Flying Cow

@trinireddman:

Fullscreen... great idea, thanks!

@Dream_Team:

An .OCX is fine? That way you wouldn't need SetParent.

Wish-list and a few thoughts, for whatever they are worth:

Of course integration with explorer (XP and Vista) would be great, but if that can't be achieved then perhaps a right-click context menu in explorer is a decent alternative so that when you right click on a item in explorer you have the option to "View in Flying Cow".

Keeping memory usage down would be great, also of course. If I use Flying Cow to browse through images in a folder containing a lot of images, 200 for example, memory usage on my CPU goes to around 100%.

In terms of being able to page through PDFs, perhaps a Quickview-like app is needed (which would be a great development on its own).

It would be great to have the images in Flying Cow be clickable, both to open in their native apps and to quickview them, and also to scroll through without using the scrollbars all the time. Could you also, I'm wondering, click on a folder in Flying Cow, and then go into that folder's contents? That is, navigate

It would be great to have all items in a folder represented not just pictures, movies, etc. Thats is, have Flying Cow show folders, compressed files, Office docs, etc. I assume this would at least require use of high-res icons, but most users do that by now anyway.

It would be great to have a sidebar like in finder/findexer to navigate through Folders, that could be toggled on and off, instead of the one button currently in use.

On the GUI, the more closely it can resemble OSX, in my view, the better, including smoother fonts, having the scrollbar overlayed across the images, sharper-looking file list panel, etc.

Thank you. I know many of these ideas have been mentioned before, and they are certainly not original to me, so please accept this post in the constructive spirit in which it is offered. Flying Cow is a remarkable piece of work.

#489819

Oh an ocx is good, but I think having to be admin to use DllRegServer on Vista is annoying (Anyway, the whole UAC thing is annoying), plus I have already used OCXes

But hell yeah I would love it

If you can provide good events (CurrentItemChanged etc ...) and other functions it might be able to turn out good

#489829

hey great idea;

instead of building an app from the ground up y not focus on what microsoft has already given you. vista explorer has all the perks of finder -bar the visual appeal. what i suggest is that you skin explorer to have the preview pane be horizontal on the top just like leopard's finder keep the nav pane to the left and have the folders to the bottom. really if i had the programming savvy i would do it myself. maybe it can be achieve by a reg hack i dunno but what i do know is that this would prove to be a much easier task that creating something completely new. and the upside if one succeeds then all one would have to do to get the full leopard finder look is apply one of the many WB skin to it.

so summarizing; modify vista's explorer, make the preview pane horizontal, keep the nav pane to the left and have the folder view beneath the preview pane. or if u feel creatinve have options the same way outlook has option

#489871

@frasbyte:

Problems:

I don't have Vista (and I'm not likely to install it).

I don't have WindowBlinds (I prefer plain MSStyles or TrueTransparency).

Microsoft Explorer is not as customizable as I would want to. But I understand it is possible to include the folder views of Explorer in your own apps, the only thing here is I don't know how

Explorer Band Object would put the preview below the file list and also I have no way to set which file is selected on Explorer itself, there are some hacks I think but I don't like doing undocumented hacks which won't work on future versions of Windows.

Just look at Stacks Docklet which works fine in ObjectDock and mostly fine in RocketDock, but not in RK Launcher. The best choice would be to write a dock, but that's kinda too much work to do.

Instead writing a Finder clone is much easier, not really *that* easy, but at least easier, and at least to me is also easier than trying to fit it into explorer.

However, the sources are available for anyone wanting them, so anyone who has the skills to write a Vista Explorer plugin can do so integrating Flying Cow into it.

Maybe I'll do an .ocx version of it, and I'm thinking about a port to VB.NET (in such case with some limitations, for e.g. forget about .pdf and video previews). Mostly I want to do an .ocx version so anyone will be able to include Flying Cow easily in their apps.

#489872

An open source ocx that allows you to get coverflow, wherever you want like mac os x, seriously :

that would rock

But maybe you should then change it a little to something more windowsish and do things cool that coverflow doesn't

If you can use ocxes, just put the IE HTML one (note the same in XP and Vista !), make it point to C: and boom you will have an Explorer pane !

The problem is that I don'tkno how to retrive current folder name and all ... I'm sure that there is a better way than the html one.

#489883

If you're switching over to VB.Net, you can get video previews and pdf previews if you decide to go down the WPF / .net 3.0 route. I've started dabbling in that and video previews are a snap with all the fancy reflections included.

I actually started a explorer replacement some time ago, integrated tabs, breadcrumbs, a 'finder sidebar-esque, er...sidebar - but geared it more toward a Gnome look so I know how time consuming this will be. If You need some code examples of hooking into system menus, etc. just let me know and I'll send you over a copy of what I have.

I wish you all the best in this mate and I'm with Dream_Team. Being able to drop this into our programs would just be the cat's meow! Really looking forward to seeing where you take this project.

#489890

Along my journeys I came across this link that will add .psd preview support for explorer. Hope it helps, you might be able to hook into it, or include the .dlls and pull the preview from the shell, depending on how you go about getting your previews.

Argh!! The dreaded double-post....nice.

#489891

Microsoft Explorer is not as customizable as I would want to.

MS Explorer is incredibly customizable. Look upon the shell interfaces in MSDN.

#489912

A vb.net conversion would be awesome! Thanks for all your hard work.

#489917

Has anybody got a working link

#489989

Has anybody got a working link

try here :http://www.box.net/shared/6k0fgo8oww

if you read the previous page,ok I hope this works,good luck

#490000

Nexplorer integration is a really cool solution !!!

Hope you get in contact with the author for a quick development..

Great work Matias !!!

#491997

..mmh, nice app!! any place to d/l it for testing please?

#493076

wow...such a wonderful project.It would be more perfect if i can click next image to do transition for next preview (not clicking the horizontal scroll bar). i tried your pre-release 2007-11-28.

Awesome!!!treeview would be nice 2 so we don't need to open a folder (just one click from a folder in treeview, scan and wow you make us crying...lolz).0_^

#493360

@frasbyte:

Problems:

I don't have Vista (and I'm not likely to install it).

If you use Virtual PC or Virtual Box to install vista?? ^o^

Please re upload Flying Cow

Byes & Good Luck ñ_ñ

#493415

Here are some suggestions:

-integrate into a leopard - finder interface

-allow sidebar navigation

-improve button quality

-improve image load times

-increase supported file formats

other than that, AWESOME APP!!!!

#494941

Hmm, Nexplorer is very slow and buggy.

I would love it to see flying cow in windows-explorer like the Quizo Apps, Styler and Findexer, because it is fast, stable, customable and 100% in windows integrated

#495195

1

#495196

Same here.

Where are u matonga?

#495213