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                      FastFolders V3.2.0 Readme
                      
                     Copyright (c) 2004 DeskSoft
                      http://www.desksoft.com
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Welcome to FastFolders, a system extension which increases your
productivity dramatically by giving you quick and easy access to
folder contents and files. Without opening each and every folder,
you can browse the directory structure starting at any point by
clicking the right mouse button on a file, folder or drive. The 
program adds a menu item to the context menus of shell objects, 
which displays the directory structure on demand. If you drag 
and drop an object on a folder or drive using the right mouse 
button, you can copy or move the object(s) to any folder of your 
computer by selecting it from the FastFolders menu. FastFolders 
also adds a new column to the "Details" view of Explorer windows, 
which shows the total size of folders including their subfolders 
and files. This is extremely useful for getting an overview of the 
distribution of your files and the disk space they occupy.

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Instructions:
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To use FastFolders, open the context menu of any shell object ("My
Computer", "Network Neighborhood", a drive, folder or file, etc.) 
by right-clicking it. When you move the mouse pointer over the
FastFolders menu item, a submenu opens which displays the contents 
of the selected object. To open any object, simply click the menu 
item with the left mouse button. To access the context menu of the 
object, click the right mouse button on the item. Pressing CTRL
while clicking a menu item opens the parent folder instead of the 
object.

CLICKING THE FASTFOLDERS MENU ITEM ITSELF OPENS THE FASTFOLDERS
OPTIONS DIALOG, which allows you to customize many options of
FastFolders, including a filter for the file extensions to display.

The FastFolders item of the context menu of the "Start" button in 
the Taskbar contains all items of the Desktop. This allows quick 
access to all objects on the Desktop.

The usual keyboard navigation for menus also works with the
FastFolders menus.

Folder size:
To activate the "Details" view column "Total Size", right-click the 
column header of an explorer window (which must be in "Details" 
view) and switch on the check mark of the item "Total Size". If 
this item is not included in the menu, you can find it in the full 
list of available items which is displayed when you select 
"More..." from the menu. This feature is only supported by
Windows ME, 2000, XP or higher!

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Remarks
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Menu speed:
It is recommended to set the menu show delay to 0 seconds, because
this will allow the fastest navigation through the directory tree.
Under certain circumstances, this setting may have no effect, e.g.
if an old version of the MS IntelliMouse Driver is installed. In 
this case, please update the driver to the newest version available
from the Microsoft website (http://www.microsoft.com/).

Default editor / viewer:
This edit field allows you to specify a command line which is 
invoked if you select a file type which has no executable program 
associated with it. Typical examples are files like: "Readme.1st", 
"Disk.id", "Setup.nfo", etc. It is recommended to enter your 
favorite text editor, so you can view all these files quickly.
By default, FastFolders chooses the program which is associated 
with .TXT files (generally this is NOTEPAD.EXE). So the default 
command line is: "C:\WINDOWS\NOTEPAD.EXE %1". The "%1" at the end 
makes NotePad load the file which was selected by the user. If 
you choose any other program than NotePad, loading the selected 
file probably works the same way, so please make sure that the "%1" 
is specified at the end of the command line.

SmartStatus 98:
If you are using Windows 98 or Windows 95 with Internet Explorer 4 
and its desktop enhancements, you will probably have noticed that
the important information in the status bars of Explorer windows
(e.g. volume information for drives, file sizes) is only visible
if you make the window very large. SmartStatus resizes the parts
of the status bars to display all information optimally. (If you 
are using Windows XP, 2000, NT or Windows 95 without IE 4.0, 
SmartStatus has no effect!)

IMPORTANT: Some users have reported, that SmartStatus occasionally
causes Windows to hang at startup. If you experience this problem, 
please select the option "Safe mode" in the SmartStatus group of 
the main dialog. This way, SmartStatus will only be activated 
after you right-click any object for the first time after booting 
Windows.

Transition effects for menus and tooltips:
For Windows 98, ME, 2000 and XP, transition effects for menus and 
tooltips (e.g. fading, scrolling) are disabled for the FastFolders 
menus.

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Installation and uninstallation:
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To install FastFolders, simply run FFSetup.exe. The Setup program 
will guide you through all necessary steps. To uninstall 
FastFolders, open the Windows Control Panel, select "Add/Remove 
Programs" and the select the FastFolders item from the list of 
installed programs. Click "Add/Remove" to remove FastFolders from 
your system.

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FastFolders System requirements:
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*) Windows 95 / 98 / ME / NT 4.0 / 2000 / XP
*) Mouse or compatible pointing device
*) 1 MB of free harddisk space

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Contacting DeskSoft:
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If you have any questions or comments, please do not hesitate to 
send us an email or visit our website:

Email: support@desksoft.com
Web:   http://www.desksoft.com

If you experience any problems running the program, please make 
sure to include information about your computer configuration, 
hardware and software.

***** IMPORTANT *****
Please include the product name "FastFolders" in the subject line 
of your email, or it could be deleted by our spam filter! 

We answer all emails within a maximum of 3 business days (usually 
even within a few hours), so if you don't receive an answer from 
us, there's probably something wrong with your email address. In 
this case, please send us your message again and make sure to use 
a working email address so that we can reply to your email!

The DeskSoft Team.

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Windows 95 / 98 / ME / NT / 2000 / XP, Internet Explorer, etc. are 
registered trademarks of Microsoft. All other registered 
trademarks are registered trademarks of their respective owners.
