Files Au3 - AutoIt File Manager

[WildByDesign]

I would like to introduce Files Au3 as a project that anyone here in the community can help to improve. The name "Files Au3" can potentially change if anyone has a better idea for the name. At the moment, it is a bare bones file viewer. It uses the TreeListExplorer by @Kanashius which has a lot of callback options to extend the functionality further.

Note: This uses a separate header control together with a ListView (with no LV header) to get around the AutoIt bug #1492 which causes problems between WS_EX_COMPOSITED and ListView headers due to AutoIt using CS_OWNDC for GUI's despite Microsoft's guidance against using CS_OWNDC. Although I understand that there were reasons for this and it was a decision made likely 15-20 years ago.

The Files Au3 GUI will automatically use dark or light mode depending on Windows theme settings. You can force light mode by uncommenting the following:

; testing light mode
;$isDarkMode = False

 

TO DO:

• Header still needs subclassing for the text color in dark mode
  • There is a LV header subclassing example by @UEZ in SampleControls.au3 in Dark Mode
  • There is also a LV header subclassing example by @jpm over in this post in the DarkMode UDF thread
  • Both are for ListView header and I don't know how to convert to standard header control only for subclassing
• Complete functions for Back, Forward, Up and Refresh buttons
  • The TreeListExplorer UDF has a function for Refresh: __TreeListExplorer_Reload()
• Complete menu bar functions
• Add a status bar
• Access File Properties
• Eventually subclass the menu bar for dark mode (and get rid of ModernMenuRaw UDF)
• Lots more...

Then the question is, should we get into actual file management?

• Use callback features of the UDF
• UDF may need to be extended to multiple selection?
• File/folder copy/move/delete/etc.
• Should file operations been done multi-process for performance
• etc.

Anyway, I don't know how far this will go but I'm just throwing it out there.

If anyone wants to contribute, maybe we should just let each other know what part we are working on so that we don't have two people working on the same thing.

FilesAu3-2025-08-12.zip

Edited 2 hours ago by WildByDesign

[WildByDesign]

I just realized that I forgot to dock the controls to the edges for resizing. That explains some of the problems that I noticed. 🤦‍♂️