This is not a mockup but some pics describing the concept for the Haiku’s files manager.
Mainly, one has a path indicator; files and folders can be displayed as icon or as a detailed list, in this case each folder can be expanded. One also has a status bar displaying the space used by a given folder and the remaining free space.
Nothing new here, excepted that one has a vertical toolbar. That doesn’t prevent to have a horizontal one or the both, but the principle here is to place a control for anything which can be displayed at the right-hand side or the left-hand side. For example (see below) one can switch the tabbed path indicator in write mode.
Below, the menubar is reduced in a cascading menu but one can display a menu at the left-hand side of the vertical toolbar in a panel (next picture). If one rather likes a menubar, one can and that doesn’t prevent to display each menu in the panel; the control “M” will be just aside the menubar.
So, now the “file” menu is displayed in the panel which has a control to close it.
You may have noticed that there’s no horizontal scrollbar. Indeed one has a navigation window with which one can pan the canvas; the vertical scrollbar is conventional.
The following is optional but it’s about managing files and folder, for example displaying information related to a given item. Below, one uses the status bar to display sequentially different kind of infos (e.g rights, comments and so on). The so-called properties indeed, currently in the “view” menu, hence one can display them in the panel.
Multiple-sorting would be good as well:
Not new, a files manager like Opus Directory has this feature and a lot more. After all, a detailed list is like a spreadsheet from which one could pick its current features. For example, one relies mainly upon the file or folder’s name, hence the “name” column could be fixed while the others slide.