Gianluca Administrator Posts: 1274 10/10/2011	Gianluca Administrator Posts: 1274 A friend of mine asked for some clarifications about the way SyMenu Extension Manager works and why it seems not working in certain situations. Let's make a comparison with one other program that temporally maps some extensions to portable programs. I'm speaking about PortableFileAssociator (http://portableapps.com/node/15583). Certainly PFA works better than SyMenu Extension Manager but the reason is that it plays hard with your system. It adds the extension associations in your registry during its startup and then it restores the old associations when you quit it. The question is what does it happen if PFA crash? Have I to rerun it hoping that on quit it repair my extensions? Anyway this kind of programs are not literally portable because they change your system registry even if temporarily. SyMenu Extension manager (ExM) works poorly than PFA because it doesn't modify your system at all (no registry modifications, no file system modifications). SyMenu ExM works in an indirect way monitoring every new process in Windows. Let's make an example. If I double click C:\test.txt file in my PC, Windows, trough its extension association, passes test.txt file to notepad.exe that starts with that file opened. SyMenu ExM analyzes this new process and realizes that it was started by a file (SyMenu succeeded to get the file name because it's one of the argument of the process). Then it checks if this argument file has an extension managed by my SyMenu ExM (naturally it depends on my custom configuration). Just in case SyMenu quits the former process (notepad) and start the SyItem that manages the extension passing to it the file test.txt as argument. It's a very complicated process but sometimes it works :-) There are some processes that don't expose the opening file among their arguments. Office applications are in this group, Windows Media Player is another. One other case in which ExM can do nothing is when you open a file through open file menu... the process in this case is already active and SyMenu can't understand that you are opening something. Well miracles are difficult to do. Gianluca
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PoWi Posts: 90 11/10/2011	PoWi Posts: 90 Thanks for explaining the ExM. I don't know how the PortableFileAssociatorreally works. Does this program generates registry files where the old associations are stored? If yes so it would be possible to restore all the associations in the system registry. Maybe SyMenu can do it.... Before changing the associations store them. Then add the new ones to the system registry. After exiting SyMenu restore the old association. That's the normal way... :-) If SyMenu crashed and couldn't restore the old associations there could be a simple mechanism to add the old stored file associationsto the registry. What do you think? <em>edited by PoWi on 10/11/2011</em>
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Gianluca Administrator Posts: 1274 11/10/2011	Gianluca Administrator Posts: 1274 Hello PoWi. I don't agree at all. A portable program can't alter your system even if the alteration is temporary. The registry is a fundamental part of a Windows system and the file association lies on a common part of the registry whereby your proposal is evil in my opinion Well I describe how PFA works to let you know why SyMenu ExM is not so powerful and to let you know a tool (PFA) that you can use to replace ExM if you don't care about the alteration of your system. Gianluca
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Gianluca Administrator Posts: 1274 05/08/2013	Gianluca Administrator Posts: 1274 I resurrect this thread because some users regularly ask me how to bypass the limitations of SyMenu Extension Manager. I would like to suggest to everybody to use a great tool that works with the file extensions with a really brilliant approach. This tool is eXpresso (http://gluxon.com/apps/eXpresso). eXpresso monitors Explorer Window (and others windows if configured) and intercepts every execution action such as double click or enter key on every file. When such an event occurs, eXpresso analyzes the extension of the file clicked. If it finds that this extension is among the managed ones, it prevents the normal Windows behaviour and takes control over the event, launching the file with its custom associated program. Well it is surely a superior behavior than the extension manager and it succeed in remain portable. Well I not even try to rewrite it by scratch. So my advise is really simple: if you are not satisfied by the SyMenu Extension Manager, use eXpresso. You can work with SyMenu and eXpresso together following this instructions: copy eXpresso in your SyMenu program folder; add it to SyMenu and configure this new entry checking the SyMenu Autoexec on start checkbox. In that way eXpresso will start when SyMenu starts; now clone the eXpresso entry and uncheck the Autoexec on start checkbox on the new item and check the SyMenu Autoexec on close. This entry must be completed with the program argument /exit that makes eXpresso quit. In that way eXpresso will quit when SyMenu quits; start SyMenu and configure the eXpresso tool with all your managed extensions. <em>edited by Gianluca on 8/7/2013</em>
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PoWi Posts: 90 07/08/2013	PoWi Posts: 90 Thanks for that advice Gianluca. I will try this.
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timrray Posts: 24 22/01/2014	timrray Posts: 24 FYI, the link you posted to eXpresso is no longer working. I did find one here: http://www.lupopensuite.com/db/expresso.htm <em>edited by timrray on 1/22/2014</em>
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