FolderSizes v4.5 is Released

FolderSizes v4.5 is now officially out of beta, and has been released to the general public.

I'm extremely excited about this new release. It contains a wealth of new capabilities, including (but not limited to) Unicode support, command line access to the search facility, improved file system object sorting, numerous search system improvements (including better support for finding folders - including empty ones, a more granular file mask exclusion mechanism, etc.), numerous user interface improvements, and a variety of performance enhancements.

We've also decided to drop support for Win9x based systems (including Windows 98 and ME). At this point, the limited use of FolderSizes on these platforms is simply no longer worth the extra development and testing time required to support them.

Download the new release from our product download page. Full release notes are available here. The upgrade is free for all existing v4 license holders. And if you're still using an older version, this is another great reason to upgrade.

BTW, those of you who know me are probably aware of how seriously I take the usability and appearance of our software products. Aside from core features, this new release of FolderSizes has a broad array of user interface enhancements, a new application icon, updates to the help file, and even new graphics in the product installer. Let me know what you think!

Find Empty Folders - The Movie!

Some time ago, I posted a blog article on how to find empty folders with FolderSizes.

Well, with the release of FolderSizes v4.5 there is a new way to accomplish a similar result, and it has the advantage of only showing empty folders (you needn't sort the folder view and / or alter the subfolder view depth to get an intuitive result).

So how can this be done with FolderSizes v4.5? The key is a series of search facility enhancements that provide superior support for folder objects. In particular, folder sizes are now always computed and displayed within search result output. This, combined with a new "directory" attribute flag, makes it very easy to search just for folders with an aggregate size of zero.

I've created a brief video tutorial that demonstrates this process. Please click here to view it.

Download the free 15-day FolderSizes v4.5 trial today.

FolderSizes v4.5 BETA

FolderSizes v4.5 is just around the corner, and it has several new features and enhancements that will prove very valuable to our users. Perhaps the most important of these is Unicode support, which will allow FolderSizes to analyze and report against file systems that contain Unicode characters in their component names.

Now more than ever before, FolderSizes is being leveraged within larger enterprises that use it to analyze and manage data storage systems on a global scale. The upcoming FolderSizes v4.5 Unicode support will better support these enterprise customers while reaching out to the ever-expanding global software market as a whole.

FolderSizes v4.5 also includes a number of other important enhancements, including access to the search facility (including exporting search results) via the command line interface, improved file and folder name sorting algorithms (including superior support for Unicode characters and "natural" sort ordering), lots of user interface and performance improvements, and more.

Since there are a considerable number of changes in FolderSizes v4.5, we'll be running through a brief BETA period - and we could use your help. But before you download and install the BETA, please read this list of considerations:

• This is beta software. It probably has bugs.
• The v4.5 BETA will upgrade an existing v4.x installation (you can always uninstall it and re-install v4.2 from our public website download page).
• We need feedback, and we need it fast. If you find any problems with the FolderSizes v4.5 BETA build - please email us immediately.
• In particular, we need people to test the new Unicode capabilities of FolderSizes v4.5. If you have need of this new capability, please give it a merciless thrashing and report any problems you find.
  
  

If you've read the points above and want to try to the FolderSizes v4.5 BETA, please download it from here:

http://www.foldersizes.com/download-folder-sizes/test/FolderSizes4-Setup.exe

Complete release notes can be viewed via the Help menu.