[link] Nuonsoft Shellenhancer

http://www.nuonsoft.com/shellenhancer/

ShellEnhancer is an application designed to enhance the default shell of Windows and to make your life easier.

ShellEnhancer includes two types of taskswitcher (Enhanced TaskSwitcher and Mosaic TaskSwitcher) which you can use to replace the default Windows Alt+Tab taskswitcher.

ShellEnhancer allows you to make your own tasks. Tasks consist of a number of commands which get executed one after the other. Available commands include: insert text, send keystroke, manipulate windows, run program, start screensaver, lock workstation and many other.

With X-Window style moving and resizing you don't have to move your mouse to a corner of a window to move or resize it.

Other features include: making any window transparent, always on top, keep focus. This can also be automated with the Auto Managed Windows feature.

NOTE: ShellEnhancer 1.0 is still in BETA stage.

Latest version is ShellEnhancer 1.0 Beta. Freeware

Mosaic TaskSwitcher (Exposé-like feature)

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Topic tagged.

Pe8er

#122300

#122302

Pretty F8cking cool!

#122315

nice, will download @ home!

#122380

Wow, this is a tough decision. The beta of Shellenhancer draws the mosaic feature much, much faster than iEx on my computer. Unfortunately, Shellenhancer doesn't have the asthetics that iEx already has (and the stuff Expire will incorporate in the future). Shellenhancer draws a table with separate sectors for each program on an ugly, black background. Each space not occupied by a program contains an even uglier red "no" sign.

I can't decide if the speed beats the asthetics.

Plus, you can't set the mosaic to initiate when the cursor moves to a corner of the screen - only hotkeys.

#122529

Don't be dissatisfied! This is only a beta.

#122577

Originally posted by sen@Mar 1 2004, 09:31 PM

Don't be dissatisfied! This is only a beta.

Are you the creator?

#122639

What I like about this which should have been a function in XP to begin with is the function to hold down a key like ALT and drag a window from anywhere.

#122743

Unfortunately, they haven't released a new version in quite a while... not in the last 4, 5 months or so. I use Shellenhancer regularly because it's the only application besides iEx that automatically sets inactive windows to be transparent. You can make windows become transparent using a particular keyboard shortcut etc with various other apps, but nothing that will globally make all windows of a particular program switch back and forth depending on their inactive/active state.

#122758

Well, I haven't released a new version of ShellEnhancer for several reasons.

A first reason is that I'm currently working on another project (which is almost done) and another reason is that I have to spread my releases because cost for my bandwidth of my webserver is increasing

But, I certainly have not stopped the development of ShellEnhancer and certainly will release new versions

#122911

Originally posted by Marc G@Mar 2 2004, 09:42 AM

Well, I haven't released a new version of ShellEnhancer for several reasons.

A first reason is that I'm currently working on another project (which is almost done) and another reason is that I have to spread my releases because cost for my bandwidth of my webserver is increasing

But, I certainly have not stopped the development of ShellEnhancer and certainly will release new versions

Ooo, I'm glad to hear that. Glad to see you're around on Aqua-Soft.

I've got a few questions/bugs with ShellEnhancer if you wouldn't mind hearing them:

1. Does it hook into the graphics card engine, (example: use nvidia's built-in capability for setting window transparency) -- would this be any faster than what you're doing now?

2. I have explorer.exe set to be an auto-managed window (turn transparent when inactive, opaque when active). If I have a few (4+) windows open and I'm copying and pasting and/or switching relatively rapidly between them, I regularly get a windows dll intialization error (just watch, now I won't be able to reproduce it)...

ok, I'll post a screenshot the next time I get the error... maybe you know what I'm talking about?

#122966

I'm still not sure what triggers this error, but I do know that it happens often.

Then, ShellEnhancer will pop up a tiny window saying "break"

After clicking the Ok button, this message will pop up:

#122988

Ooo, I'm glad to hear that.  Glad to see you're around on Aqua-Soft.

I've got a few questions/bugs with ShellEnhancer if you wouldn't mind hearing them:

I certainly don't mind

1. Does it hook into the graphics card engine, (example: use nvidia's built-in capability for setting window transparency) -- would this be any faster than what you're doing now?

No, I don't do anything graphics card specific. I just use the standard transparency option that is available in Windows 2000 and XP and I'm pretty sure the NVidia drivers hook themself into this system, so that whenever you use transparent windows, the NVidia driver kicks in.

I'll try to find out if I'm right or wrong on this issue. If you have any interesting links or so regarding this, please let me know.

2. I have explorer.exe set to be an auto-managed window (turn transparent when inactive, opaque when active).  If I have a few (4+) windows open and I'm copying and pasting and/or switching relatively rapidly between them, I regularly get a windows dll intialization error (just watch, now I won't be able to reproduce it)...

ok, I'll post a screenshot the next time I get the error... maybe you know what I'm talking about?

I'm not sure which error you're talking about, so if you get that error again, please post a screenshot.

I'm also aware that using transparency on large windows can have a large performance hit, but unfortunatly there is nothing I can do about this. It's just the way Windows implements this transparency.

But, the good news is that NuonSoft ShellEnhancer for Windows 'Longhorn' will have much more 'eye-candy' features without a big performance impact For example, transparent windows, animating windows, ... will probably incure almost no performance hit.

#122991

One thing I would like to see in Nuon ShellEnhancer is to be able to turn off the top bitmap in the alt+tab replacement, the one that shows up when you aren't using a visual style. I'd also like to be able to make the icons in that window bigger.

#122993

Ah, now I know what error you're talking about.

The error is basically a safeguard to prevent Windows from becoming unresponsive. Let me explain a bit more.

To implement all those features in ShellEnhancer, a lot of hooking needs to be done. This hooking is implemented in the ShellEnhancer.dll. This DLL communicates with the main ShellEnhancer application by means of messages. I have put a timeout on these messages, so that when I don't get an answer within this timeout, that error-messagebox is shown.

If this timeout mechanism wasn't there, you can almost be sure that your Windows GUI would become completely unresponsive when I don't get an answer on a certain message, because the ShellEnhancer DLL is hooked onto each running program.

I do get that error myself from time to time and I've other users that also get the error from time to time.

For the final 1.0 release I'll try to see what I can do about this and find a way to solve this.

#122996

Originally posted by smoke@Mar 2 2004, 04:38 PM

One thing I would like to see in Nuon ShellEnhancer is to be able to turn off the top bitmap in the alt+tab replacement, the one that shows up when you aren't using a visual style. I'd also like to be able to make the icons in that window bigger.

I can add an option to hide the banner at the top of the Enhanced TaskSwicther when you're not using visual styles.

About bigger icons:

the problem is windows in Windows only have a small icon (16x16) and/or a big icon (32x32) associated with them. So, I can't really make the icon bigger unless you mean to simply scale the icons to 48x48. But scaling wouldn't look that good i guess.

#122997

From what I have seen the window icon most of the time simply uses the default application icon so it would not be able to show any sizes that that icon contains other than 16x16 or 32x32 even if it contains them?

Just curious, I've changed a lot of my applications to have icons that go all the way up to 128x128 and the larger size gets used wherever needed in the shell or Y'z Dock.

#123024

I'll take a look at it.

#123036

interesting... thanks!

#123081

A new version of NuonSoft ShellEnhancer has been released today.

This new version contains lots of new features and bug-fixes. The following are a few major new features:

* Run tasks with Mouse Gestures.

* Run tasks with Screen Corners.

* Enhanced TaskSwitcher now includes a list layout.

* The backend is completely rewritten from scratch.

* Quicker Enhanced AltTab repsonse.

* And much more...

Visit http://www.nuonsoft.com/shellenhancer/what...ersion_2.0_beta to get a list of all the new features and bug-fixes.

For more information about ShellEnhancer 2.0 Beta, check out our site at http://www.nuonsoft.com.

EDIT: There seems a bug in this forum, i cannot get the URL and LIST tags to work.

#188163

Originally posted by Marc G@Jul 10 2004, 08:45 AM

A new version of NuonSoft ShellEnhancer has been released today.

thank you! it's really nice.

(i know it's a bad manner but do you plan to release the source code?)

#189293

For the moment, i'm not planning on releasing the source code.

ShellEnhancer is such a complex program and when I release the source code, I probably well get lots of emails regarding the code because of its complexity.

#191120

Really enjoying your software Pretty small memory footprint for all that it does. Thanks for releasing it!

#192924

Post content removed.

Please do not bump such old threads. If you have a problem with this app - contact its authors directly.

Pe8er

#263617