Fooling Around // Software Production Line

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)

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):

• A Programmer’s Perspective on NTFS 2000 Part 1: Stream and Hard Link
• A Programmer’s Perspective on NTFS 2000 Part 2: Encryption, Sparseness, and Reparse Points

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.

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)

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).

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

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)

An update of NTFS Links is available, some shell operations on soft linked directories acquired new options:

• An option to create move a soft link when a soft linked directory is being moved
• An option to create a soft link when a directory is being copied
• An option to copy a soft link when a soft linked directory is being copied
• An option to delete link when a soft linked directory is being deleted

Great news is that extensions apply also on clipboard operations, that is you can copy/paste directory and have a prompt to create a soft link (when possible). New windows are optional and should not be annoying:

Download:

http://alax.info/blog-dist/AlaxInfoNtfsLinksSetup-1.1.0.msi (333K)

Inspired by today’s conversation with Ilya, a new bunch of features is coming as a part of NTFS Links update. It will hook into shell’s copy/move/rename/delete operations suggesting useful options. Stay tuned.

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