CFi ShellToys Changelog

What's new in CFi ShellToys 7.4.0

Dec 15, 2012

This release chiefly addresses installation and usage changes needed for compatibility with Windows 8.
The 'Cascade On Start Menu' tool has been removed.
Change Date & Time now stores the last-used Created and Modified dates/times, allowing them to be easily set again for the next file to be changed.
A new option for Clipboard+ allows duplicate items to be removed from the clipboard history, helping to streamline its contents. (When upgrading from an earlier version of ShellToys, existing duplicates won't be removed from Clipboard+, but the feature will start to work as you use the clipboad.)
Encrypt/Decrypt File: a new option when decrypting single files allows them to be opened in the associated application for viewing, and to be automatically re-encrypted if edited.
In Play Media Album it's now possible to drag-and-drop an audio file into the player window. The player will load the contents of the file's containing folder and play the tracks starting from the file that was dropped.
The Clock+ Stopwatch now includes a countdown feature, allowing you to set a countdown to a particualr time, or for a particular lengh of time, and sounds an alarm at the appointed time.
CFi Explorer adds a new menu item and keyboard shortcut for Windows 8 users to toggle the new 'Details pane'.

New in CFi ShellToys 7.3.0 (Oct 22, 2011)

Clipboard+ now supports Rich Text (RTF) clipboard content, and pastes formatted text when the Paste To Window option is used (if the target window supports RTF).
Clipboard+ can now paste graphics as well as text directly to another window.
Clipboard+ now allows text/RTF clips to be edited.
Batch Rename adds a new renaming tool — the ability to rename MP3/WMA files based on their audio-tag details.
Batch Rename now includes a 'Quick Preview' area to provide live feedback about the resulting new names as you change options.
CFi Explorer adds a number of small improvements: optional close buttons on tabs; clearer feedback when drag-reordering tabs; an easy option to reopen a closed tab; an option to clear folder history on exit; an option to close all tabs but the current tab; a tab can be closed by middle-clicking it.
If CFi Explorer receives a notification to open a particular folder in a new tab, it now checks whether that folder is already open and, if it is, switches to the appropriate tab rather than duplicating it.
In CFi Explorer you can now use Back/Forward buttons on your mouse or keyboard rather than clicking the Back/Forward toolbar buttons or keyboard shortcuts.
In CFi Explorer, if you enable the option to include an 'Open in CFi Explorer' item on the context menus of drives and folders, those folders will be opened in the existing CFi Explorer window rather than a new window.
Browse Media and Play Media Album add a new, shared 'skiplist' feature, allowing you to skip audio tracks you prefer not to play.
The audio tag editors in Browse Media and the Media Info window now provide support for a wider number of common tags including Comment, Composer, Publisher and AlbumArtist.
Browse Media now lists more information about individual audio tracks when the folder contains a compilation of tracks from different albums.
In Convert Audio Files the option to convert to/from Ogg Vorbis format has been removed (temporarily, we hope).
Fixes a bug in which ShellToys' audio components would be unable to play (or retrieve information about) some 320kbps MP3 files.
Change Date & Time has been redesigned to provide an easier and neater way to select dates and times. In addition, for single images containing EXIF information, the creation/modification date can be set to match the EXIF 'Date taken' tag.
In Change Date & Time, hold Ctrl and drag-drop a file into the window, and the creation/modification fields will be populated with the datetimes of the dropped file.
Split File (and its file reassembler) and Shred File are rewritten to process files considerably faster, and to support multi-gigabyte files.
Shortcut Target supports the new Pinned Site Shortcut (.website) files introduced by Internet Explorer 9.
Run With Parameters now includes the (obvious, but previously-missing) option to run an application with administrator privileges.
The Shut Down menu now includes a 'Switch User' option in Windows XP and higher.
Fixes a bug in Clipboard+ in which searching for clips (Ctrl+F or F3) could fail.
Fixes a bug in Clipboard+ in which the wrong window might be targeted when pasting a clip if the Clipboard+ window were pinned open.
Fixes a bug in Resize Images in which the resized image could be slightly smaller than it should be.
Fixes a variety of other small-but-annoying bugs, and adds numerous other improvements and redesigns.

New in CFi ShellToys 7.2.0 (Oct 25, 2010)

Shred File can now shred a single selected folder, including (of course) its entire contents. A progress dialog is now shown during shred operations and, for multiple files, an emergency 'Stop' button is included.
Extended Delete now provides a checkbox option that allows files to be deleted immediately, bypassing the Recycle Bin.
Batch Rename has been tweaked to add the following: (1) A 'Variables' menu making it easy to allow filesize/date-related file properties to be included in filenames; (2) On the 'Simple Rename' tab, an extra pair of 'Replace text' fields allows two text replacements to be made in a single pass; (3) New 'Add extension' checkboxes allow new file extensions to be appended to the original extension rather than replacing it; (4) Additional files can be dropped into the dialog to include them in the list of items to be renamed.
The Change Date & Time dialogs have been improved and clarified, with additional hyperlinks to quickly set or copy dates.
In Change Date & Time, when one or more folders is selected, a checkbox option allows the specified date and time to be applied to the entire contents of each folder along with the folder itself.
In Set Attributes, if a folder is selected, a checkbox option allows the specified attributes to be applied to the entire contents of that folder.
In CFi Explorer, a new 'Exit and Save Session' option on the Tabs menu saves the current tab setup and closes the application: the same tab collection is recreated next time CFi Explorer is started. In addition, a new 'Always save session on exit' option can do the same automatically each time you exit CFi Explorer.
CFi Explorer now includes a link to the Control Panel's Folder Options dialog on its Tabs menu.
The Clear Temp tool, which clears the Temp folder on system startup, now offers an option to retain temporary files modified within the last 24 hours, on the basis that they may be required as part of an ongoing software installation/removal.
In Windows 7, certain ShellToys batch-processing tools now make use of on-taskbar progress bars, allowing you to monitor their process while doing something else.
The MD5/CRC32 tool now also calculates SHA1 hashes (and sports a fairly-obvious new name as a result). A new 'Compare to file' hyperlink allows you to quickly check whether the selected file is identical to another. Hashes are now calculated significantly faster than in previous versions.
The Go To Folder dialog, displayed if you assign and use a hotkey for the Go To Folder tool, now includes two additional tabs besides your own list of folders. A 'Recent Folders' tab lists recently-used folders, and a 'Common Folders' tab lists useful system locations.
The Copy Path tools now offers a new 'URL' (file:///) format for copied file paths.
When displaying the following ShellToys tool dialogs, additional files (and folders, if supported by the relevant tool) can be dragged-and-dropped into the window to be added to the list of items to be processed: • Batch Rename; • Convert Audio Files; • Convert Images; • Resize Images; • Set Attributes (when multiple items were initially selected); • Change Date & Time (when multiple files were initially selected).
Fixes a bug in CFi Explorer in which options changed in the Options dialog were not saved if CFi Explorer was shut down by the Windows session ending.
Fixes a bug in Convert Images in which converting certain types of JPEG image to TIFF resulted in an exception.
Fixes a bug in which the MD5/CRC32 tool could fail when calculating hashes for multi-gigabyte files.
Fixes a bug in Resize Images in which, when converting multiple PNG images, only the first would be processed successfully.
Fixes a bug in Change Date & Time in which, when launched via its hotkey, any selected folders would be ignored and not listed in the dialog.
As always, a wide variety of other small improvements, optimizations and bugfixes.

New in CFi ShellToys 7.1.0 (Nov 9, 2009)

New in CFi ShellToys 7.0.0 (Nov 9, 2009)

The majority of the changes made in this version are to provide or improve ShellToys support for Windows 7.
NEW Resize Images offers an easy way to created resized copies of images, either individually or as a batch, and allows you to save sizes and options as named presets for easy reuse.
NEW New File Here is a simple tool that lets you create a new, empty file (with any name and extension) in any location, and optionally open it for editing as soon as it's been created, all in one quick action.
NEW CFi Explorer is a new application for Windows 7/Vista users that offers a tabbed alternative to Windows Explorer. In addition to the flexibility of having multiple folders open in their own tabs (and copying or moving files between them), CFi Explorer includes various useful options such as the ability to save tab groups to its Favorites menu.
In Batch Rename, when a renaming operation has been carried out, the window no longer closes. Instead, it loads the renamed files, allowing you to immediately carry out another renaming operation on them.
In Batch Rename, you can now save the settings of the 'Construct Sequence' tab as a named profile for easy reuse, in the same way that you can on the 'Simple Rename' tab.
In Batch Rename, your last-used settings are automatically stored as a Profile named 'Last Used' in case you want to reuse them next time.
In the Preview window, you can now drag-and-drop a file onto the toolbar to preview it.
In Clipboard+ it's now possible to prevent particular applications' clipboard content from being stored (such as sensitive information you might copy-and-paste into a password manager).
The Convert Images window now shows JPEG quality and encoding details for any selected JPEG images, and allows quality and encoding settings to be chosen when converting to JPEG format.
In the Convert Images tool, the converted images are now saved to the same folder as the source files if all images were from the same folder, and only saved to the 'Converted' folder if the source files came from a variety of folders. This now matches the behavior of other ShellToys file-conversion tools. However, a new option on the Menu & Tool Options page of the ShellToys Settings window lets you override this behavior and force the 'Converted' folder to be used as the output folder for all conversions made by Convert Images, Convert Audio Files and Resize Images.
If you allow the Image Size context menu tool to display a preview of the selected images on the context menu, a new option on the Menu & Tool Options page of the ShellToys Settings window lets you specify the maximum dimensions of that preview image.
The Image Size preview window includes additional options on its context menu (with hotkeys) that allow an image to be rotated or zoomed for viewing.
The Image Size preview window has improved support for icons, now showing all images contained in an icon file rather than just the 32x32 image.
The Choose Program tool has been improved in a variety of ways. You can now choose to have the 'open with' applications shown on a submenu (as Windows does) rather than choosing an application from the dialog. You can choose friendly names for applications rather than using their makers' descriptions. You can also quickly rename or remove applications from the lists for all file extensions.
The Delete On Reboot tool now always prompts for User Account Control elevation in Windows 7/Vista; without elevation, UAC prevents it from writing to the Registry (and thus from working at all).
When using the Change Date & Time tool for multiple files, a 'Touch Now' option is now included, as it is for single files.
Finally, and as always in a major version update, this version includes a huge number of tweaks, redesigns, improvements and bugfixes not noted above.

New in CFi ShellToys 6.4.0 (Sep 1, 2008)

New in CFi ShellToys 6.3.1 (May 9, 2008)

New in CFi ShellToys 6.2.0 (Jan 10, 2008)

NEW Preview tool for Windows Vista provides a more flexible alternative to the awkward Preview Pane in Explorer windows. Preview opens in a separate window, but uses the same Vista previewing features as well as allowing a greater number of file types to be previewed.
NEW Drag-and-drop taskbar buttons option for Windows Vista/XP allows the order of taskbar buttons to be rearranged by dragging and dropping them into different positions. Taskbar buttons can also be hidden by dragging them off the taskbar.
In Windows Vista with Aero enabled, the ShellToys context menus are now drawn in native Windows style.
In Windows Vista, an option on the Menu & Tool Options page of the ShellToys Control Panel allows icons to be shown beside any ShellToys tools that have been moved to the main context menu.
In Synchronize Folder, each item to be synchronized now has a Properties dialog giving details of the file being added or deleted, or comparing details of the two files involved in a 'replace' action.
You can now choose the action to be taken for the Copy Path tool via an option on the Menu & Tool Options page of the ShellToys Control Panel. This replaces the old 'Always show dialog for Copy Path' option.
Clipboard and AutoType now have Unicode support for clipboard text and filenames captured by Clipboard , and for folder names, captions and text in AutoType.
When playing audio or video files in ShellToys (in Media Info, Play Media Album and Browse Media) the /- keys on the numeric keypad can be used to raise or lower the volume.
ShellToys tools that play audio or video files (in Media Info, Play Media Album and Browse Media) now have smoother handling of DRM-protected files. Although protected files can't be played, these tools now either display an explanatory dialog or, if more appropriate to the tool, skip automatically to the next file in the sequence.
In Batch Rename, collections of renaming settings can be saved as named 'profiles' for easy reuse.
In Copy/Move to Folder, when filenames conflict during a copy or move operation, the prompt dialog now includes the option to copy/move the file giving it a unique name.
Browse Media has a variety of new features and options:
A new Audio Tag Editor allows the tags of multiple audio files to be edited at once.
A new Movie Frame Grabber allows frames from movies to be captured as individual JPEGs or as a single animated GIF.
Movie thumbnails can now animate when the mouse hovers over them, displaying an in-place slideshow of frames from the movie to give an overview of the movie's content.
An added option allows you to play movies in the AutoPreview panel by double-clicking a movie thumbnail rather than single-clicking.
The View menu now includes an Arrange By option, letting you choose how items are listed in the window (such as by name, date or size). This setting is maintained separately for images, movies and audio.
Bookmarks are now listed on a menu, rather than a tab behind the Folders panel, to make bookmarks more accessible.

New in CFi ShellToys 5.2 (Aug 21, 2006)

The ShellToys XP Settings window has had a major redesign, along with varying levels of cosmetic overhaul throughout ShellToys XP.
As part of the redesign, ShellToys XP has edged away from Windows 98/Me/2000 users. Although still compatible with 98/Me/2000, the visual design now assumes a true-color display and support for alpha-blended icons used in Windows XP/Server 2003/Vista. Some aspects of ShellToys XP may therefore look poor on older Windows versions.
In addition to disabling unwanted ShellToys XP menu tools or moving favorite tools to the main context menu, the Configure Menu Items page of the ShellToys XP Settings window now allows the items to be displayed in any order, and separators to be added to the menus.
For users of Windows 2000/XP/Server 2003/Vista, the Personal Folder used to store user-specific settings for ShellToys XP is now created in the Application Data folder. When upgrading from an earlier version of ShellToys XP, the installer moves files from the original location of the Personal Folder (within the ShellToys XP installation folder) to this new folder.
New Dialogs provides easy management of file dialogs (including Microsoft Office dialogs), letting you choose the size and view-style of Open/Save dialogs when they appear. Dialogs also adds a handy toolbar menu containing folders on your Go To Folder list for easy folder navigation in dialogs.
The desktop icon position saver is no longer built into the Control Panel's Display Properties window. Instead a new 'Desktop Icon Positions' item is shown on the context menu when you right-click a blank space on the desktop.
The desktop icon position saver now includes options to manage desktop-icon layouts: you can duplicate, rename and delete saved icon layouts.
Extended Delete now includes a 'negative mask' option, allowing you find files that don't match the specified file mask.
Extended Search & Replace also allows you to search for files that don't match the specified file mask.
Improves the loading-speed and quality of image thumbnails in Browse Media.
Improves the quality of image thumbnails shown on the context menu in Image Size.
You can now reach ShellToys XP's Image Editor directly from the Image Size tool by holding the Ctrl key when clicking the Image Size context-menu item (or the image-preview on the menu).
Browse Media now has a 'Details' tab showing file and EXIF information (if available) for the selected image.
The View Icons window now includes a 'Browser' panel which will find and list all icon files and icon-libraries (such as .exe and .dll files) in the selected folder. Click a filename to view the icons it contains.
The View Icons tool is now available for folders and the folder background, allowing you to browse a folder for icons and icon libraries.
The Properties dialog in View Icons now includes Save As and Custom Export buttons, giving a quick way to save an icon.
Print Folder Listing has been entirely rewritten to produce improved output and provide more options. Printed output is now HTML-based (requiring Internet Explorer 5.5 or higher) and can include file icons. Contents listings and tree structures can also be copied to the clipboard in ASCII or RTF formats, or saved as ASCII, RTF or MHTML files.
Encrypt File now includes an option to create a self-decrypting file, making it possible to distribute encrypted files to non-ShellToys XP users.
The Duplicate File tool now allows more than one copy of the selected file or folder to be created.
In Batch Rename, when using the Construct Sequence tab to create an alphanumeric sequence of filenames, a new Sort menu allows the selected files to be easily sorted by name, date or size before renaming them.
In Play Media Album you can now drag-and-drop a folder into the window to play the audio files it contains.
The video player used in Browse Media and Media Info now supports forward/rewind: hold PageDown to scroll forward or PageUp to scroll backward; combine with the Ctrl key for faster winding. You can use these keys while the movie is playing or paused.
In Media Info, the player window for audio and video files allows you to drag-and-drop multiple files into the window, to play them sequentially in alphabetical order.
In New From Template, when you create a new file from a template and want to open it for editing straight away, you can now choose which application to use from a list of compatible programs.
The Reminders feature of Clock now allows you to set reminders to occur monthly or annually at the same date and time.
The Clock calendar now adjusts its colors according to whether the blue, silver or olive XP theme is used.
Fixes a bug that prevented the Duplicate Folder tool from being 'detached' and shown on the main context menu.
Fixes a bug that caused an exception if Copy Path or Shortcut Target were used and the options to resolve mapped network drives were selected on the Menu & Tool Options page of the ShellToys XP control panel.
Improves support for Windows Vista (based on Vista Ultimate build 5384). The majority of ShellToys XP tools and features can be used in this build of Windows Vista, but we don't claim full compatibility with Vista.
Numerous other improvements and a few minor bug-fixes.