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Ivan's apparently offering a 50% discount on Desk & Archive through the end of October.

I've tried dozens of themes over the years but have always stuck with b0se Classic Final v2. I've found nothing easier on the eyes than the Ergonomic variation.

Powerdesk 6

I run into something simple like the inability to open a zip archive as a folder and I am back in TC again .

After reading about DOpus & XYplorer for years, I finally took advantage of the DC discount last month and bought XYplorer. I've been using Powerdesk for ten years, and in the last few years have tried out and quickly abandoned dozens of file managers, sticking with Powerdesk.

I guess I should have tried out XYplorer before buying it, but I wanted to cut through the procrastination and so I took a leap of faith. I was flabbergasted to quickly find out that XYplorer can't open a zip file as a file folder--countless other file managers can do this, including Powerdesk and many other free ones. To add to my dismay, when I brought this up in the XYplorer forum, DonL made it clear that he doesn't think this is an important feature to add, despite the fact that it's one of the most-requested features.

I work with zip files a lot and have become habituated to working with them in my file manager. I find the idea of having to use a separate archive manager after having just spent what is for me a lot of $ on a file manager to be really distasteful. For now at least, I'm back to Powerdesk.

You might also want to check out Default Programs Editor:

Features

    * File Type Settings:
          o Add, Edit, and Delete context menu items
          o Edit file type information (such as icon and description)
          o Change an extension's associated file type
    * Autoplay Settings:
          o Add, Edit, and Delete autoplay handler programs
          o Change which autoplay options are available for any media type
          o Change the default autoplay handler
    * Default Programs Settings:
          o Add or Remove default associations (possible to check, but not un-check, in Windows)
    * Additional Features:
          o Disable the "Search web for unknown extension" dialog
          o Standalone utility, or install as a Control Panel applet
          o Make direct changes to the system registry, or export edits as .reg files
          o Designed for Vista and Windows 7 with UAC support

If you're using Firefox, try eBay - Item Description - Save Enlarged Pix.

FWIW, a portable solution is Microsoft's Virtual CD-ROM Control Panel. It's old & clunky, and only supports a few formats, but I've used it several times and it works.

I found this to be a good guide to using it, and it includes the download link.

Innuendo, thanks for the tip. I researched the MAF add-on and it looks good!

I've been saving ebay pages to MHT for years using the UnMHT addon for Firefox.

I'm glad to see this thread. I've been using KeyNote for years, but I'm in one my periods where I'm itching for something else.

My minimum requirement for a tree-based outliner is that it have tabs--there's no way I want all of the half-dozen totally different topics I track in one big tree.

I tried TreeDBNotes when it first came out years ago, but my outline file got corrupted after a few weeks of use. I also recall that the file was encrypted or in some binary format that prevented me from recovering the uncorrupted data.

Anyone thinking of moving from KeyNote to something else might be interested in ABC Amber KeyNote Converter, which I just discovered last week but haven't tried yet.

codecrafter,

Wow! Brilliant! Thanks so much for sharing the fruits of your labor with us!

I just followed your instructions and they worked perfectly. The one thing I would add is to make sure in the Browsers options to select Mozilla as the preferred browser.

Keep an eye out for some DonationCredits. Thanks a million!!!

Cheers,
Twinkler

AviDemux along with ffmpeg or mencoder is an excellent, free, solution.

I second Ehtyar! Avidemux is not only free, but open-source as well.

MuldeR has a Windows build, screenshots, links to guides/tutorials, and this info:

Avidemux supports a great number of file types, including AVI, MPEG, MP4/MOV, OGM, ASF/WMV, MKV and FLV.
It also provides a great number of video filters, e.g. resize, deinterlace, IVTC, sharpen and denoise.
Furthermore Avidemux ships with various encoders built-in, such as x264, Xvid, LAME, TwoLAME and Aften.

- besides, both IE7Pro and Orbit are for Internet Explorer,
not for Firefox which patteo is using ;-)

I've been using Orbit with Firefox contentedly for years, with around a 95% success rate in downloading what I ask it to.

The latest version floats a GetIt button next to streaming media embedded on a web page.

For the record, it does have a couple annoying traits:

1. Every time it upgrades it recreates its start menu program group that I keep deleting.
2. The latest upgrade hijacked my 404 page without asking, and I had to go into the settings to undo it.

Tranglos,

What a great concept, and so well articulated!

I've been collecting bookmarks for "virtual" or "tagging" file managers but haven't had the time yet to really investigate them. For what little it may be worth, here's my list of apps not already mentioned:

Detalizer
TagAndFacet
TaggedFrog
TaggTool
TagLauncher

Thanks for the food for thought!

Powerfox, I apologize for not replying yet to your private message asking me to share my experience with this. I'm crazy busy with work right now, but I'll dig out my notes and post them in the next week or two for the benefit of you and anyone else who may be interested.

Alright, since we're piling on....

Steven, when I first read one of your posts a few months ago (maybe in the note-taking thread?), I thought "Wow, what a detailed, thoughtful, helpful, post! Who is this guy?" I've continued since then to enjoy reading a good number of your posts. Many thanks!

cyberdiva & Steven,

Many thanks for sharing your experiences with Linkman. I just installed it, imported my Powermarks, and tweaked the interface.

However, I hit a brick wall looking for a way to display a list of all of my keywords the way Powermarks displays what it calls a dictionary. Do you know if Linkman can do this? If not, I don't see myself using it.

Steven, I use my AutoHotkey script every day and it (usually!) works fine. I'm sorry it didn't work for you, but your switch to Linkman seems to have made that moot.

I just discovered this thread in the newsletter.

Although I haven't used SideSlide yet, I do have it on my short list of programs to check out. I came across it a few months ago while looking for launchers. Even though I'm pretty happy with Rocketdock & KKMenu, every now and then I get that itch to see if there's something better.

Mouser, thanks for the update! I tried LBC last year but stuck with RocketDock; now I'll take a close look again.

FYI, LBC's home page says that the current version's date is Nov 03, 2007 instead of 2008.

From Lifehacker Is Looking for AutoHotkey Coders:

We're looking for a few good AutoHotkey coders interested in contributing to open-source projects to be developed and distributed right here at Lifehacker. If you're interested, join the newly minted Lifehacker Coders Google Group and let's hammer out some details.

I just installed and tried out Power Favorites. Although my overall impression is favorable and it might appeal to many people, there's a simple feature missing that makes the program ususable to me.

Powermarks enables selecting which fields appear as columns in the main bookmark list, and I depend on one of those columns being the tags associated with each bookmark. Power Favorites decides for you what fields are displayed, and tags are not one of them.

I realize that the tags of the currently highlighted bookmark are displayed in the bottom pane, but that’s not useful to me in browsing my bookmarks.

By the way, I noticed that the create date for imported Powermarks was often incorrect.

Hi Marc, nice to see you here.

Power Favorites, as you present it on your website, looks like a great program. I didn't try it out because I was looking for a program that can import my 4000 bookmarks from Powermarks, and it doesn't seem that yours can. (Although I have the programming skills to convert a Powermarks file to whatever the Power Favorites file format is, most people don't.)

As mentioned above, both miTaggedMarks and Netvouz can do this.

It's not clear to me from your site if your search facility is find-as-you-type; i.e. do the search results narrow with each letter I type into the search box, or do I have to type in a whole word and click that binoculars button? If the latter, I would consider that a major deficit and would encourage you to change that.

I agree with superboyac and patteo that Powermarks is about as close to perfect as programs get. In my opinion, anybody who can replicate or add to its features, while maintaining its simplicity and enabling importing of existing Powermarks bookmarks, would be doing a great thing.

superboyac, I suggest doing the following:

1. in your Powermarks options, in the Startup section, check "Start Powermarks when Windows starts"
2. in your Powermarks options, in the Hotkeys section, set "Add bookmark from browser" to alt+ctrl+=
3. if you haven't already, install AutoHotkey and read the tutorial for basic info on how it works
4. create a new file called hotkeys.ahk, copy the code below into it (modified for your hotkey), and save it
5. set the hotkey to be defined for your system at startup by adding a shortcut to hotkeys.ahk to your startup folder
6. reboot

[copy or print]
^+=::
   Clipsave = %Clipboard%                    ; save the current clipboard contents
   WinActivate Firefox                       ; move to the Firefox window
   WinWaitActive Firefox                     ; wait until the Firefox window is active
   Send !d^c                                 ; copy the page's URL
   Send !^=                                  ; simulate the hotkey for "Add bookmark from browser"
   WinWaitActive Bookmark Properties         ; wait until the new blank powermark appears
   Send {Tab}                                ; move to the URL field
   ControlGetFocus, ControlName              ; wait until we're at the URL field
   loop
   {
      if ControlName = Edit7
         break
      sleep 50
      ControlGetFocus, ControlName
   }
   Send ^v                                   ; paste in the URL
   Send !f                                   ; hit the Fetch button
   WinWaitActive Updating Powermark          ; wait until the fetch finishes
   ControlGetText, ButtonText, Button1
   loop
   {
      if ButtonText = OK
         break
      sleep 50
      ControlGetText, ButtonText, Button1
   }
   Send {Enter}                              ; close the fetch window
   WinWaitActive Bookmark Properties         ; wait until the fetch window closes
   Send {Tab}{Del}^+{End}{Del}               ; delete the fetched keywords so I can enter my own
   Clipboard = %Clipsave%                    ; restore the previous clipboard contents
   return

Now, Powermarks and AutoHotkey will run in the background. Hitting shift+ctrl+= will run the code associated with that hotkey. One of the things that code will do is simulate pressing alt+ctrl+=, which you've set in Powermarks as the hotkey to add a bookmark. You don't have to mess with compiling the script.

I owe you more than I can ever repay for your contribution to this site, especially the note-taking project. Plus, like you, Powermarks showed me the brilliance (and unfortunate rarity!) of find-as-you-type. So I'd be more than happy to work with you until you get this running.

TucknDar, do you use AutoHotkey? If so, and you don't mind hitting a hotkey instead of pressing a button, try my script above and let me know if it works for you.

patteo & TucknDar, I've always preferred hitting Alt-M (my defined keystroke) to add a new bookmark over moving the mouse to press a button that takes up room on a browser toolbar.

And relying on an extension to implement a button re-creates a dependency on Firefox that could fail with a future Firefox upgrade.

Nevertheless, as I said, tomorrow I'll try compiling my script and see if I can attach it to a button for the Firefox users who want one.

TucknDar, I don't think it works that way. You launch the program at startup and it runs in the background, waiting for a hotkey or button push to trigger it to add a bookmark.