Explorer>Open with both sides selected

[penguin22]

Sometimes I've had the need to open two folder sides in Explorer for various reasons. In BC2 you could have both sides highlighted and in the context menu when right clicking, there was the Open With>Explorer sub-menu. In BC3 there is no sub-menu item Open With>Explorer.


This section was based on a misquote that the Explorer sub-menu item was missing in BC3, it was actually the Open With sub-menu:
Additional, this also applies to Explorer>Properties and other options such as other custom context menu items. Is it possible to restore the Explorer sub-menu for this purpose or if there is a valid reason for not having it, could a custom context menu item for Open in Explorer be added when a folder is selected on both sides?

[Erik]

Actually, the [B]Explorer[B] behavior is the same as BC2. The reason your probably not seeing it is that your base folders are on different drives (BC2 doesn't show it in this case either).

[penguin22]

Erik, you are absolutely correct and as I didn't actually have BC2 installed with my latest rebuild using Vista SP1, I mentioned the wrong sub-menu item.

In BC2, there is an Open With>Explorer option that can be used to open two folders, even if they are on different drives. This is not, as far as I can see, available in BC3.

[Erik]

You must have defined this "Open With" item for BC2. To define it in Cirrus, select Tools -> Options and switch to the "Open With" page.

[Zoë]

You're right, we removed "Open With Associated App"/"Explore" from the Open With menu in favor of using the Explorer menu all the time. To re-add it:

1) Go to Tools->Options and open the "Open With" panel.
2) Click "New..."
3) Enter "Explore" for the "Description" and "explorer %f" as the "Command line".
4) Click the "Advanced" button, and check "Accepts folders" and "Multiple Instances". Uncheck "Accepts files".

[penguin22]

Actually, the Open with>Explore was there already with a clean install of BC2. I didn't have to define anything and the Open With sub-menu doesn't even appear in BC3 with two folders selected.

[penguin22]

In responce to Craig's informative post and considerring the information that Erik provided in his first post:
Actually, the [b]Explorer[b] behavior is the same as BC2. The reason your probably not seeing it is that your base folders are on different drives (BC2 doesn't show it in this case either).

Would it make sense to either re-add the functionality as a default or allow the Explorer menu to appear in all instances (not sure if that's possible as two folders appear and if custom Explorer options are initiated at the same time, undesirable effects could occur)

Just out of curiosity, why was it decided to remove the Open With>Explorer? If it was just to have it all under Explorer, can BC3 detect if two folders are selected and if that is the case, it's the only time the Open With>Explorer appears. This would keep it in Explorer for all single folder selections and have the ability for multi-folder selections as well.

[Lutz]

More powerful settings are:

You're right, we removed "Open With Associated App"/"Explore" from the Open With menu in favor of using the Explorer menu all the time. To re-add it:

1) Go to Tools->Options and open the "Open With" panel.
2) Click "New..."
3) Enter "Explore" for the "Description" and "explorer /n,/e,,/select,%f" as the "Command line".
4) Click the "Advanced" button, and check "Accepts folders" and "Multiple Instances". Check "Accepts files".

This works on any number of files and folders selected in BC and opens one explorer for each with the file or folder selected in explorer.

This also works to open multiple DOS-shells:

[Michael Bulgrien]

More powerful settings are:
Enter "Explorer" for the "Description" and "explorer /n,/e,,/select,%f" as the "Command line".

Thanks Lutz... the added /select, %f is a really cool touch!

[Zoë]

Would it make sense to [...] allow the Explorer menu to appear in all instances?

I may be wrong, but I don't think it's possible. We have to give the shell paths relative to a single folder that contains the entire selection, so the highest we can go is a single drive root. If both base folders are on the same root then it will work correctly, though even having relative paths that aren't just the filenames can break some shell extensions.

Just out of curiosity, why was it decided to remove the Open With>Explorer?

The actual item removed was Open With->Associated Application; it just says "Explorer" if folders are selected. It was removed because we considered it redundant with the Explorer menu. The top-level "Properties" item was removed for the exact same reason.

The "Open With" menu also used to include the different viewer types, which are currently in the "Compare In New View Using" submenu, so if we added an Explorer item to it again it would be the only item available. I think it's easy enough to add it for those users that want it that it's not worth changing the current behavior, but we could be convinced otherwise, and we could at least add it as an example in the "Open With" documentation.

[Michael Bulgrien]

The actual item removed was Open With->Associated Application; it just says "Explorer" if folders are selected. It was removed because we considered it redundant with the Explorer menu.

I agree. There is no loss of functionality here. In BC2 one could do Open With \ Explore. In the same situations in BC3, one can do Explorer \ Open.

Where the Explorer menu is missing in BC3 (base folders on different drives) the Open With \ Explore menu was also missing in BC2.

I would not want the default Open With \ Explore that came with BC2. The configuration posted by Lutz is much more useful.

Suggestion, perhaps Lutz's configuration could be documented into the Help file as an example?