vemod

Well, if you say so... It is written for 32 bit windows and has never worked with 64 bit windows. I don't own the development tools needed to make a 64 bit version. It however still works with 32 bit windows as it has always done. If the project is considered dead for this reason, then ok.

Just a small update notice. Version 0.1.0.5: This version is identical to 0.1.0.4 except it has an option to only load the Icons and Thumbnails that are actually within the viewport. This uses far less resources and seems faster than the earlier versions. This is also the way it works in "Finder". This option is seleced as default. If you check "Load all Icons and Thumbnails at once" it will work exactly as 0.1.0.4. If you don't care about this option, don't bother to upgrade. This is the only change. It will still not work with the 64 bit explorer.

@Kittieocker: I helped a friend with installing a fresh XP no SPs on a blank HD. Just for fun I also installed Cover Flow and it worked just out of the box. Maybe you replaced some essential system files with Flyakite or whatever... The menu items for pngs can be switched on and off with the settings app. @magnus: I can add esc but for now you can use F10 to close full screen. I don't see processor load going up to 100% on my computer, if that's what you mean. If your video memory is very limited you might try to decrease the backbuffer and texture sizes. I can't find any event from the explorer interface that raises when you single click an icon. If you know of any way to track that, please let me know. The other way around, I can't find a way to just select a file in the explorer pane without opening or running it. Suggestions welcome... @vmart: I have already posted in the mac finder navigation bar thread with a request. I hope to get an answer soon as this would make the Cover Flow much more usable. @Everybody: Microsoft has removed thumbnail preview of html documents after XP SP1. You can get it back along with thumbnails of text documents and a lot of other file types: http://www.winmatrix.com/forums/index.php?...3rd-party-file/ Try "Thumbnail extensions" and "Thumbnail restore" and look around for more if you like. If you want to try something cool, you can have 128x128 icons in XP by adding a vista icon package (i.e. the "Leo Vista" package available at deviantart) with icon packager and then run this reg file: Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\WindowMetrics] "IconSpacing"="-1200" "IconVerticalspacing"="-1200" "Shell Icon BPP"="32" "Shell Icon Size"="128" Your desktop will probably look the same when it has finished loading. Thumbnail view in explorer will have quite big icons. The start menu will be totally screwed up so you might want to replace it with a 3rd party one or switch to classic start meny. Most important you will now have hi-res default icons in Cover Flow...

Save this as KillLayout.reg REGEDIT4 [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Toolbar\WebBrowser] "ITBarLayout"=- [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Toolbar\ShellBrowser] "ITBarLayout"=- [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Toolbar\Explorer] "ITBarLayout"=-

Freestyler has a nasty thing with locking the Toolbar layout so it won't be saved. You might need the KillLayout.reg file that comes with Cover Flow if it starts to make trouble, this way you can start over with a fresh layout. You shouldn't run the reg files from FreeStyler or the KillLayout file from Explorer but rather from the Desktop while Explorer is closed. So the sequense is something like this (I have done this several times but it seems I can never remember the order): Close explorer Run KillLayout.reg (from desktop) Run HideFlag.reg (from desktop) open explorer and enable FreeStyler and hide the addressbar and the standard buttons enable CoverFlow Edit: open explorer and enable Cover Flow Edit: enable FreeStyler and hide the addressbar and the standard buttons close explorer open explorer (it should now remember the settings) It might take a little experimenting to get it working... @KSoft: I am the developer of Explorer Cover Flow and I have a request for you. I do like FreeStyler very much and it would be such a great thing to have a button next to the "View" buttons on FreeStyler to Show/hide Cover Flow! Is there any chance that we could work toghether on that?

So, it seems to be working, that's nice. FreeStyler toolbar aka "Mac Finder Navigation Toolbar for Windows" is right here along with some skins. Freestyler has a nasty thing with locking the Toolbar layout so you might need the KillLayout.reg file that comes with Cover Flow if it starts to make trouble. This way you can start over with a fresh layout. You shouldn't run the reg files from FreeStyler or the KillLayout file from Explorer but rather from the Desktop while Explorer is closed. I think problems with the installer can be avoided by installing the VB-runtimes first. I found a small memory leak in 0.1.0.4 Edit: and fixed the zip/generic folder problem The DL is updated. (If you have already installed 0.1.0.4 you can just replace the existing ExplorerCoverFlow.dll with the new one.)

New version available 0.1.0.4. Features: Speed optimizations. Various unnecessary image scaling and reloading removed. Thumbnail extraction in background threads. Extracting thumbnails in the background lets Cover Flow respond while the thumbnail plugins are processing. There is an option to set the maximum number of background threads to more than one, but it should be use with caution since not all plugins are multithreaded by design. On my computer I have a problem with Real Video plugins that will crash Explorer if more than one background thread accesses the plugin at the same time. Anyway, raising the number of threads doesn't always mean things will get faster. Timing the loading speed of a directory with pdf files shows that 2 threads are slightly faster than one, 3 threads about the same time as 2 and with 4 threads it starts to get slower again and the animation starts to get a bit jumpy. Anti-aliased text. Text is now written with GDI+ before it is put onto a DX-texture. Goodbye MCI, hello DirectShow! Media files are now played with DirectShow. This hugely expands the number of file formats that can be played. You can now preview DivX, flv and Real Media videos and even DVD-images. Make sure you have the required DS filters especially since the native Mpeg1 filter that plays mp3 files has a problem with certain mp3 formats. FFDShow is highly recommended! Vista Icons, what? on XP? Well sort of. Exe files that are Vista-ready will have their 256x256 icon shown. Just look at the OpenOffice-exe files. Ico, cur and ani files will also be show in their largest format. Not sure what it will look like on Vista... Mouse wheel scrolling. Well you know... Mp3 cover art. There is now an option to show mp3 files with cover art instead of icons. And an option to show cover art while playing mp3 files. Customizable icons and icon packages. Tired of that darned yellow XP folder icon? Now you can select an icon (png) for each file type with the resolution you want and choose to skip the loading of thumbnails for these types. You can also specify an icon for each single file (overriding the file type). Just turn the icon (with one click) and bring up the Verbs Menu. You should use png files of the same size as the Image Texture Size or smaller since larger images will be scaled down and down scaling is pure waste of cpu... Icons applied to file types or special folders can be “packed” (or rather moved) into a folder and bundled with a package script. The folder can then be zipped and applied by other users with the Settings app which brings us to: Rewritten Settings app. With a “Mac-like” UI and full control over the customized icons. And you can have this little menu addition on png files as well: “One step” installer. It is the same old installer but it is packed in a self-extracting zip for your convenience. Make sure to completely remove previous versions before installing! Go to Control Panel->Add/Remove programs. Shut down all instances of Explorer before you hit remove! I know there are some really good graphic designers here. This app really needs a better throbber. A 64x64 animated gif that looks good on both bright and dark backgrounds, maybe with a drop shadow like on the iPhone. Please!

@aquawelt: Some Windows Explorer extensions and some Control Panel items are not displayed on computers that are running an x64-based version of Windows The workaround in the article is of course not satisfying in the long run, especially since you'll then miss your 64-bit extensions. This obviously calls for an x64 compilation of the cover flow (a little googling gives me the impression that this at the current time only can be done with the professional version of VS.NET).

I currently do not have any plans to switch platform. This does not mean that its never gonna happen. I have developed applications that way before. Starting out in VB6, which is a really fast way to whip an application together, and then when everything works, rewrite it in C++. I did so with Object Studio However, by "Vista/7 safe" I guess you mean VS.NET/DirectX 9 and not Borland C++builder 2006/DirectX 9. A VS.NET license costs a smaller fortune and I don't have any budget at all for this application.

@mps69: When I added the scroolbar I was considering setting a minimum height around 200+ px just like in iTunes but then again I thought that it is better not to fill it with limitiations. @aquawelt: Findexer is an explorer bar, cover flow is a toolbar, it isn't a surprise they aren't found in the same menu. I don't have Vista 64 so I can't try it out myself but a logical place would seem to be "Organize -> Layout", perhaps. I will try to see if I can find somebody who owns vista 64 who will let me debug. @bSAYZ: I think that might be a unicode thing. Maybe somebody else who is using a unicode language can tell? @Everybody who has problems with the text or the settings app. Make sure you have the lateste versions of DX and the VB runtime files. You might also try to temporarily reduce the size of the text textures to see if makes any difference. On some computers textures must be sized to a power of 2. I.e. 64,128,256,512,1024 to look right. There are 2 ways to upgrade from 0.1.0.1 to 0.1.0.3: 1. Unselect the cover flow in the toolbars menu and shut down all instances of windows explorer. Uninstall from control panel -> Add/remove programs. Install the new version. 2. Unselect the cover flow in the toolbars menu and shut down all instances of windows explorer. Open the cab file in the installer and copy these files: ExplorerCoverFlow.dll CoverFlowSettings.exe min.png max.png left.png middle.png right.png thumbleft.png thumbmiddle.png thumbright.png into the directory of the old version. Optional: Create a shortcut to CoverFlowSettings.exe. If in any doubt: Right click the installed ExplorerCoverFlow.dll. Select properties->version and make sure you have version 0.1.0.3 In this version you will also find a file called KillLayout.reg. If the layout is screwed up, i.e. the address bar always shows up even if you unselect it everytime you run explorer or it never shows up even if you always select it. Copy KillLayout.reg to the desktop, close all instances of explorer and run KillLayout.reg from the desktop to start over with a completely wiped toolbar layout. I hope this was helpful to someone

That sounds good to me I just added a new version (0.1.0.3) to the first post. About (text) resolution: The text is rendered to a RenderToSurface. In the first version this was locked to 512x512 pixels and the backbuffer was locked to half of the screen size i.e. 960x600 for a 1920x1200 screen. The new version includes the option to have the full screen button like in iTunes and also an option to select the sizes of the backbuffer and textures. If you select to use the full screen option (or if you don't but are picky with text quality) you should also set the backbuffer size to the same as the screen size and raise the Text Texture size to 1024. This should give a rather smooth text output. RenderToSurfaces does not anti-alias so another option is to render the text with GDI+ and put it on a texture. I think this will have to be a later project. If your computer is capable (hardware acceleration and lots of video memory) you can gain very high quality by fiddling with these settings. If it isn't you can really force it on it's knees. On the Dell Dimension 2400 test computer (the one without video memory) the animation speed suffers if I choose the full screen backbuffer and it just wont show 1024x1024 text textures. The quality you can get depends on your hardware. Associated icons just have the size they have. I think vista icons include a 256x256 image, don't they? On xp (again I think) you could use an app like "Icon packager" to get hi-res icons. About speed: I do, despite the above remark, think the animation is quite smooth (at least far smoother than the cover flow in iTunes) the problem with speed IMHO lies in the calls to IExtractImage during the rendering. Each of these calls can take up to a second and just locks the whole thing and makes it seem like it is not responding. If you uncheck "Use Thumbnails" in the settings application IExtractImage will not be called and only associated icons and image preview will be shown. It looks boring but it is way faster. The calls to IExtractImage could probaly be put into a separate thread. I think this will also have to be a later project (holy moly batman). Here are my current settings: Edit: Forgot to mention: I won't be able to work seriously on this app for a couple of weeks now, but I will be back after the holiday

Doesn't Explorer in Vista 64 have a Toolbar menu that pops up when you right click a toolbar? You should keep newer files as described in the very first post.

I do understand your request but since cover flow is a toolbar it will always sit on the top. You can tweak the registry settings and register cover flow as an explorer bar (instead of a toolbar) using this method: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa753590(VS.85).aspx the GUID of cover flow is {B964D79B-D625-408F-B2AB-B308806EA2DD} Unfortunately the results is still not what you want since a horizontal explorer bar always sits at the bottom: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc144099(VS.85).aspx I just tried it, there is just no way to move it even if you could expect so... So it looks like the limition is within explorer itself

Thanks vhanla! That was easy to reproduce but hard to debug. The english error description is : The callee (server [not server application]) is not available and disappeared; all connections are invalid. The call may have executed. First I thought that explorer stopped responding during standby but it turned out that it is actually DirectX that goes stone cold after resuming. The only way to fix it is to poll the dx device and completely restart it if it is dead. I will upload an update with the fix later, there might be more things to add or fix. @aquawelt: I have no idea about Vista 64, but if you enable the cover flow in Internet Explorer's extension manager and check it in Internet Explorer's toolbar menu, doesn't it show up in Explorer's menu as well? @cns0813h: 1.findexer still same Height not going down Yes. It is a toolbar and toolbars sit on the top. 2.button could on or off d coverflow..(but im using styler) The standard toolbar in explorer does not support custom buttons. An alternative is to create a new custom toolbar with only one button, but you don't want that. Maybe you could talk sweetly to the creators of styler and/or freestyler... 3.to have a scrollbar in coverflow That might just come later (no promises)

That's nice. As far as I can see it works just fine. The altereded settings will be visible the next time explorer is launched. If you have an explorer window open while using this handly little program, the height will be overwritten when explorer is closed. Thanks!