FolderSizes v4.7 BETA

The next release of FolderSizes (version 4.7) will contain a new feature that I’m really excited about. We’re calling this new feature a Folder Map view, and it provides a graphical representation of a complete subfolder hierarchy within a limited amount of space.

Let’s jump right to a screenshot (click it for a slightly clearer view):



This is a Folder Map visualization of my C:\Windows system directory. The entire subfolder hierarchy is shown as a series of nested rectangles, computed with a technique known as Treemapping. The larger the rectangle, the more storage space the corresponding folder is consuming.

This new visualization approach is interesting because it provides much greater depth than other graph types (such as bar and pie graphs) can reasonably achieve. It’s almost impossible, for example, to show a hierarchy of 5,000 folders within a pie graph – the individual pie slices would be too small and cluttered to be useful. Bar graphs have a similar limitation in that thousands of entries would require lots of scrolling to view all the data they represent.

For the next couple of weeks, I’ll be looking for BETA testers to try out this new feature. If you’re interested, please contact me via email as soon as possible.