When comparing Altap Salamander vs QTTabBar, the Slant community recommends Altap Salamander for most people. In the question“What are the best file managers for Windows?” Altap Salamander is ranked 13th while QTTabBar is ranked 14th.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Looks very polished and consistent
Pro Very feature-rich
Pro Very stable, even preview versions
Pro Intuitive two-pane interface
The program features a dual-pane interface that allows you to easily move files between views.
Pro As of July 2019 now freeware
Pro Very fast
No delay is noticable in the user interface.
Pro License is good on multiple machines
Can be used at home and work.
Pro Extensive keyboard shortcut support
Pro Built-in FTP and SFTP
The program has built in support for a variety of common network protocols (such as FTP, FTPS, SCP and SFTP) for file transferring over the internet.
Pro Powerful bookmark support
Easy bookmark usage, e.g., Shift+1 selects the first directory. The bookmarked directories are also available in the usual popups to switch the left/right drive (Alt+F1/F2).
Pro Built-in archive support (zip, rar, etc)
Pro Customizable colors
Different colors can be assigned to compressed files or files with a certain name pattern.
Pro Customizable with own external tools
Pro Copy and move operations can work in background
Pro Automation plugin
Enables user to automate repetitious actions via JScript and VBScript (via windows script engines already installed). There is also support for Perl, PHP, Python and Ruby (Arton's ruby must be installed to have the Action script support)
Pro Encrypt files
Pro Built-in undelete plugin
Pro Middle click/Ctrl+click to open new tab
Pro Allows you to simply add tabs to File Explorer which suit the design
Pro Plugin support
The program can be enhanced further by plugins for a variety of purposes.
Pro Good drag and drop options
Pro Preview popup buttons
Pro Ctrl+arrow keys for navigation between different tabs
Pro Ctrl+tab to go from tab to tab
Cons
Con Slow development
Rarely updates.
Con Text Viewer does not support UTF-8
Con Winscp not available for x64 version
Winscp plugin is available only for x86 version and missing @x64.
Con Hard-coded shortcuts
Shortcuts are hard-coded and therefore can't be changed by the user.
Con Image viewer is basic
Con No tabs in dual panes
There are no tabs available in the dual panes view, which can be a time-saver for some users.
Con No Unicode support
Unicode was promised many years ago, but due to slow development, still nothing.
Con Is only available for Windows
There is no full replacement for Linux or OS X.
Con Options menu almost unusable on some high resolution displays
Options menu almost unusable on some high resolution displays, for example Surface Pro 4 2736X1824 and 225% magnification (scaling issues). Interestingly, works ok on external display 3840X2160 with 150% magnification.
Con Possibly abandoned project
Not updated since 2019-3-24. No response from developer. Is the project dead?