Winkey + E in FindeXer Solved!

April 6, 2008

hello all

just wanted to post here that i've practically solved the winkey + e problem that has plagued all those wanting to adopt findexer as a replacement to treeview in explorer!

for those who don't know what i'm talking about, this pic should explain:

so what is the solution? well, at the moment the problem is that the winkey+e combination brings up explorer, which in itself explicitly activates the tree view. clicking on my computer, or on my documents (say in the start menu) WILL bring up findexer as the default bar (note that to do this, the 'set findexer as default view' option must be selected in findexer options)

so explorer is out... but what if we could override the winkey combination to bring up My Computer, instead of explorer? then, with findexer set as a default view, we should be set! :D

so i looked around a bit and found this great powerful program called AutoHotkey ( http://www.autohotkey.com/ ), which is AMAZING in terms of functionality... this program essentially lets you make scripts that you can execute to do things according to keyboard shortcuts, which can include overriding default winkey combinations... neat huh? there's a ton of other stuff, to give credit to whoever made this, but it's quite detailed...

i cbf'd reading through all the options so i just had a look at the essentials and whipped up a quick and dirty script that does the job with no hassle (Y)

Long story short:

i made standalone exe's that don't need anything installed, they can run on their own. There are two flavours:

winkey+E, to replace the default shortcut; OR

winkey + W... i thought that if i did this people could keep the default shortcut while still having some new functionality.

TWO DOWNSIDES:

1) these standalones use about 5MB in memory... not perfect, but if you want to use findexer, perhaps it's worth it? up to you... with most computers now anyway most people shouldn't notice this anyway... executes instantly so there's no delay or anything

2) this brings up My Computer, which is what the default winkey + E does anyway - BUT this new method will not allow you to open up more than one window at a time! wtf? well you can't open like more than 1 at a time

BUT

you CAN bring up a new window after navigating to another folder in the 1st window you bring up.

let me explain if that wasn't clear: you bring up My Computer the first time... and you MUST navigate to a folder before you can use the shortcut again... this is NOT a limitation of the script/standalone, but windows itself

try it yourself, using the start menu, you can't open more than 1 My Computer window at a time... but as soon as you double click on a folder you're fine, and can bring up another window.. you just can't if the window still shows My Computer

SO you can still use the shortcut, find a file and copy it, then use the shortcut again to find a destination and paste... typical things like that are fine... you'll get what i mean after using it for a bit

to kill the process, you have to use task manager (look for winkey+e, or winkey+w, depending on what you use)

if you want this to run on startup, place it somewhere on your comp and make a shortcut in your startup folder of your start menu.

to those scared that this might be a virus or something... all i can say is, trust me ;) or wait for feedback from some brave people :p

hooray for progress... futurama is awesome! :D

Winkey + E

Winkey + W