Category Archives: Shell Extensions

NTFS Links: x64 build

Posted by on October 12, 2011 No comments

Per user request, here goes 64-bit version of NTFS Links utility, which provides shell UI for NTFS Junction Points.

As 64-bit version of Windows operating systems provide two versions of shell explorer, and support both Win32 and x64 platform applications, it is typical to install both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the utility to cover/extend applications of both platforms. Note that 32-bit (Win32) applications can only load and directly interact with 32-bit builds of libraries (DLLs), so 64-bit (x64) applications need a corresponding matching version of the shell extension available.

As the utility provides a shell extension for directory property pages, here comes a curiosity exercise: how Windows 7 uses junction points to cross-map directories under user profile directory, e.g. C:\Users\<username>\Local Settings directory is actually a shortcut to C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local.

Current version of Alax.Info NTFS Links can be downloaded from:

NTFS Links: List junction points under certain directory

Posted by on February 16, 2009 No comments

While NTFS junction points are powerful to relink files without duplicating data and/or moving between disks, they are treated as regular directories by most of software and it may unexpectedly result in conversion of a junction point into a regular directory with implied duplication of data and disk space waste.

This is a quick fix for the NTFS Links shell extension that allows to quickly list created junction points under certain directory, and delete if necessary. The update adds a property page Junction Points to NTFS non-UNC directory properties:

Directory Junction Points Property Page

This is a quick update, so be aware (also my TO DO list):

  • no Russian localization, sorry
  • context menu should also be given another item Open Containing Directory
  • does not work for root directories
  • list items should be OLE draggable
  • there should be a junction point validation feature that checks availability of substitution path and indicates result by an icon
  • I should remove the mess between “soft link” and”junction point” in favor of the latter

Release information:

NTFS Links minor update

Posted by on February 25, 2007 2 comments

I decided yo update NTFS Links to fix an annoying issue several people complained about. If you copy a directory and decide to, yes, copy and not create soft link, you will be still prompted with the same question for every subdirectory inside. Windows gove no option to learn this is actually a subdirectory and not a different operation so the workaround is not as simple as it seems.

The solution is the following: each of the dialogs currently is suppressible using a special check box, which if checked makes dialog don’t appear unless Control key is pressed. Since this version, if unchecked, the dialog box is still suppressible while you hold Shift down. Thus, hold shift and have subdirectories processed with default option without prompt.

The rest of the changes, significant amount of in fact, add no more features. The extension is changed to using Unicode version of APIs (you can expect it to work as much as 1% faster), compiled with new compiler, without dependencies and thus distributable became unexpectedly small, 251K as compared to previous 336K.

What’s new in this build?

  • New: Shift key being hold suppresses prompt dialogs

Application Name: Alax.Info NTFS Links
License: Free for personal use, request commercial licenses via email or contact form
Latest Version: 1.1.2
Download Link: Alax.Info NTFS Links 1.1.2 (251K)

NTFS Links: Alternate data streams

Posted by on February 24, 2007 No comments

Another interesting feature of NTFS file system is alternate data streams, which basically means that a file may be attached extra data such as for example “slave files”. The tricky peculiarity is that data streams are almost invisible to Windows shell, though Windows uses stream to attach version information (Summary property page in file properties) and zone information to mark downloaded files from unsafe locations.

The idea I thought about was that alternate data streams may be useful to create a named copy of file contents, something similar to checkingin to version control system. The idea does not seem to be worth implementation though as it is unpredictable how software (such as word processors) is updating the files. If the file is re-created, the existing alternate data streams would get lost with saving of the new content.

Additionally, a good introduction into NTFS features, including hard links and streams (I am actually surprised I came across these only now):

Shell extension to save screen shots to file with minimal effort

Posted by on December 10, 2006 2 comments

Alax.Info ScreenShot Shell Extensions extend windows shell to provide a helpful command to work with screenshots. A new command “Paste Image as PNG File…” is added to directory context menus when clipboard contains an image.

10-image001.png

User will be prompted to enter file name for the saved image. Should Control key be pressed at the moment of command invocation, the shell extension will auto-name the file using ImageNNN.png format, where NNN is an auto incremented number.

Images are saved in PNG (Portable Network Graphics) format with an automatic color depth reduction to create more compact images for web.

The extension is designed to work with Windows hotkeys PrintScreen and Alt+PrintScreen, which copy a shot of screen or active window into clipboard. The image becomes pasteable into file with this shell extension.

Application Name: Alax.Info ScreenShot Shell Extensions
License: Free for personal use, request commercial licenses via email or contact form
Latest Version: 1.0.0.42
Download Link: Alax.Info ScreenShot Shell Extensions 1.0.0.42 (237K)

Search engines

Posted by on February 25, 2006 1 comment

Quite amusing, this blog shares first two positions with elsdoerfer.info on query for “soft link ntfs” and is 4th on MSN search, 3rd is elsdoerfer.info again. Yahoo search lists elsdoerfer.info but this blog is somewhere far away. This is probably because “soft links” are better known as “symbolic links”.
The mentioned elsdoerfer.info is a very similar utility, with a brief introduction to the link features, however ours one seems to be a bit more feature rich. This site also mentions a great artcile on Shell-Shocked (recommended).

NTFS Links Update

Posted by on February 10, 2006 2 comments

Multilanguage support added and Russian translation is also put into this update. No features added.

Screenshot 1
Russian locale is detected automatically but you can also overrdide through registry:

Key Name: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Alax.Info\NTFS Links\Locale
Value Name: Default
Value Type: DWORD
Value: 1049 (decimal) for Russian

Translation is implemented as a satellite DLL, so more languages are possible if anyone would ever like to make a translation.

Download:

http://alax.info/blog-dist/AlaxInfoNtfsLinksSetup-1.1.1.msi (336K)