "Enable third-party browser extensions".

Status bar

Classic Explorer restores the original Explorer status bar that shows the free disk space and the size of the selected files:

File size in status bar

Unlike the built-in status bar, the selection size is shown even if more than 100 files are selected. When no files are selected the total size of all files in the folder is shown.

Windows 7 note: Classic Explorer enhances the default status bar instead of replacing it. To see it, you have to turn it on first from the View menu. The status bar is different from the blue Details Pane you see at the bottom of Explorer. You can turn off the Details Pane from the Organize menu to save space. Also there is a bug in the Windows 7 Explorer that sometimes doesn't show any text in the status bar. Press F5 to refresh the view and get the status text.

Windows 8 note: Classic Explorer adds its own status bar. You should hide the default status bar to save space. Select the View tab in the ribbon, then click on Options. Select the View tab in the options. Locate the checkbox "Show status bar" and uncheck it.

Settings

You can access the settings of Classic Explorer from the toolbar or from the start menu:


You can choose from seeing only the basic settings, or all available settings. Hover over each setting to see a description of what it's for. Type in the search box to find a setting by name.
Every setting has a default value. The default value can be constant, or it may depend on the current system settings. Once you edit a setting it becomes "modified" and is shown in bold. To revert to the default value, right-click on the setting.

You can save the settings to an XML file, and later load them back. Press the Backup button to access these functions. From there you can also reset all settings to their default value.

Press OK to store your settings. Most of the settings will be applied the next time you open a new Explorer window. Small number of settings will require a log off before you can see the change.

Note: All Settings windows are resizable. Resize them and place them where you want them to be. They will remember the new position.

Here's one example of what can be customized:
Title bar tweaks

Click on the Toolbar Buttons tab to customize the toolbar:


The column on the left shows the current buttons in the toolbar, and the column on the right lists the buttons you can add to the toolbar. You can drag and drop buttons from the right column to the left. You can rearrange the buttons by dragging them up and down. If you drop one button inside another you will create a sub-menu.
Hover over each button to see a short description of what it does. Right-click on each button to access more functions (like Delete, Rename, etc). From the right-click menu you can also reset the toolbar to the original state.
Each item in the left column must have a unique name. This is the identifier of the item and can only contain English letters, digits and underscore. Some items (like SEPARATOR) cannot be renamed.

Important Note: Not all available commands have default icons or text. That's because Windows doesn't have icons for things like Undo, Select All, etc. If you want to use such buttons in your toolbar you will have to provide your own icon. See below how to do it.

After you place a button in the toolbar, you can edit it's attributes. Double-click on the button to edit:
Edit toolbar button
Here you can select a command for the button, its text and icon. Press the Restore Defaults button to get the default text and icon for the chosen command.
The command can be:
The link can be a path to a file or a folder. If it is a file, that file will be executed. If it is a folder, that folder will be opened as a sub-menu (only for top-level buttons).

The icon can be:
If the label or the tip attribute start with $ (dollar sign), then the system will treat it as a name of a string in the ExplorerL10N.ini file. The actual text will depend on the current language setting. This is useful when creating a toolbar that can be used by multiple languages.

Note to developers: Buttons for custom commands can be checked or disabled. The toolbar checks the registry key HKCU\Software\IvoSoft\ClassicExplorer for a DWORD value with the name of the button (the name used in left column). 0 means normal, 1 is disabled and 2 is checked. The toolbar reads the registry keys on startup. To force the buttons to update their state after that you need to find all Explorer windows, locate the child window with class ClassicShell.CBandWindow, and post a message WM_CLEAR. This is useful if you are developing a custom exe to be used by the toolbar.

Examples for Custom Commands

0) Use quotes when necessary

In order to support paths that contain spaces, you should use quotes around the path parameters. The quotes are not always required, like in examples 1 and 2 below. Make sure you test your commands with paths containing spaces to avoid surprises.

1) Print the current folder

Use this command: cmd.exe /k echo %1. %1 will be replaced by the path of the current folder.

2) Open the selected file in Notepad

Use this command: %SystemRoot%\notepad.exe %2. %2 will be replaced by the full name of the selected file. It doesn't need to be in quotes because Notepad uses the whole command line as a file name.

3) Copy selected files to the parent folder

Create a batch file called C:\CopyParent.bat:
set list=%1
set list=%list:"=%
for /F "delims=" %%i in (%list%) do copy /Y "%%i" ..
del %1
Use this command: C:\CopyParent.bat "%3". %3 will be replaced by a text file containing the full names of all selected files. The batch file will read each line of that text file, and copy each of the selected files to the parent folder. At the end the batch file deletes the initial temp file. The first two set commands remove the quotes from the %1 parameter.

4) Select all text files

Create a batch file called C:\SelectText.bat:
echo select > %1
dir *.txt /b >> %1

Use this command: C:\SelectText.bat "%5". %5 will be replaced by a blank text file, where the command must output the word "select" and a list of files it wants to select. The "dir *.txt /b" command provides that list.


Administrative Settings

The settings are per user and are stored in the registry. By default every user can edit all of their settings. An administrator can lock specific settings, so no user can edit them:

In this example the setting "Show Up button" is locked to always be "Before Back/Forward" and can't be changed by any user. This is achieved by adding the setting to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\IvoSoft\ClassicExplorer registry key. Create a string value called "ShowUpButton" and set it to "BeforeBack".

In some cases you may not want to lock the value for all users, but simply modify the initial value of the setting. In such case add "_Default" to the name of the value. For example if you want the Up button to be before Back by default but still allow the users to change it if they wish, create a string value named "ShowUpButton_Default" and set it to "BeforeBack".

The easiest way to know the registry name of a setting and its value is to modify it, and then look it up in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\IvoSoft\ClassicExplorer\Settings.
Sometimes you may want to lock a setting to its default value, but you don't know what the default value is. Then create a DWORD value and set it to 0xDEFA.

There is also a global setting EnableSettings. Set it to 0 in the registry to prevent the users from even opening the Settings dialog:
Disable all settings

You can enable or disable Classic Explorer for individual processes using the 2 registry settings "ProcessWhiteList" and "ProcessBlackList". ProcessWhiteList is a list of processes for which Classic Explorer will load. Use only the file name of the process (like "notepad.exe"), separate multiple names with a comma or a semicolon. ProcessBlackList is a list of processes for which Classic Explorer will not load. You should only use one of the two lists. If both lists are specified, the black list will be ignored. The lists are only used when you enable the features that are supported for processes other than Explorer. At the moment these features are: the shared overlay icon and the replacements for the copy dialogs.

Editing the settings through group policies is also supported. Extract the file PolicyDefinitions.zip found in the installation folder and read the document PolicyDefinitions.rtf for more details.


Dependencies on Windows settings

Some Classic Explorer settings require specific Windows settings to be enabled:

Localization

The user interface (except the Settings dialog box) is localized in 35 languages.
The Settings dialog box is translated in a smaller number of languages. The default installation contains only English. More languages can be downloaded from the translations page. Make sure you download the translation package for the exact version of Classic Shell.