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13.Mar.2016
■ Is it a folder or is it a spreadsheet? It is the new xplorer²!
xplorer² design philosophy is to keep it simple. Everybody's busy and have lots on their minds, competing for limited brain resources, so the last thing they want is a complex user experience. So when it comes to editing file properties xplorer² does it the most intuitive way — in place in detailed view mode. Everybody knows how to rename a file by clicking on its name column. Now you can use the same intuitive way to change any other editable property. No need to remember menu or ribbon commands, no special dialogs. Just natural text editing. File attributes and properties come in 3 varieties:
- Innate properties that cannot be changed directly, like file size
- General properties like attributes, file dates and comments
- Special document type-specific properties like Composers for MP3 files
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xplorer² already had commands to change generic properties like touching dates and adding comments, but now you can do it straight in the folder view. Now you can also change all editable properties inplace (previously only available through the property page dialog). You can see how it works in the
demo video
Advanced properties can be a bit confusing because not all file types support them. So you can add tags to a picture but not to an executable file. Frustratingly property support in windows is incomplete; why can you change tags in JPG but not in PNG image formats? We will never know. You can improve the property system installing plugins (e.g. for video or audio files), but these plugins themselves are hit and miss too. We cannot save the world but we can try one little step at a time <g>
Version 3.2 brings more improvements, and just to name a few (see here for full details)
- Browse into compressed folders. The plugin that allows xplorer² to enter 7Z/RAR/etc archives has been improved and it even works for windows XP
- Better regular expressions. xplorer² can search for filenames, text contents and other properties using regular expressions like TEST[1-9].JPG. A new regexp library is used that is more PERL compatible, which means that more people can figure out how to write a useful regular expression
- Folder content property. The folder contents stock column can be registry-tweaked to report specific details. Rather than giving the total file count, you can use a wildcard to find e.g. all folders that contain 3 or more text files.
Upgrade information
Version 3.2 is a free upgrade for most people that already own v3.x licenses. A small exception is people who got a v3.0 key as a free upgrade using the
"free upgrades for a year" policy. So if your unlock key is dated before 1 January 2015 (check your
About dialog), then you'd need a new key, but you should be able to get one at a
discount. On the other hand if you've already bought a v3.x key or you own the free lifetime upgrades cover, you don't have to pay again.
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