Mike Zamansky has a new video up. This time he discusses the Treemacs file browser. The idea is to recreate file browser side tab that editors like Atom popularized. You can watch the video to see its features and how it works or you can check out the project README at GitHub. One nice feature is its integration with Evil and Projectile.
Coincidentally, I read the project description just before I saw Zamansky’s video. Like him, my first thought was, “That’s nice but I probably won’t use it.” My reason for that is that it takes up valuable screen real estate but doesn’t offer me a compensating efficiency gain. I don’t use the mouse in Emacs so navigating through the menus would take longer than finding the file with my usual Avy assist. Helm or ido users would doubtless find the same.
You could argue that it helps when you’re not familiar with a directory structure but in those cases Dired offers the same functionality and gets out of the way once you’ve picked your file. Still, if you’re coming from Atom or one of the other editors offering a file browser or if just like the idea, you might want to give Treemacs a try. It’s not that I think there’s anything wrong with the package, it’s just that it doesn’t fit in with my workflow.
Zamansky’s video is just short of 10 minutes so it should be easy to fit it in. Like all of Zamansky’s videos, it’s definitely worth the time.