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Enhanced File Dialog

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Darwin:
Thought I'd posted about this in the past (but can find no evidence that I did...). Has anyone else tried Stardock's Enhanced File Dialog? It's currently only available as part of the Object Desktop Suite BUT it is an excellent dialog extender - and I have actually purchased licenses for four others, File-Ex, XfilesDialog, DirectFolders and Places Bar Wizard. The last works with Office apps and runs nicely alongside EFD. This is desireable because EFD does not work with Office dialogs.

I've written to Stardock encouraging them to consider releasing a stand-alone version - I can't see myself renewing my Object Desktop subscription (I flirted with WindowBlinds for a stretch but returned to my Windows Classic minimalist desktop after a few months) and I'd like to continue to benefit from ongoing development work on EFD. I *hope* they will consider my request. Anyway, just wondered if I am the only one that thinks that it's great!

Mike

PS Direct Folders is great - have it installed on my second notebook while File-Ex is on a third! I like XfilesDialog a lot but don't have anywhere to run it at the moment!

cranioscopical:
Thanks for the alert!
So far, File-Ex suits me best, out of those that I've tried.
My trouble with utilities is that I get so accustomed to whatever I'm using that 'different' tends to mask 'better' when trying something else.
Do you mind saying what you see as the main advantage of Stardock's Enhanced File Dialog? I'd be interested to know.

Darwin:
Hi Chris,

Ummm..., er...., ah... Enhanced File Dialog "Enhance(s) your common file dialogs with additional features, including most recently used folders, shortcuts, sorting options, custom sizing, text shortcuts, grid lines, and more! " As far as I can tell, it doesn't even have a website devoted to it - I cribbed the above from the history file.

What I like best about it is that it resizes my dialogs and makes the places bar much more useful - something that none of the other dialog extenders that I have tried do. It gives you the same flexibility that the Office 2003 (and XP?) places bar provides and enables it in all dialog boxes. You can set the app to ignore specific applications (Scansoft/Nuance's PDF Converter must be ignored for example as the zdplus.exe component crashes when EFD modifies its dialogs) and you can force EFD to hook into other processes that aren't automaticlly enhanced, Foxit Reader for example. The recent folders and recent files are nicely implemented as well - links on the places bar. All in all, I like it because it is configureable.

Here's a screenshot of my Notepad "save as" dialog:

Enhanced File Dialog

cranioscopical:
I'll look into it some more, I'd certainly like to modify the places bar in MS dialogs.
Thanks for taking the time to reply!

Darwin:
Just an update - I uninstalled Enhanced Dialogs this morning... I'm a bit gutted about doing so BUT it has resoved two issues on my notebook, one hoped for and one entirely unexpected. I have a 16 bit program that refused to cough up any open, save or other "browse to a location" type dialogs. Ripping out Enhanced Dialogs resolved that issue nicely. Removing it ALSO got rid of a seriously annoying problem that I was having and that I had never connected to ED: whenever I tried to open or save files in Notepad (and a restricted set of other applications, the names of which escape me), I would be asked to log into first a webdav folder that I use for work and then into my MS Live account. I had to hit cancel a number of times in order be able to perform the operation that I wanted to perform. It was very annoying, not to mention disturbing, and now it's gone...

I've reverted back to XFilesDialog and it doesn't feature either of these annoyances.

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