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Introduction

The NewFileBrowser is an improved version of the FileBrowser tool. In addition to a tree-oriented presentation of the browser directory, it offers bookmarks, improved history and multiple document editing (notbook) among other features.

A new fileBrowser can be either started by the launcher
or by evaluating the smalltalk expression

    FileBrowserV2 open
in a workspace or from within your program.

The above starts the browser in the last visited directory. To start a browser on some other directory, evaluate:

    FileBrowserV2 openOn:'someDirectory'

Typically, after startup, it looks like:

[fig: filebrowserV2 hardcopy]

It consists of 3 subviews pluse various menu panels and pathFields; these are:

  1. path field
    shows the name of the current directory; also allows changing the directory

  2. filter field
    allows a fileName match pattern to be entered

  3. directory tree
    displays the directory hierarchy

  4. directory contents
    shows the selected directory's contents

  5. contents view
    displays the selected file's contents

To see the contents of a file, simply double-click on the corresponding name entry in the directory contents list. If the selected item is a text file, its contents is shown in the contents-view.
The contents view knows how to present certain files; for example, if you select a bitmap file, the bitmap image is shown.

The directory contents list will only show files matching the pattern in the pattern field (if a pattern was entered).

All of the above mentioned subviews provide a popup menu, which is activated by the middle mouse button (or the right button, if you use a 2-button mouse).

By the way:
pressing an alphabetic key in the fileList will make it scroll to the next entry whose name starts with that character. If you press "SHIFT" at the same time, it will find the previous entry starting with that character.
Typing "RETURN" executes the double click function on the selected entry.
Also notice that "CURSOR_UP", "CURSOR_DOWN" "HOME" and "END" keys too can be used to change the selection, while "PAGE_UP" and "PAGE_DOWN" scroll the list.
This is true for all views which show a list to select entries from.

Doc $Revision: 1.2 $ $Date: 2003/03/31 09:42:00 $