Filed under: Text, Utilities, Windows, Productivity, Open Source, Windows x64
Console is an open source, tabbed CMD alternative for Windows
by Lee Mathews Mar 26th 2009 at 11:30AM
CMD is still an incredibly useful tool, but let's face it : it's older than dirt, and well overdue for some kind of an update. You could be waiting a coon's age for Microsoft to offer an official upgrade, so you may want to give Console a shot.
Console is an open source project that adds both functionality and eye candy to the Windows command prompt. The tabbed interface helps keep taskbar clutter to a minimum, and you can customize display colors, choose from a dozen different cursor styles, and set transparency levels for both active and non-active windows. You can also set your Console window's z-order to pin it to the desktop top or force in on top of or behind other windows.
To simplify your command prompt chores, Console also supports a number of command hotkeys and mouse actions. I also like the simplicity of copy on select - after all, I probably wouldn't be highlighting text if I didn't want it on the clipboard. Those of you who prefer utilizing an alternate shell, Console can be configured to handle that as well.
Console is portable, free, and runs on all Windows versions 2000 and newer.
Console is an open source project that adds both functionality and eye candy to the Windows command prompt. The tabbed interface helps keep taskbar clutter to a minimum, and you can customize display colors, choose from a dozen different cursor styles, and set transparency levels for both active and non-active windows. You can also set your Console window's z-order to pin it to the desktop top or force in on top of or behind other windows.
To simplify your command prompt chores, Console also supports a number of command hotkeys and mouse actions. I also like the simplicity of copy on select - after all, I probably wouldn't be highlighting text if I didn't want it on the clipboard. Those of you who prefer utilizing an alternate shell, Console can be configured to handle that as well.
Console is portable, free, and runs on all Windows versions 2000 and newer.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
David Ron said 12:13PM on 3-26-2009
But don't forget, it's still DOS. For a real powerful shell, install Cygwin. That will give you the full power of BASH, scripting, aliases, function creation, and all. Plus all of the GNU command line utilities. You can STILL use all of the DOS commands. And, it'll run inside of Console or Ponderosa.
http://www.cygwin.com/
http://en.poderosa.org/
And for an alternative to the "tabbed interface" try GNU Screen.
http://www.gnu.org/software/screen/
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LiqwidZero said 12:11PM on 3-26-2009
But can I run fdisk with that program?
Simon said 1:55PM on 3-26-2009
Uh... this program supports using alternate shells. So you can run Bash in it if you want (though you would have to install Cygwin or find one of those minimalist GNU environments).
Mark said 3:28PM on 3-26-2009
Actually it's not DOS. You can get an emulated DOS session by typing "command" instead of "CMD" though. The CMD console does have a lot of the same commands, but includes hundreds more as well as supporting long file names. If you need even more than that you can use Windows Powershell.
Lee Mathews said 12:13PM on 3-26-2009
Great tips...Thanks, Ron!
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Jake said 1:16PM on 3-26-2009
Didn't Microsoft release two updates to CMD in the last few years with Powershell? http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/technologies/management/powershell/default.mspx
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David said 4:18PM on 3-26-2009
I love Console. But it has serious issues on x64 Windows of all flavors so it's back to good old cmd for me.
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Jon said 12:31AM on 3-28-2009
A couple people mentioned Powershell as an update to the old command prompt. It's not really. It's pretty much a completely different beast (in a good way). Powershell is basically a little programming environment that's all text based. It has .NET framework goodness built in, so you can create a form on the fly and display it via a Powershell script. All this programming power allows for much more powerful scripts than any batch file could dream of being.
Sorry, not very related to the app mentioned in the post. I just think Powershell is really cool and recommend people who are interested to check it out.
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Bryan Price said 1:57PM on 4-22-2009
Weird. I downloaded what I thought was the newer of what I had, but I ended up writing the 1.5 over the 2.0 that I had already downloaded some time ago. And wondered where the tabbing went.
Oh well, I see that there is a new beta of 2.0 out. My 2.0 (evidently still beta) was downloaded three years ago. :/
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