Is it just me or do you hate Windows Explorer too?
I have used file managers in the past but have given them up for the ease and simplicity of integrating and using StExBar. Its functionality is ridiculously simple. StExBar gives my Windows Explorer a helping hand at getting things done quicker. It adds a tool bar to your Windows Explorer with common tasks.
This seems like such an obvious maneuver - even Microsoft should have picked it up and ran with it. Since the author just updated the application I decided to share it with you all at Make Use Of. If you use something similar or better, don’t be shy - let us know in the comments!
If you are the type of person who likes to try out lots of new applications or if you just like to click ‘next, next, next’ while installing software, chances are that you may have some bloatware and possibly messed up your right click context menus.
Well if that is the case or you simply want to play along and customize the right click menus then you need mmm…. mmm..
Download it and we will see how you can use it. What’s “IT” ? Oh….sorry in case you are wondering about the software I am talking about (but I already mentioned its name (twice!)) its “Mmm”. Download it here.
Windows Explorer does do its job, but there is a lot left to be desired. Xplorer2 Lite gives you a more powerful alternative that makes browsing those folders quick and easy. Xplorer2 Lite is the free version of Xplorer2, but don’t let that worry you. The free version has a good feature set that still makes it a great option as your alternative to Windows Explorer.
Xplorer2 Lite isn’t a full replacement for Windows Explorer. What I mean by this is that if you click on a folder after Xplorer2 Lite is installed, it will still open with Windows Explorer. However, right clicking on a folder now gives you the option to open the folder in Xplorer2 Lite. This is a minor inconvenience, but it’s worth it. You’ll see.
Windows interfaces have evolved steadily with time. Windows XP was a step forward in interfaces over previous versions and so is Windows Vista over Windows XP.
The thing with the Windows interface is that it looks pretty for some time then we get tired of it. This is not the case with Compiz Desktop Effects and the themes in Linux. There are so many options that one can always find something new and worth changing to for some time.
The following apps lets you overhaul your Windows interface and add some eye candy and usability enhancements at the same time. You wont need pliers and screwdrivers - promise!
Windows Vista has an incredible amount of features and tools, many of which are almost totally undocumented and buried in the system somewhere. Administrative and troubleshooting tools particularly are now much more powerful and easier to use then ever before.
Here are six little features and applications in Vista which I think are quite useful:
The Snipping Tool was an application I didn’t even know existed till yesterday. This tool was introduced with Windows Vista (although it is not present in Vista Basic) but I just hadn’t come across it yet.
Windows Explorer probably lacks a few features that some people desperately require. It might be quite OK to use for the usual purposes, but when it comes to power tasks, it fails.
Here are seven carefully hand-picked utilities that enhance the default Windows Explorer functions and will leave you thinking “Why doesn’t Explorer have these by default?”
1. Folder Size
Windows Explorer, by default, doesn’t show the size of the folder when you opt for the ‘Details’ view. This is one of the little things that users will find lacking in Windows Explorer.
As much as I like Windows XP, I am constantly aware of its severe limitations. I realised this when I installed Teracopy to replace the standard Windows moving & copying function and it shot out the gate like a bat out of hell.
Piky Basket is something similar although it isn’t a software program. It is a shell extension which integrates itself into your Windows Explorer right-click menu. But where Teracopy is best suited for large-sized files being moved between drives, Piky Basket is more for your standard day-to-day folder maintenance, when you’re cleaning things up and generally staying organized.
Countless books have been written on how to shortcut your way around Windows to your advantage. But in the last part of my shortcuts series, I am going to do you a big favour and only tell you a few shortcuts that I use on a daily basis to speed up my travelling around Windows XP (most should work on Vista as well).
None of them involve going anywhere near the registry or indeed altering your Windows settings in any way. What I am about to talk about is just plain old keyboard shortcuts to make menus jump up and down, windows change or make you bounce your way around the desktop - without touching that mouse once!
It’s only recently that I have begun to realise the full potential of the Windows clipboard. Normally I copy and paste text all the time and never give the actual clipboard a second thought. But after reading Lifehacker’s Top 10 Clipboard Tricks, I now realise there is more to it than just pressing CTRL + C.
Recently I found a nice little freeware program called ClipX. It’s described as a “Clipboard History Manager” and it is proving to be insanely useful. It basically remembers all the text and images that you have copied and pasted to the clipboard and you can retrieve any of it at any time by clicking on the relevant entry.
It’s small but it’s definately useful. Using the freeware program, InfoTags, you can now find out the initial contents of a plain text file by hovering over it with your mouse. If you have lots of plain text files on your PC, then this could end up being extremely handy.
It works along the same principles as the HTML “alt” tag. After installing InfoTags, just move your mouse over the desired file and it will tell you the first few lines of what is inside :
Your computer running Windows isn’t running in the same speed that it used to run when you first used it. It’s slower, crappy, takes a while to start and tests your patience like anything. There are many reasons for this, let’s try fixing up a few things on your slow Windows PC:
Slow Start Up
There can be a variety of reasons to Windows loading slow during start up. Go to Run, type msconfig and hit enter. Under the ‘Start Up’ tab, uncheck the unwanted programs and press OK. Things should be a bit fine the next time Windows boots.
When I bought a new computer a few months back, I split up the 500 GB hard-drive into three parts - one part for all programs and Windows files and two other drives for other files. But what I neglected to realise was that if I wanted to move a large file from one drive to another, it was going to take a while. Windows Explorer tends to get a little wheezy and asthmatic when it comes to shifting / copying large files from drive to drive.
One of the goodies I received from Santa was the new CD album by the Eagles and as always, when I get a new CD, I make a private MP3 backup copy on the computer using CDex. But one of the really annoying things about having a MP3 copy is that each song comes out on the computer as “audiotrack1.mp3″, “audiotrack2.mp3″, etc. Even if you manually rename the song title in Windows Explorer, it still comes out in media players as “audiotrack1.mp3″ or “untitled1.mp3″ as below:
I am always looking for ways to do things faster and one of those things is to shut down the computer faster, or log off a particular XP user account. It gets a little irritating having to always go through the start menu so I started experimenting with desktop shortcuts to streamline the process. Now I am trying out a feature which you can use using the right-click button on your mouse. It’s called Clickzap.
Friday was another “Eureka!” day for me as I finally found a freeware PC program I was convinced existed somewhere in the deepest darkest reaches of cyberspace but was doing a good job of hiding from me. It’s called Filebox eXtender and it gives you one click access to your most used folders in Windows Explorer.
Whenever you want to save a file to your computer, Windows automatically goes to the “My Computer” folder. But I never use that folder as I have my own custom-made set of folders in another part of the computer. So it is intensely irritating to save something, be taken to “My Computer” then have to navigate to my own folders. That is where Filebox eXtender comes in to save the day.
Before we continue with our registry tweaks, why not put a shortcut to the registry on your desktop? It sure beats going through the start menu…
Just right-click on the desktop, choose ‘new‘ then ‘shortcut‘. In the target box, enter ‘C:\WINDOWS\regedit.exe‘ . Click ‘next’ and enter your shortcut name (such as “Windows Registry”) then save and close. You now have a desktop shortcut to the registry.
OK, now using that shortcut, let’s see how else we can tweak Windows to our advantage…..
Bypass the Win XP welcome screen and automatically log into your Windows account
Posted by makeuseof guest-writer Mark O’Neill
1. Edit / customize the “Send To” right-click option
When you right-click on a file in Windows Explorer, you have a “send to” option which can launch a program or send that file to another folder.
You can delete or add new destinations by going to the following Explorer destination
C:\Documents andSettings\username\SendTo (replace “username” with your Windows account username).
While I am busy compiling some more Registry tweaks for you, I realised that there are some tweaks you can make to your PC without ever having to touch the Registry at all. So here’s some off the top of my head.
1. Tweak your trash bin
If you right-click on your trash bin and choose “properties”, you can tweak a few trash features. For example, you can turn off the eternally annoying “are you sure you want to delete this?” dialogue (I love being rid of this stupid feature). You can also reduce the space in your trash bin (to prevent it from filling up too much) and you can even disable the trash bin so that anything you delete bypasses the trash and gets deleted off the system immediately (I would use this one with caution though).
I bet you have seen the following Windows error message quite a lot :
That is enough to make you want to rip your hair out in frustration. You want to move, rename or delete a file in your hard drive but you can’t because, according to your lovely Windows operating system, the file is “currently being used by another person or program”. The chances are though that actually the program is locked up in some obscure system process that will take forever and a day to clear. Meanwhile you want to do something to that file immediately and not be a slave to Bill Gates by waiting for Windows to tell YOU when it’s ready. That’s where Unlocker will rapidly become your best buddy.
