Tag: EXPLORER

If you used Windows XP for a long time (who didn't?), one of the biggest changes when moving to Windows 7 or Vista was the massively-altered Explorer. While the new Explorer introduces some useful new features, it also removed just as many -- which is where Classic Shell comes in! We've covered Classic Shell before, but here's the crib note: Classic Shell restores almost every Windows ...

Rafael Rivera and Paul Thurrott have posted a second look at some of the early changes which have surface in Windows 8 milestone 3. First there was the restyled Welcome Screen, and now it appears that Microsoft is toying with bringing the Ribbon UI to Explorer. The Ribbon, like in Microsoft Word and Excel, is context-aware, adding tabs for specific tasks which apply to the folder you're ...

Competition is a good thing, and the browser arena has been a fierce arena for years now. There are at least four "major" browsers each vying for your attention, along with lots of smaller spin-offs (SRWare Iron or Flock, anyone?). While the browser usage charts we share from time to time show overall browser usage amongst the Web at large, Download Squad readers are not exactly the average ...

Don't get me wrong -- I really enjoy using Zune to listen to music on my desktop computer. When all I want to do is quickly drop a couple of songs or video clips onto my Windows Phone 7 device, however, it's a bit overkill. While my humble little Palm Pre has a USB mass storage mode which lets me copy files onto it like it was any other external hard drive, WP7 devices aren't quite as accessible. ...

Droid Explorer is, at a glance, a dream app for Android owners. As you can see from the screenshot above, it provides a delicious Windows Explorer-powered portal to everything on your phone. It's also free, and open-source. The tools provided by Droid Explorer range from the very handy (browsing the file system, installing/uninstalling apps, backing up and syncing your data) -- through to the ...

SecondShell is a tool that makes window management both less fiddly and more keyboard shortcut oriented. It doesn't actually do a whole lot (it's only 200 kilobytes!), but it adds such handy features that you'll wonder why Windows doesn't include them by default. First, you can resize windows by holding down Alt+Right click and dragging the mouse anywhere in the window. Alt+Left click moves ...

Listary is a quick-search utility that I first heard about back in February. Back then, I wasn't too impressed with it. However, Listary's developers have been hard at work, and they have recently released version 2.0 -- which has some nifty new features. While I cannot find a change log listing all of the new features, at least one feature is certainly worthy of mention. You can now use Listary ...

What the Zuk is a (very) occasional feature, in which I review software that I have been using for many years, and which is instrumental for my work. These are the first tools I install on every new system, the reliable work-horse applications I turn to for every need. In every installment I will try to explain what makes this particular program special, and why I find it so vital for my ...

Yes, this news is obviously a little bit of chest-pounding from the boys in Redmond, but there's no denying the stat is impressive. Internet Explorer 8's SmartScreen filter has blocked more than 1 billion malicious downloads. SmartScreen is one of the many way IE8 is a big upgrade from previous versions of Microsoft's browser, and clearly a feature which is helping combat the rising tide of ...

Just a couple days ago, Microsoft posted a new application on their download site. It's called Microsoft Download Manager, and it's pretty much you would expect from an app with that name. Its features are fairly basic compared to the download managers you're already familiar with like DownThemAll, LeechGet, Orbit, and Free Download Manager. Microsoft's app currently only handles HTTP ...

I love Total Commander. I can't live without it, really. When I realized we've never featured Explorer++, though, I was actually quite surprised. Not everyone wants to spend $38 on a file manager. While plenty of powerful free alternatives exist, Explorer++ is one of the more compelling ones. I know many of you know it, but some of you may not. It is open-source, free, and positively tiny; it ...

So this might not seem obvious to everyone, but as a guy in the trenches I'm not at all surprised by the statement Ars Technica quoted this morning from a new Microsoft whitepaper: "Add-ons cause most browser crashes, accounting for over 70 percent of Internet Explorer 8's crashes. Slowdowns in Internet Explorer 8 are very often caused by add-ons-especially when you open a new browser window or ...

A web browser without tabs? Hard to come by. Windows Explorer, on the other hand, is still pretty much the same pane it's always been. Qmmander is a lightweight, portable alternative. Built on Nokia's QT framework, Qmmander (like many Explorer replacements) adds tab support and split-window views to power up your file management tasks. File browsing is snappy, even when exploring shares on ...

A new version of Total Commander for Windows is available - version 7.50. Total Commander is a file manager / windows explorer replacement that is positively packed to the rafters with features such as side-by-side windows, compression and decompression of most popular (and unpopular formats), a fully featured ftp client, file and folder comparison, parallel port linking (remember that?), ...

If you're looking for a simple, fast, portable file management application to run instead of Windows Explorer, you might want to take Snowbird for a spin. It's less than half a meg in size and includes some features that aren't included in Windows by default. Snowbird's main window is split between a tree view on the left and folder view on the right. Like Vista, breadcrumbs appear as you ...