WhereIsIt
is an application written for Windows operating systems, and designed
to help you maintain and organize a catalog of your computer media
collection, including CD-ROMs, audio CDs, diskettes, removable drives,
hard drives, network drives, DVDs, or any other present or future
storage media Windows can access as a drive. The primary goal for
WhereIsIt is to provide access to the contents of cataloged disks, even
when they are not available on the system, or even not your own. You
can browse their contents, search for items you need, use imported
descriptions and thumbnails, and organize data using categories, flags
etc.
· Suitable for beginners and advanced users
WhereIsIt
was designed to be a very adjustable program with lots of options for
power users, as well as quick and easy to use with predefined default
settings and wizards for all those who don't want to get their hands
dirty.
· Well thought-out user interface with multi-language support
WhereIsIt's user interface is one of its most praised qualities. Easy
to use, familiar Explorer-like user interface with clear overview of
available functions, adjustable toolbar, columns to choose between, and
extensive use of object menus (right mouse click) to let you quickly
access command you need. Want to see item's description or assigned
thumbnail image? Just leave mouse pointer on it for a moment, it will
popup as a tool-tip.
Not just that, WhereIsIt's user interface
can be used in any of the supported languages, dialogs will adjust to
translated text. Support for new languages can be downloaded in a form
of small language files, or even created by users themselves by
translating the program to a new language.
· Manageable catalog files
WhereIsIt doesn't use large and complex databases, all information is
stored in a single catalog (.ctf) file, easily transferable to another
computer, a friend, a public forum... as well as easy to backup. Share
your data the easy way. Catalogs don't need to be installed in any way,
they can just simply be opened in the program as document files, even
on someone else's computer, while still retaining full functionality.
Internal catalog file structure is optimized for very efficient access
and small total size, allowing fast searches and small memory
footprint, even with very large catalogs. For example, 30.000 files and
folders (that's about five heavily populated CD-ROMs) will result in a
catalog file approximately
1 MB in size - details may vary, depending on data structure and selected scanning options.
· Detailed information about every file, folder, or disk
Every item in catalog includes detailed basic information about files
and folders you would come to expect, like name, size, date, file
attributes and similar, but WhereIsIt adds to that its own information
it provides as a catalog program. For example, every item can include
up to 32 KB textual description, a small thumbnail image, you can
assign items custom-defined, multi-level categories or flags, you can
even assign them so-called alias names, under which are they known in
catalog - for example, if the real file name is to cryptic. When
displayed in WhereIsIt, items can be colored according their type,
assigned categories or flags... All of those can be used to find items
you are looking for, or just make browsing your disk images a lot
simpler and more fun.
· Internal support for many compressed file formats
Many of the often used compressed file formats can be handled during
media scan, including ZIP, ARJ, RAR, CAB, LHA/LZH, TAR, ARC, ACE, ZOO,
GZIP, BZIP2, 7ZIP, CBZ, CBR, PAK, HA, JAR, SFX... If so selected,
compressed files can be presented as folders, showing their content
inside. Files compressed inside archives can be extracted right out
from WhereIsIt to any folder, or they can be viewed or launched with
associated program with one click!
· Automatic description and thumbnails importing
Description Plugins One of WhereIsIt most powerful features are
description and thumbnail plugins, in charge of importing descriptions
and images while media is being scanned and stored in the catalog. This
way, you can have your files and folders equipped with descriptions
right after scanning completes. Based on source type, descriptions are
automatically attached either to files themselves, to their parent
folders, other files in the folder, etc. Standard description plugins
handle importing from more than 60 file types and other sources,
including files like File_id.diz, Descript.ion, 00index.txt, Files.bbs,
they can browse and extract details from most documents, graphics and
audio files, including MP3s (sampling, play time, ID3 tags...), Audio
CDs (CDDB database, Cdplayer.ini), MS Office documents, Adobe Acrobat
files, executable files and fonts, and many many more. Details about
graphics files not only include their size and color depth, a small
thumbnail can be imported in catalog as well, possibly together with
digital camera info and other comments embedded inside.
As if all
this wouldn't be enough, there is even more - you can develop your own
description and thumbnail plugins to handle additional types of sources
and files WhereIsIt doesn't handle yet at this time, or you can
download plugins others have written and made them available for others
to use.
· Built-in media recognition system
WhereIsIt
supports any media type Windows can access as drive, including
diskettes, CD-ROMs, DVDs, removable disks like iomega Zip, hard disks,
network drives etc. It will recognize by name and collect useful data
for most of them, too. WhereIsIt is compatible with all
Windows-supported file systems, including FAT, FAT32, and NTFS.
WhereIsIt does not use drive letters to reference cataloged disks, it
is able to recognize them by their key properties, like type, serial
number, formatted capacity, and similar. This way, it doesn't matter
which drive your media is in, WhereIsIt will find it, even on some
other computer over the network. In the unlikely event that media
changes that much that it can no longer be recognized (for example, by
reformatting it), you can still manually update its existing disk image
in catalog.
· Powerful searching finds what you are looking for
WhereIsIt features a powerful multi-threaded searching, with detailed
settings on what to search for, where to search and how to search. Use
either Quick Search to quickly find your items by name or description,
or start up Advanced Search with Search Expression Editor, allowing you
to write complex search queries using the full rich set of available
search criteria and Boolean logic operators. WhereIsIt provides quick
shortcuts to search only in selected disks or folders, or you can
search through previous search results or user list items, resulting in
countless capabilities to combine multiple searches, narrow down
results...
Searching for duplicate items is in there, too, as
well as comparing cataloged disk image to actual files on the media,
and comparing cataloged disk images allows for tasks such as version
tracking, if comparing disk images of the same media taken at different
points in time.
· Professional report generator
Adjustable and professional report generator adds a final touch to your
catalog collections. Report generator is usually used together with
extensive search capabilities or report wizard, allowing you to first
collect the items you want in the report, while report generator
handles processing items themselves, such as specifying layout and
details to be included, optionally sorting and arranging items by their
location etc. Needless to point out, you can use the built in print
preview, with adjustable zoom and full-screen capabilities.
Report generator not only allows you to print your reports on your
printer or send them by fax using the Microsoft Fax, it is also used
for exporting cataloged data to other formats, including ASCII files,
Excel tables, rich-text RTF documents, HTML documents, external
database formats like SQL, XML, CSV, SYLK, or just send it directly to
clipboard for pasting to some other application...