Powerful Alternative File Manager for Windows: Nomad.NET

Nomad.NET is a powerful alternative file manager for Windows, complete with breadcrumbs, thumbnails, integration with explorer plugins and support for multiple tabs.

Here is a list of all the main features:

• Full Unicode support.^[screenshot]
• Tabbed interface. But in contrast to almost every other file manager tabs are not panel based.
• Powerful bookmarks system. You can bookmark you favorite folders, ftp sites or even searches (yes, you can create virtual search folders)


• One of the most powerful search engines on market (if I can say market, project is freeware). You can create very complex search rules, with ability to search in different encoding (complete encodings auto detect), use IFilter filters, apply custom text search rules (including regular expressions), search in hex, duplicates search and so on... For novices there is a simplified search that is not so scary at first sight.^[screenshot]
• Powerful filtering system, based on the same core as search. You can use dedicated advanced filter dialog, or use simple toolstrip for quick filtering.^[screenshot]
• Much simpler, elegant and polished UI (program must look nice, right?)^[screenshot]
• Customizable visual themes^[screenshot] and icon packs. And you can even create your own themes and icon packs.
• The most powerful toolbar you can even find in file manager.^[screenshot]
• Improved main form layout. You can use single panel or dual panel mode (horizontal or vertical). Each panel can have its own tree view that can be hidden or displayed horizontally or vertically. And you can even store your customized layouts for future use.
• Ability to customize selected folders view and options (filter, sort, etc). This is unique feature and you cannot find it in other managers.^[screenshot]
• Program is highly customizable via Options dialog^[screenshot], including simple UI scaling according to your current system DPI settings (or manually).
• Breadcrumb folder toolstrip on every panel is much more powerful than simple folder name.^[screenshot]
• Full internal support for many archive types (using 7-Zip libraries). Program can also handle WCX Total Commander plug-in, even in more powerful way than Total Commander did. You can view, create and edit archives.
• FTP folders support (with limitations yet, for example, only one http proxy allowed with no UI to configure).
• Many things were done more correctly - drag'n'drop from explorer, clipboard handling, shell file menus and so on.
• Support for shell shortcuts, url shortcuts (ftp only) and even shell folder shortcuts (rarely supported in other file managers).
• And last, Nomad is the first and only file manager written on .net. This is not advantage, because in addition to strong sides, it has some drawback. Just a fact.
• And many, many more...

Using Nomad.NET requires very little explanation—just download, extract, launch the executable, and start browsing through your file system. Where Nomad really shines is the level of customization you can do—you can tweak almost any of the UI elements, create bookmarks to common folders, open multiple tabs, or even add in your own custom tools to the menu. Unlike some of the other alternative file managers, when you right-click on a file or folder you'll actually see the system context menu, complete with any extra menu items—like Dropbox, for instance.

[via addictive tips]