Gianluca Administrator Posts: 1274 02/12/2011	Gianluca Administrator Posts: 1274 Hello to every SyMenu user. The 1.14 version is out and these are the SyMenu new features: Customizable recent items list New customizable elements added to SyProgram: Home page and Version Enhanced the flexibility in using the mouse on the configuration form tree New splash screen​ And only for the eyes of SyMenu lovers, here are some technical details: New zipping library (Ionic.Zip.dll) The item's guid (is a sort of identifier that SyMenu creates for every SyItem) is stored on the configuration file Configuration files are moved into the Config folder and are now compressed to increase performances ​The last news is very important because it become impossible to downgrade to a lower SyMenu version without losing the configurations. Well the configuration formats are not changed but now the file are zipped. So if someone wants to downgrade to 1.13 or lower preserving his configurations, he has to downgrade the program, unzip the configuration files and move them to the SyMenu root folder. The configuration files are now zipped because in some slow portable devices, the time lost to read and write these files represented a big problem. Zipping the files, the read/write operations become faster even if the program has to make some expensive operation in memory (unzip/zip data). If someone of you wants help with some manual benchmark (or personal sensations) please let me know. Enjoy. <em>edited by Gianluca on 12/2/2011</em>
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Coastie Posts: 26 11/12/2011	Coastie Posts: 26 Thanks, 1.12 -> 1.14 works great. In the future would it also be useful to zip the icons folder? My Icons folder contains 239 icons, seems if we were worried about 3 files, 200+ may be useful too. <em>edited by Coastie on 12/11/2011</em>
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Gianluca Administrator Posts: 1274 12/12/2011	Gianluca Administrator Posts: 1274 Hello Coastie. The reason for which the config files are zipped is not that they are big but that they are often read and written. In other words these files are accessed whenever you open the configuration form, when you change the SyMenu options and even when you starts applications because of the "recent" features. I don't want to create delays in all these moments. Accessing a light file instead of one heavier affects performances in slower system such as pen drives. The app icons are read only during startup because they are stored in memory during execution (it is one of the reasons for which SyMenu weight so much when you check it in Task Manager but it's the same reason because it is so fast in opening itself when you call the menu). Zipping the app icons in one single file could be a good idea but it is necessary to do some benchmarks to verify the performance in different system (slow access pen drive, fast portable HD, local HD and so on) because the only benefit is that you do a single access and not multiple accesses (zipping an ico file that weight few bytes doesn't affect its dimensions so much). I promise that I check this for future version and eventually I'll implement it. P.s. What do you think about a thread in this forum or a new page on ugmfree web site where we post the list of our personal SyMenu program collection? Is it interesting for you? My SyMenu contains 119 programs and I'm curious to discover new portable good programs and the list of SyMenu users could be useful to know it.
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Coastie Posts: 26 12/12/2011	Coastie Posts: 26 I use Symenu as a start menu replacement, so I have many/many non portable apps within it. I like the clean and simple interface where I can keep a lot of data in a tight space. I do use a lot of what is on http://www.portablefreeware.com/ and http://portableapps.com/ though. I don't use portable apps because they can be moved around, I use them when possible because they don't put junk all around my OS. My 200+ portable apps are all installed on my main HDD. Thanks for the great launcher to access them all
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