TDFSB file browser visualizes files and directories

Happy Gliding

By Andreas Kneib

You can choose from many different file managers - from the console-based Midnight Commander to Nautilus and the KDE all-rounder Konqueror - but if you are looking for more than just a pragmatic approach to listing directory content and are interested in an original presentation technique, the TDFSB browser might be answer to your dreams. TDFSB stands for 3D File System Browser, and the name is programmatic; users walk through or fly over a 3D view of the files and folders on their disk and have a 3D view of multimedia file content. This is a great way to view image files or play MP3 files, but you do need a 3D graphics card with hardware acceleration support to avoid nerve jarring display lag spoiling your flight experience.

Ubuntu users have an easy option: They can either launch the Synaptic package manager to install the program or issue the sudo apt-get install tdfsb command in the shell. If TDFSB is not available from your distribution's repository, you can pick up the source code for version 0.0.10 of the file browser from the project's homepage [1]. After unpacking the tarball, you will find a README file in the new tdfsb-0.0.10 directory, which tells you everything you need to know about required libraries and manual installation. To build TDFSB successfully, you need the SDL and SDL-Image developer packages and the SDL MPEG Player Library (SMPEG), among other dependencies.

First Flight

Typing tdfsb at the command line opens a 400x300-pixel file browser window that shows you the content of the root directory (/), such as the /bin, /etc, and /home directories. The software visualizes folders as spheres, images as thumbnails, text and HTML documents as animated yellow cylinders, and music files as stylized green loudspeakers (Figure 1).

Figure 1: TDFSB gives you a 3D view of your hard disk content by using a variety of shapes, colors, and textures.

To navigate to one of the directories, use the mouse or arrow keys, as in an ego shooter, until you "touch" the directory. A WARPING... message appears and you are taken inside the directory - assuming you have the required permissions.

If the directory contains a large number of files or a number of large files, for which TDFSB offers a preview (e.g., images or MPEG videos), warping into a directory can take a minute or more (Figure 2). If needed, and especially if you need a better overview of the mass of data, you can press the Space bar to take off and look at the area from above. Pressing End puts you back on the ground.

Figure 2: TDFSB displays images as digital billboards, so you can walk through your graphics files.

If the browser window is too small, you can press F for a full-screen view. Pressing F again takes you back to your standard desktop and sizes down the browser view. Besides these keyboard shortcuts, there are many keyboard and mouse functions for controlling the 3D file browser. The most important shortcuts are listed in Table 1.

Configuration

The first time you launch TDFSB, it creates a ~./tdfsb configuration file in your home directory; the program will parse this file whenever you launch it in future. This file is in ASCII format, so you can display it with the use of a pager, such as less, or edit it in a text editor if you want to customize the settings. The ~./tdfsb file has a simple Variable = Value structure. The values are either numbers, like 400 or 0.6; characters like /; or yes/no choices that change default settings. At the top of the file, you'll see a comment. The line starts with a hash sign (#) and is ignored when the file is parsed, just as in shell scripts. These lines tell you which program function you can change by redefining the variable. For example, the StartDir variable defines the start directory that TDFSB accesses when called. The developers preset this to the root directory, but if you want to view, for example, the /etc directory on launching TDFSB, you can modify the variable as follows:

StartDir = /etc

In a similar way, you can define a browser window with more than 400x300 pixels. The variables in the next example expand the WindowWidth and WindowHeight height to 800x600 pixels:

WindowWidth = 800
WindowHeight = 600

By default, the program will sort directory content alphabetically. If you don't want this, you can enter:

AlphaSort = No

The CustomExecuteString variable at the end of the list has a special meaning. If you check the default ~./tdfsb file, you will see that the variable is set to cd "%s"; xterm&. This means if you left-click a directory and then press Tab, the application will pop up a terminal window with this folder as its working directory. The variable is thus a shell-style command, and you can modify it to suit your own purposes. For example, if you want GMPlayer to play a file when you click it and press Tab, the following entry will do the trick:

CustomExecuteString = gmplayer %s &

At the end of the ~./tdfsb configuration file is a list of key mappings, which you can customize freely, just like the variables already considered. To use, say, the + key to fly rather than pressing Space, you would redefine the existing line to say KeyFlying = "+".

Conclusions

Although I really love playing around with this tool, you are probably better off with a file manager like Midnight Commander or a GUI-based tool like Konqueror for doing serious work. But if you simply want to explore your hard disc content in three dimensions, like a walkable, virtual world, without any danger of destroying your data, TDFSB is a perfect choice. You might also like to give your kids a playful approach to exploring the computer or just to relax on your lunch break.