[xplorer˛] — Operation Glamour
home » blog » 21 November 2010
 

As you may know in the past few months I've been working on something new, but I have not abandoned xplorer˛. And to prove the point here is a small-ish but useful update, which looks and works better with windows vista and 7.

I take a lot of criticism from the fashion conscious about how dated xplorer˛ looks (I wonder what they have to say about total commander :). xplorer˛ isn't meant to impress the girls or the lads down the pub, it is a beast of burden, but even I will admit that working in a more visually pleasant environment somehow improves the quality of life. So as you can tell from the pic to the right xplorer˛ now has better looking menus and toolbars, larger & fast thumbnails and even shows the drop label tips like windows explorer (a label tip shows you where files will be dropped as you move around the objects). Most of these improvements apply for windows vista or later only. But xplorer˛ still works for windows 98 for all you luddites out there <g> new xplorer2 looks and works better

From the complete list of improvements let me highlight the most important:

  • Fast and quality thumbnails. If you want to preview your pictures (View > Pane style > Thumbnails menu) xplorer˛ will show better quality and super fast thumbnails as it now takes advantage of windows explorer icon cache. The first time you browse your pictures you may have to wait a little but from then on thumbnail rendering is almost instant!
     
  • True color toolbar bitmaps. The available toolbar skins are extended to full color alpha transparent PNGs so that they look better. There are a few hires skins available and you can even make your own, see the skins page for more details.
     
  • Extract plain text from documents. This version is not just about looks. This new command in Edit menu, can extract plain (unformatted) text from your word or PDF documents and save it in a file. I use it to compare the contents of PDF files for example using windiff.
     
  • Better autofilters. Autofilters are very easy to use (View > Visual filter > Autofilter or the toolbar button) to show only pictures or source code with a single click. Now they work even in scrap windows and the menu is alphabetically sorted. The predefined filter categories are extended for many new image audio and video formats (remember you can extend them even further yourself)
     
  • Spread the word through your social network. Using Help > Tell a friend menu command you can tell your mates (whether from facebook, twitter, stumbleUpon, digg, delicious and a dozen other networks) how much you love xplorer˛ (thanks!)

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Download xplorer˛ (64 bit)

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