Show HN: hColumns – a jQuery plugin that looks like OS X Finder Column View

Think Smalltalk's code browser: http://www.pharo-project.org/about/screenshots

Or NeXSTEP where you see the Cocoa ancestry for this columnar display: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:GNUstep-liveCD.png

Beyond Finder, you'll notice that on your iPhone / iPad this paradigm is everywhere. When you see a list, you can select an item and dive into the next level. The only difference is that a single column consumes the entire screen width. See UINavigationController: http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/uikit/...

In Cocoa, there is a general NSBrowser class, which implements this paradigm: https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Cocoa...

Another application that uses faceted browsing is of course iTunes: http://screenshots.oahermes.com/6/large_4_itunes_store.png

One project which I tracked long ago, called mSpace, has some good stuff: http://research.mspace.fm

- Any idea why this view isn't used in file managers other than Finder? (especially Windows Explorer & GNOME Nautilus/Files). This view has so many advantages (very visual, enable quick round-trips in a hierarchy, show the path leading to a leaf while conserving screen space, enable copying files from anywhere to anywhere, more adapted to our horizontal screens and vision than traditional WindowsExplorer-ish views) that I can't understand why it wasn't copied elsewhere. Is it patented?

- Any option for such a file manager under Linux/Windows? Maybe a Nautilus extension/fork (and under windows, an Explorer patch/extension)?