Tabbed Explorer Add-on for Windows Vista (and an Up Button too!)
I’ve been hoping for a Tabbed explorer add-on to Windows Vista ever since I made the switch, but what most of you have been talking about is the lack of an Up button like XP used to have. Reader Shawn wrote in with a solution for both of our problems: QTTabBar, an add-on for Explorer that gives you a ton of functionality for either Vista or XP.
Installing and setting this application up isn’t the simplest thing in the world, so I’ll take you through it. Once you download the file, you’ll want to unzip it somewhere safe, since there’s no installer.
Installation
Right-click on the QTTabBar.exe file and choose Run as administrator.
You’ll be presented with the only installation screen, which only registers the components, but doesn’t move the files anywhere. Click Next and then continue.
Now you’ll have to either log off your computer and back on, or you can kill explorer.exe with Task Manager and then restart it with File \ New Task.
I’ll assume you are back from restarting explorer. The first thing you’ll notice is… nothing. That’s because the toolbar hasn’t been turned on yet. Either hold down the Alt key, or choose Menu from the Organize \ Layout menu in order to turn on the File menu.
Now you’ll want to go to View \ Toolbars \ QT TabBar and select it. You can select both of the toolbars at this point, since one is for the tabs, and the other is for the buttons.
Tweaking the Configuration
The default layout and button choices aren’t very pleasant, so right-click on top of the buttons and choose the Customize option.
Now you can choose your button options. Here’s where you’ll find that Up button you’ve been hankering for.
If you want to change the defaults for the tabs, you can right-click on the tab area and choose Options.
There are loads of options, far too many to get into for this article… you can change pretty much anything that you’d like.
Tabbed UI Goodness
Now check out my nicely configured explorer, tabs and all. I chose to lock the toolbars when I was done, and put the buttons on the left side because that way I can expand to more tabs without the UI cramming them in there.
Usage Tips
- You can move the toolbar positions by dragging them from one side to the other.
- Once you’ve moved the toolbars, you can right-click on them and choose to Lock the Toolbars so they won’t move around.
- There are a full set of keyboard shortcuts, which mimic many of the Firefox shortcuts.
- The New Tab functionality is in the Clone Tab button. Obviously you can’t create a new blank tab, which is why it’s called Clone Tab.
- Middle-clicking on a folder will open it in a new tab.
- Middle-clicking on a tab will close it.
- You can copy files between tabs by just dragging them to another tab.
- You can turn off the explorer File menu in the options.
- You can turn off the hovering buttons over folders in the Misc tab of the Options.
- The tabs support skins, so you can change the look of them if you want.
- Read the help file!
Get QT Tab Bar from quizo.at.infoseek.co.jp
The author has a paypal button – if you really like this software, you should consider donating. He’s got a development version up with more features, including plugin support. We’ll be watching this one closely.
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Wow! Just installed. It looks really nice!
I couldn’t get your link to work, but this one did: http://members.at.infoseek.co......html#qttab
That’s odd… either one works for me. Thanks, though!
IK already knew about this… I read about it on raymondcc blog. Only thing was that it made my explorer take FOREVER to load. about 10 secs
I’ve been using it for a while, it’s always worked perfectly for me.
Hi
Thanks for the tips. Cool!. However one thing is anoying me after installation of this QTTabBar
Every time now when I open a folder or change the tab I hear a sound – like double “peak” – I checked options in this QTTabBar but I cannot switch it off. If I really cannot switch it off then sorry I will not use it. Do you know how to switch it off so I will not hear any noise.
It works great, I love having my frequently accessed tabs locked instead of leaving shortcuts on the desktop. However, I noticed the memory explorer.exe uses kept increasing. Each time I accessed a folder and close it, the memory increases by a bit. It never went down. I got a friend to install and test it out and he got the same problem as me, both running Vista by the way.
Restarting the explorer process “temporary” fixes the problem, getting the memory consumption back to normal but the problem still persist. I wouldn’t recommend having this add-on installed unless you restarts your computer frequently or you free memory you can spare. Or simply go through the trouble of putting..
taskkill /f /im explorer.exe
start %windir%\explorer.exe
into a batch file and running it once in a while.
I personally would recommend .xplorer2. It’s a 2 pane file manager with tabs and an up button. I guess you can replace it in the shell but I wouldn’t do it.
Absolutely hate this, and uninstall refuses to work.
I can hid the qttab bar but there is no way to hide the menu bar any more.
How about a HOW-TO on uninstalling this.
Simply run the installer and uninstall it? The un-installation is guided and doesn’t require you to do anything other than pressing “Next”.
Great idea.
Except for one thing…. It simply does not work.
Not for me anyway.
Doesn’t seem to be working – the QT Tab Bar and TabBar Options install all right, but are greyed out after logging off and logging on… and restart also. Any ideas why?
Absolutely amazing! Worked perfect on my Vista machine.
I’ve been looking for something like this for the longest time… xplorer2 was too complicated and had too many features that I didn’t need. I just wanted a simple tabbed explorer, and I got it!
I really like this. Wanted it only for the Up button, but really like the tabs, too. Thanks! (Did get some errors the first day or two after installing whenever I’d select “Customize” and it would lock up Windows Explorer. Tried it again a few day later, and it worked as advertised.) Thanks!
Well, there’s always DirectoryOpus.
It works great man. But if I try to customize it, I am getting some exceptions.
I am using Vista, and the exception is about Microsoft .NET framework. Any Idea ?
Thanks.
@Andy: The QTTabbar bar program now has it’s own forum at http://qttabbar.wikidot.com/fo.....iscussions where you can the author and other users of it about a problem.
My friends i got it!! (Vista up button) http://mavisapps.com/up-button/
I haven’t been able to get this to work. I didn’t get any install error messages. Both toolbar options (”qt tabbar” “qt tab standard buttons”) are grayed out and can’t be selected. Anyone have any ideas?
@Kane: You can running the registry file at http://www.kellys-korner-xp.co.....yedout.reg
If any policies are making the toolbars unavailable that should fix it.
I found this while trying to figure out how to get those buttons back. This program is amazing. Thanks so much. Works perfectly with my Vista Home Premium.
Can a Delete button be put on this menu also ?
Unfortunately, the reg file didn’t work. I don’t think there are any policies that are keeping them from showing. Other custom toolbars that I’ve tried worked fine. I didn’t have any installed when I tried QT but do now. By the way, the QT address bar worked fine right off the bat. Is anyone else having the problem I am?
@Shirley: If you install the FileTools plugins pack for QTTabBar you can get a delete button as part of the QTTabBar Toolbar.
The url of it is http://qttabbar.wikidot.com/plugins
@Kane: Do you have .NET Framework 2.0 installed? If so and it still doesn’t work you could try posting at the official forum for QTTabBar at http://qttabbar.wikidot.com/fo.....iscussions
Thanks jd2066. I will post over there. I do have .net 2.0 installed but is there a way I can check to make sure there’s no problems with the installation?
I just reread your post and remembered that QTAddressBar uses .NET Framework 2.0 too so if that is working then the problem shouldn’t be with .NET Framework 2.0
jd – thanks for your help. On the QT Wiki, someone else posted an obvious solution to my problem a few days ago. Somehow, my qt toolbars were disabled. Once I went into “manage add-ons” from the internet options control panel and re-enabled them, everything worked fine. Thanks for your help and I feel like a blockhead for not figuring this out sooner.
This does not uninstall properly, it is impossible to hide the toolbars in vista 32 after uninstall.
There is a tip to remove a registry key if you encounter this problem but it doesn’t work.
If you try this software make sure you have created a restore point manually before hand.
The only way I could get rid of the toolbar without doing a fresh install was to create the following registry key which I wasn’t too happy about as I havn’t done it before and don’t know if it will have any unwanted side effects.
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced] “ShowToolbars”=dword:00000000
But toolbar gone!
w00t!!!
This is by far, beyond any shred of doubt the most amazing explorer enhancement I have seen till date. Beats all other explorer replacements/enhancements hands down. Keep up the excellent work Quizo!!!
Just one thing the memo plugin does not seem to be working as desired and it causes the explorer to malfunction. For example the explorer is redirected to the my computer page (in WinXP ) while trying to open some folders. Was about to file a bug report against QTTabBar but posting this here seems to be much easier (please pardon me for being lazy but this is better than not posting at all
)
Hey Zbyszek,
Please take a look at Control Panel->Sounds and audio devices->(program Events) windows explorer->Start Navigation change the associated sound to None if its not already so. I hope this helps.
@SDX: You should post on the official QTTabBar forum at http://qttabbar.wikidot.com/fo.....iscussions
You would have a better chance at getting a reply from the author there.
If you press alt+up arrow (in vista) it has the same effect as the “up one level” button from XP
side note*
alt+left arrow = back
alt+right arrow = forward
*works in both explorer and internet explorer
i have a problem! it installed properly but instead of the tabs aligning horizontally, they are aligned vertically!! how do i fix this? please help..>.
great program took while to get it running properly but at least I have the navigation buttons I got used to from xp thanks for thr tip
Same problem with the uninstalling, once you install this you can never hide your menu bar again! Even after it’s uninstalled. I even reinstalled it, told it to hide bar, uninstalled, and the bar is back.
I also had the same problem, after uninstall the menu bar was not going. I found a site where i got the problem solved.
http://tandt-u.blogspot.com/20.....vista.html
it worked for me. hope it would help someone.
How can I EVER thank you???!!?! I HATED how there was no up one level, and now you’ve given me not only that, but a Firefoxized Windows Explorer! You are so cool! Kudos to howtogeek.com!
You know how in Windows vista the plus and minus icons have been replaced by the little triangles that are only visible when you mouseover the explorer bar? Does anybody know how to get the plus and minus icons back