"Recession is when you lose your job; Depression comes when I lose my job" — Economic definitions

IMHO infinite adjustability is bad for a program. That's why xplorer² only exposes part of its settings directly through Tools > Options menu command. For those that don't mind searching for less significant tweaks, there is the registry settings editor and a file in the installation folder called REGISTRY.TXT that document a plethora of advanced options. Most of the advanced tweaks are offered through the registry settings editor so mere mortals without a registry black-belt can play with them. A few require direct registry editing though, and I will be discussing them in a series of blog posts.

There are two things to keep in mind when using REGEDIT.EXE to tweak xplorer² settings. First you should quit xplorer² with <Alt+X> then change its registry settings. Second is the usual disclaimer: editing the registry willy-nilly can harm your computer, so don't do it unless you are comfortable with it — but it isn't rocket science either!

On to the autofilters. xplorer² "knows" a few types of documents by their 3-letter extension, stored under the registry key HKCU\Software\ZabaraKatranemia Plc\xplorer2_UC.global\File types. For example the category "program files" is defined as *.exe,*.dll,*.bat,*.cmd, which is a comma-separated list of wildcards that map onto filenames we think of as executable types. There are more categories likewise defined as "audio files", "pictures" etc. These categories are used in View > Visual filter > Autofilter command to show only some files, and in various commands that use filters to mark (select) files from the list, e.g. the Named drop-down box of Mark > Matching a rule.

These wildcard categories are offered by default, but you can amend them, for example expand the "video files" group to include flash video *.FLV files. You can even add a brand new category of yours and have it available for the various filtering and selection commands, as explained in today's demo video

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Addendum: Nowadays you don't need to hack the registry to add your own document categories, just use Tools > Advanced options and modify the list using the settings editor