[xplorer˛] — Advanced customization
home » blog » 15 November 2009
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xplorer˛ has been around long enough to form a strong user base and many people contribute voluntarily in various ways. Take snakebyte a forum regular who developed MenuHack, a compiled AutoIt script that can execute any xplorer˛ command by its ID (number). So if you type in xplorer˛ addressbar >MENUHACK 32811 then you will see the properties of the selected files, just as if you used the equivalent menu command File > Properties. This is interesting in a spoon-bending kind of way, but what good is it other than a party trick?

When snakebyte wrote menuhack he had a "problem" with xplorer˛. Many menu commands can be placed on the toolbar for easy access (right click any toolbar to customize it) but only if they have an icon next to them. For other icon-less commands the most you can do is add a keyboard shortcut. But you can put a user command on a toolbar... so snakebyte put 2+2 together and devised this external program that can send commands to xplorer˛. So if you want to have any menu command on a toolbar here are the steps:

  1. Download menuhack if you don't have it (223 KB)
  2. Find the desired menu command number consulting the table in appendix 9D of the full manual (Help menu)
  3. Add a user command calling menuhack with this number as an argument (Customize > User commands > Add new menu)
  4. Optionally select a custom icon for this command.
  5. Customize the toolbar and add this new menuhack-based user command

Detailed instructions in this demo video

Addendum: Later xplorer˛ versions allow you to create a simple command macro to add any command on a toolbar, instead of fumbling with hacker tools. For more information see here

Snakebyte has made another tool called Menu++ that can do even more fancy stuff for xplorer˛ — you can reorganize the whole menu system. Here is the download link but if you go into this amount of trouble you may as well consider rewriting your own xplorer˛ from scratch... or take up spoon bending <g>

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