Advanced Explorer - FAQ

Questions about the file manager made with Node and JavaScript.

What are the JavaScript libraries and modules used by AE?

I thank the authors of the following libraries, in alphabetical order:

• ACE. By Cloud9. Code and text editor. BSD license.
• ADM-ZIP. By Another D-Mention. Node module for reading and extracting archives. We do not use it for creation for now. MIT license.

By myself:

• Chooser. By scriptol / Denis Sureau. Client file management code. LGPL.
• Explorer. By scriptol / Denis Sureau. Node.js module file management. LGPL.

The icons are special HTML codes.

Why not using a WYSIWYG editor?

In the context of use that would not be really relevant. I actually tried a dozen different editors, WYSIWYG or not, including the most popular, as Tiny MCE or CKEditor (in 2012). These editors go well with the files they create themselves but do not show anything good when a file created by another program is loaded. For reading files on the fly in directories, they are not suitable. In addition they tend to edit files they load, and add tags, and it's still a drawback.
Finally, the ACE editor is clearly one of the best choice due to the extent of its capabilities, and it can replace both a notes editor like NotePad and a source code editor. And you can still view the page in WYSIWYG since AE works in the browser!

How do I create a directory?

There is no icon for this because the name is entered directly in the path field at the top of the file list. The program just requests confirmation.

How to add a tool in the box?

To add an extension, just create a new directory inside BoxL or BoxR. For example, Hello. This directory should contain an HTML file named hello.html and a png image named hello.png.
The hello.html file must include the xdata.js script located at the root of Advanced Explorer. In this file, the xdata object has the source and target properties, each with a path property (the directory path to be treated) and list (the list of selected files). This list may be empty.
What you do with that data is up to your imagination. Some examples ...

Hello

This is a demonstration program. When it starts, the interface sends a message to the script hello.js. The script uses a local TCP connection (with the Node Net API) for transmitting a response to the server, which in turn sends this response to the interface through WebSocket.

Search

Allows to find a string in a file, a list of file, a directory or a tree of dirs.