Back in January of 2005 I asked for Windows Explorer replacement recommendations. A number of people stopped by and shared a long list of recommendations, however none of them came close to being acceptable to me.

I was contacted back in June 2006 by Jim Kueneman, a delphi component developer who was interested in piecing together a number of his components to create a full-featured Windows Explorer replacement like the one I was requesting: UltraExplorer.

Jim has just released UltraExplorer version 1.0 and has finally given me the go-ahead to announce it here.

Among the features I wanted:

Column view (like Mac OS X Finder)

Favorites panel (not a menu)

Drop Stack (like Path Finder)

Tabbed interface (like Path Finder and rumored OS X Finder in Leopard)

Integrated command line

UltraExplorer has them all.

It’s not going to be perfect for everyone and it’s the first public release, so view it accordingly. But if you’re stuck on a Windows machine you should really check it out.