Description: WinExt is a free horizontal bar docked to the top or bottom of your screen that can give access to your files, folders, and programs as cascading menus or as shortcuts placed on the bar itself. It also offers an optional “infobar” with status indicators for CPU, memory, battery, and hard disk drive usage.

There are many ways to get access to your favorite folders, files, and apps, and WinExt can do this in the form of a docking bar that can be placed topmost on your screen or on the bottom above the Windows taskbar. What the screenshots might not at first convey is the depth and versatility of this program, and the extent to which WinExt allows for customization. Here are more notes:

• Folders on the WinExt bar: you can do 3 different things with folders placed on the bar; (1) create a cascading menu from a folder; (2) place a folder icon on the dock itself that you click on in order to open that folder in Explorer; and (3) place a so-called expanded folder, whereby the contents of the folder are displayed as clickable icons on the bar itself (as for example the contents of the quicklaunch folder in the screenshot). Personally for many folders I like to put up both a folder icon that opens the folder itself as well as a cascading menu from the folder right next to it.
• Always visible: WinExt will “nudge” your desktop down, so to speak, and Windows will maximize such that they will touch the bottom of the bar so that it is always visible.
• The infobar: an additional bar that is placed adjacent to the original and contains gauges that display status indicators for CPU, memory, battery, and hard disk drive usage, etc. I don’t care much for this, personally, but I can see how it can be useful (I use Systraymeter for some of these and am very happy with it).
• Customizability: WinExt is highly customizable; however, I will also say that the interface used to tweak and change the settings is not very user friendly and, in my view, is a lot more work than it could be (why can’t I just go into some sort of edit mode and right click on elements to change them?) It will take some work to get this app configured exactly the way you want it.
• Skins: comes with 2 skin choices (pictured in the thumbnails on this page). Customizable variables include alpha blending, changing the color of every single element, etc. Keeping my fingers crossed that more will be provided in the future.
• Hotkeys: comes with a system-wide hotkeys manager that can launch a file or maximize, minimize, or close windows. I honestly couldn’t figure out how to get it to work, but didn’t try that hard as I am not that interested in this functionality personally.
• Marquee: the right hand side of the bar can display information such as the time, memory use, battery consumption, Winamp track information, etc. It will scroll these in succession, and you can click to scroll through the different messages. The kind of info displayed is customizable and you can switch it off altogether if you like.
• Memory consumption: consumes a rather large 30 megs of memory.
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Description: Phlox is a small program for Windows XP that runs in the background and tweaks the "f2" button when used to rename a file in Windows XP, such as to select only the file name without the extension (similar to Windows Vista).

If you read the description above and did not understand what this program does, consider the following:

1. The function in question is clicking "f2" while a file is selected (and assuming the file extension is visible and not hidden). In XP this will select the file name including the extension to allow easy renaming (try it and see). In Vista it behaves a little differently whereby the file name is selected but the extension is not, making it possible to type in a new name without over-writing the extension.
2. Phlox provides this same behavior as in Vista when pressing f2 in XP.

More notes on this program:

• Can be enabled and disabled through the program’s icon in the system tray.
• While it works really well in general, I noticed at times that it becomes less responsive and might stop working and require a program restart (a bug, perhaps?)
• Memory use: approx 5 megs. Not a lot, but it seems that something like this should have been smaller.
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Description: this posting will describe how to create program shortcuts on the root folder of a USB drive that preserve the relative path of the USB drive’s folder structure (such that these shortcuts will always work no matter what drive letter Windows assigns the drive). It will also aim to preserve the icon of the application in the new shortcut.

The problem: say you have a portable app that in a folder on a USB drive with, for example, a path such as “F:\EjectUSB\EjectUSB.exe”. Say, moreover, that you would like to create a shortcut to “EjectUSB.exe” and place it on the root folder of your USB (”F:\”, in this case). You might be tempted to simply copy a shortcut and place it on the root folder; except for one thing: that shortcut will always refer to “F:\EjectUSB\EjectUSB.exe”, and should you plug your USB drive into a computer that assigns a different letter to the USB drive (i.e. a letter than is not “F”) the shortcut will break down and not work. Hence the need for a shortcut with a relative path.

The solution:

• Windows does not support relative paths in shortcuts. Instead, this article will describe a solution based on creating a so-called batch (.BAT) file and converting that into an executable (which nonetheless displays the original program’s icon).
• I will use the example outlined above (”F:\EjectUSB\EjectUSB.exe”).

Step by step:
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Description: Accelman is a dual-pane "File Manager" with a wide set of features ranging from multiple file management panes to a full-featured image viewer and editor, archiver with support of 15+ formats, media player and playlist editor, as well as a host of file and folder management tools.

Accelman, which used to be a paid program but just turned freeware, is a so-called dual pane file manager (commonly also referred to as a "Windows Explorer Replacement"). It brings together one of the most thorough and impressive range of features that you can get for a program in this category; however, because of the extensive features, I will resist making this review into a re-iteration of the features list and attempt a more holistic description. Therefore this review will be structured into (a) a PROS section, (b) a CONS section, and (c) a listing of my top 10 favorite features that Accelman provides.

1- PROS:

• Multiple panes: with the ability to drag-and-drop to arrange them. It also comes with pre-set defaults that emulate the layout of other popular file managers, and will let you save your layout scheme for later use.
• One stop shop for most file types: Accelman includes a built in image viewer/editor, a zip/archiving program, and a text editor/viewer with syntax highlighting. All of these are above average in their own right and support numerous formats (note: this does not preclude using an external app if you want to). It also incorporates a playlist manager and a surprisingly versatile media player. And, if you have Acrobat Reader or MS Office installed, can be used to view PDF and Office files.
• Sophisticated file management tools: such as filtering throughout, mass renaming, searching for folders, files, or text, the ability to take directory snapshots for later comparison, folder bookmarking, batch file-attributes editor, files merge/split, folders comparison, changing file associations, etc.

2- CONS: (and wish list)

• Less might have been more: ironically, this program has so many features as to make you (at times) wish for less. Does a file manager really need a built in media player?
• Unintuitive design: this program has a learning curve. Unless you are willing to fiddle around with it endlessly you will need to dig into the help section in order to figure out how to perform some operations.
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Description: "Types" is a lightweight open source configuration utility designed to enable users to edit the program associations, icons, context menus, and other properties of various file types.

If you’ve ever wanted to change the program used to open a certain file type, or change the icon used for a filetype, or add or remove a context menu entry that appears when right clicking on a file type then this program is for your. Here are some notes on this program:

• Finding the file type in the interface: pressing a key within the program interface will cause it to jump to the extensions which start with that key. From that point you can simply navigate with the arrow keys to hone in on the extension you want.
• Changing used icon for a file type: in the Types interface, right click filetype then properties. In the icon tab you can select any of the icons displayed or browse your hard drive for an icon or icon library (ICO, ICL, DLL, or EXE). Once selected, exit the dialog and then the Types program. You might need to wait a few seconds for the new default icon to kick in.
• Changing filetype program association: right click filetype then properties. In the class tab scroll down the list of apps under "Use linked class"; you will need to select the appropriate class (e.g. for mp3’s, "iTunes.mp3" rather than simply "iTunes"). As such in most cases it may be easier to simply re-associate file types using the windows "open with" context menu (more info here).
• Adding/removing context menu entries: this is one of the coolest parts. You can add or remove context menu entries that are displayed when right clicking on a file type. When using an external app for your new context menu entry you will need to know the command line syntax that get it to function correctly.
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Description: Melloware Placesbar Editor is an open source program that allows you to change the default folder shortcuts that are found in the Windows open/save dialog known as the PlacesBar. Moreover, it can also customize the MS Office open/save dialog by enabling the addition of 5 new user-defined folders for a total of up to 10 locations.

You might have noticed that there is a bar to the left of the dialog with 5 pre-defined folders on the default Windows open/save dialog. These folders allow you to quickly access folders when opening or saving files. By default these point to the following locations: My Recent Documents, Desktop, My Documents, My Computer, and My Network Places.With Melloware Placesbar Editor you can actually customize these to any folders that you like or frequently use. Note: you can also do this using Microsoft’s excellent TweakUI and a program I previously reviewed on Freewaregenius also named Placesbar Editor.

MS Office Placesbar customization: because MS Office does not use the standard windows open/save dialog, it’s placesbar has to be approached separately. Melloware Placesbar Editor will in fact allow you to add 5 extra locations to the Office open/save dialog (something which the other programs mentioned above do not), and these do not have to be the same ones you used in the Windows open/save dialog. Here are more notes on this program:

• Installation: although it comes as a normal installer, it is in fact a single 900K executable.
• Reverting back to defaults: there’s a button on the interface that is supposed to do this, but in fact what it does is delete the user defined folders. You will then need to select the original folders using dropdowns.
• Remote folders: I was able to define folders on the network, which was cool (obviously I had to do it while connected to the network).
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Description: this posting will compare a number of different possible ways to convert PDF files into Word Doc format, including freeware programs and free web and email services. Six different programs/services are tested: (1) PDF2HTMLgui, (2) the Koolwire email PDF to DOC conversion service, (3) the Zamzar web service, (4) Free PDF To Word Doc Converter, (5) Adobe PDF to HTML email conversion service, and (6) the MediaConvert web service.

In order to do this test I created a PDF document using Open Office’s export to PDF function that had the following elements (1) a two-column table with special formatting, which contained (2) three thumbnail-szied jpeg images. My PDF document also contained (3) working hyperlinks; and (4) it featured text that was bolded; (5) contained bulleted points, as well as (6) a numbered list.

For the sake of simplicity my PDF was only a single page. To see what the document looked like click on the screenshot to the right.

The objective: was to get a converted document that could be loaded into MS Word where the text/contents could be edited and subsequently saved as .DOC format, which is to say any of the following formats would be satisfactory: .DOC, .HTML, and .RTF.

Comparative results: look for them at the bottom of this positng.
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Description: DocShield is a program that runs in the background and monitors files and folders that you specify for changes. It will create compressed snapshots of your files whenever it detects any changes, enabling you to retrieve your files in case of data loss, and providing a retrievable version history of your files and/or data.

You may or may not be regularly backing up your most important files and/or archiving the most important version changes, and saving your backups into compressed archives to keep your files from growing too large. But chances are that you do this in fits and starts and/or are not as consistent as you like to be, or even have simply given up on this. Wouldn’t it be just great if there were a program you could run in the background that would automate do this for you and manage the process automatically? DocShield is exactly this program.

Although there are a number of freeware programs that do this (e.g. File Hamster, previously featured on Freewaregenius), DocShield features mature functions such as archive management, on-the-fly compression, and FTP backup. Here are more notes on this program:

• The user interface: is very well designed. The main configuration screen is split into 4 tabs and is very easy and intuitive to work with.
• Files monitored: can monitor local files or files on the network. You can point the program explicitly to the files you want it to monitor (drag and drop is supported), or you can define a folder/folders and tell it to scan for certain file-types (you can include or exclude subfolders and use wildcards to exclude certain files). I would strongly encourage the former approach as I have found that pointing the program to a folder that contains a large number of big files can sometimes be problematic.
• Monitoring activity: the program will check for changes in your files and folders at 5 minutes periods by default, but you can set this to anything you like (seconds/minutes/hours). If it finds that a file has changed from the latest version of it in the archive it will add that latest version to the archive. Any changes or versions that may have been created between the monitoring intervals will not be recorded. (You can also trigger the monitoring action manually by pressing the “Shiled Now” button)
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Description: RecentFilesView is a small, no install freeware program that can retrieve and save the list of the most recently accessed files.

If you’ve ever needed a list of the last opened files on your machine, RecentFilesView is for you. It provides a much more comprehensive list than the one in the "Recent Documents" folder. Here are some scenarios I could think of where you wil find this program very useful:

• If you are working on a project and for whatever reason need to create a list of all the relevant files for that project. With RecentFilesView you can export a comprehensive or partial list to a text or CSV files and edit that as needed.
• If you are uncertain as to which files or file versions you were using when you were working on a project 5 days ago. With RecentFilesView you should be able to survey that history in a snap.
• Please post other uses you might think of in the comments.

Here are more notes on this app:

• Sorting: you can sort by created time, modified time, executed time, and filename.
• Which files will be listed?: those files that were either opened from the desktop or from an application. It will list folders that were opened as well.. It will display your file activity, not files that were created or accessed by programs, such as temp files or cached files saved by your browser. Files that are deleted will also be listed, although it will indicate in the list that the file is no longer available.
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Description: Filebox Extender is a free windows explorer extension that adds a number of buttons on the top right of open windows next to the minimize, maximize and close buttons, including a "stay on top" pushpin button, a window roll-up button that hides all but the title bar of a window, a favorites folder button, and a recent folders button. Filebox Extender provides these functions in open folder and application windows, in open/save dialogs and in the system tray.

Although there are a number of programs similar to this that are also free and have been featured on Freewaregenius, Filebox Extender has done a terrific job in the brilliant placement of the functions that it provides on the top right of open windows (near the minimize, maximize, and close buttons). This is a good idea because it standardizes Filebox Extender’s interface whether the user is working with open folder windows, application windows, or even open/save dialogs. The end result is that Filebox Extender manages to provide a streamlined, more intuitive user experience than some of the other available freeware programs which provide similar functions. Here are more notes on this program:

• The look and feel: the extra functions that Filebox Extender provides are very well placed and after a few days of use you might start to wonder why Windows didn’t have something like this built-in in the first place.I tried it on XP and the additional buttons have a distinct XP look that blends into the XP interface. You can switch this off to get buttons that look like older versions of Windows which I didn’t care for much. Not sure how this looks on Vista. I will confess that, although I have known about this program for a very long time, I stopped short of reviewing it previously simply because I didn’t care for the way the icons looked (although these can be customized, see below). Also I saw screenshots that featured Filebox Extender’s Windows 98/2000 look.
• The favorite and recent folders: this is the main draw, at least for me. You can define favorites easily from within the settings or otherwise simply by browsing to the intended folder and adding it via an option on the favorites icon itself. Very cool. You can access your favorite folders or recent folders from the open/save dialog or from any folder window, as well as the system tray. Remarkably, it works with MS Office open/save dialogs, something which a number of similar programs that provide favorites in these dialogs failed to do.
• The windows management functions: the two functions offered, stay on top and rollover windows are nicely implemented. The rollover function, in case you are wondering, minimizes the window in-place so that only the title bar is visible, similar to a window blind.
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