Windows Refined

Microsoft has made huge progress with the post-XP operating systems in terms of stability, performance, ease of use and usability. Well, maybe the initial Vista is not quite the best example to support this statement, but after being patched for the second time it came really close to what it should have been at the beginning.

Nonetheless, one option available in both Vista and Windows 7 is the preview pane for taking a peek at different files, be they plain text, images or audio data. All there is to it is enabling the preview pane from the Organize drop-down menu in a Windows Explorer window and the “Preview Pane” in the Layout menu. After that you should be good to go.

As insignificant as this feature may be to most of you, one developer has created an alternative that does not require selecting the file you want to preview. With WinRefine previewing files is simply done by hovering your mouse over the item (images, video and audio data only) and a separate window shows you the contents or, in the case of audio files, the music will start playing.

The freebie has no interface, save for the configuration panel, which is built in a manner that should not pose problems to any user. None of the settings available needs an explanation as their name is self-explanatory. It does not provide an extensive amount of settings, all this making the application extremely easy to configure.

Once installed on the system it is automatically enabled, so you can start previewing instantly. Among the tweaks you can make for the application to serve in the best way possible, there is changing the time to wait before starting the preview (in milliseconds), the modifying the minimum dimensions (width and height) the image should have in order to be previewed, as well as the proportional stretch, which is actually the size of the preview.

Regarding this option, there are some bugs to be fixed, because at this stage (the app is at version 0.2) you cannot set this to just any value you want. During our tests, if it exceeded the 347 limit, the preview window would simply blink very quickly instead of lingering on as it should.

The configuration window also features an “Effects” menu, which lets you set the volume for audio and video files as well as the transparency level of the Windows tooltip for images. This is also the place to disable/enable the tooltip.

The application also comes with a set of supported extensions, which includes the most popular audio, video and image file formats. There are 19 extensions listed, among which ASF, WMV, VOB, MPA, WMA, MPEG, MPG, AVI, WAV, MP3, JPEG, JPG, GIF, BMP, PNG or PSD. Less conventional image formats, like TIF, RAS, ICO, IFF, PCD, PCX, TGA, CUT or WBMP and XBM, can be previewed in the app. You can add your own extension, but it has to be supported by the application. Currently, WinRefine lacks the necessary documentation that could give you an answer on the supported codecs. Removing file formats from the list is as easy as right-clicking them and opting for removal.

The best feature in WinRefine is that you don't have to select an item in order to preview it. It will suffice to hover the mouse over a supported file and the preview window will instantly kick in. Needless to mention, this works only in Windows Explorer. It would be nice if the program covered other popular file managers, but the project is at the beginning right now and there are still loose ends to tie up.

For instance, in the case of smaller images (we tested this with pictures under the 100x100-pixel default configuration) the preview window pops up quite far from where the image is located. Fixing this should ensure that the preview is displayed at a specific distance from the mouse pointer, in order to offer a comfortable experience.

Also, for some video files the preview would not show the content of the movie, but only the border of the preview screen, or it would just blink. On the upside, the video preview for the files that work is indeed awesome as it lets you view an entire movie just by hovering the mouse over the file. The same goes for audio files, as these seem to play out of nowhere. But the best part is that the preview works even when you try to load a supported file into another program.

WinRefine is small and integrates seamlessly into Windows. Setting it up is a walk in the park and the effects are great, especially for audio and video data. It is not quite a superset of the default preview function in Windows Vista and Windows 7, as it covers only video, audio and images, whereas the feature in Microsoft's OSs works for some text documents as well.

There are still loose ends to be tied up as it is at the beginning of the road, and this shows during testing. We limited our testing to Vista and XP, and on both of them there were problems with displaying previews for files of larger dimensions.

The Good It is simple to install and configure and it works just by hovering the mouse over the file. WinRefine is a cool addition to Windows versions that do not benefit from the preview function of Vista and Windows 7.

The Bad

The Truth