I found NERTree really akward and was one of the reasons why I originally had trouble switching to VIM from textmate.<p>Its best to use something like PeepOpen, command-t, fuzzyfinder to open files. If you want tree structure I just use terminal and aliased:<p><pre><code> alias l='ls -AlGFh'
</code></pre>
Or use the vim directory navigation.<p>VIM also looks much nicer with just a single file open. The left panel for NERDTree looks hacky.