*liveVoyager 12.04 User Guide - File Manager

File Manager

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The file manager is a tool with the goal to organize files within the operating system, showing them with appropriate tools, provide infos about them, and offer preview of selected files. Furthermore allows moving, copying and/or deleting files. The file manager is the most important application for all users.
Let we show you the Xfce file manager features. Its name is Thunar.

Thunar is a modern file manager for Xfce Desktop Environment. Thunar was designed to be fast, and easy to use. Its user interface is lean and clean, with no confused options. Thunar has a fast start, and directories are shown quickly.
Among basic file management, Thunar includes additional features, such as the so-called Bulk Renamer that allows users easy multiple files renaming, using a variety of criteria. Probably the most interesting re-namer is the Audio Tags re-namer, that generate new file name accordingly on tags present in the audio file.
Using the Thunar Extensions Framework is easy, to extend the Thunar functionalities, in order to integrate complex applications within the file manager.

In the Thunar window there are five main areas:

Thunar window

  1. Menu bar - Where you can find functions and solutions useful to viewing and managing files. There are tools to obtain infos, and to set-up the file manager.
  2. Shortcuts area - Placed on the left side of the window, where are shown directories icons. You can view them as icons or as tree. Clicking once on each icon, you can view its contents in the contents area.
  3. Search field - Where you can type file or directory name, in order to find them
  4. Contents area - In this area will be shown files inside a directory. In this area can be shown files preview, especially for multimedia files.
  5. Status bar - Where are shown infos about a specific file, folder o directory

Using Thunar
Thunar is a highly customizable file manager, using its setting-up tools, that you can find in the Edit Menu.
One of the first tweak is changing viewing mode in the shortcuts area, in order to show a tree view of directories instead of the single directory view, as shown in the above picture. In this manner it's enough a single click on a directory to view its contents.
To do that, follow these steps:

  1. Click on "View" menu
  2. Click on "Side Panel"
  3. In the menu select the "Tree" item

Thunar allows you to perform searches inside directories as follow:

  1. In the Contents area, right click on a directory
  2. In the menu click on "Search for files"
  3. In the next window enter the file name, then click on OK
  4. At the end a new window show searching results.

You can perform the search in the whole file system, playing with the file system directories.

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