What is the advantage of having this FM separate to the Windows Explorer Shell?
Why MC is not totally replacing Windows Explorer ?
Couple of reason. some of them are that there is no official way to do that. There are only bad hack way.
And I don't want to do any changes to a users computer, No crazy deep system hooks into the core of Windows. Just delete the MC exe file and only MC is gone, Nothing with the rest of the system is affected. Less things that can break and cause issues on users computers.
And MC is not built on top of the Windows Explorer Shell, And Windows kind of require the shell in some situation, So that can cause some strange issue.
There is some reg hack how to make MC replace WinExplorer, So MC is opened instead. There is a post in the forum here some where.
A little personal: How do you find time to run a project like this for free (for which I am extremely thankful)? Is it a hobby? Is it part of another project that you do at work? I just imagine that developing and maintaining a program like this would be a massive task.
No It is my private project I work on at home when I find the time. Finding the time is the hardest bit.
Yes, It have turned into quite a massive task. And there are so many parts in MC that depend on each other. So doing changes are sometimes not easy.