Free software 25: fast folder access

If you regularly or frequently access some folders, a good way is to create the folder shortcuts on the desktop. But you know, relying on Microsoft is not a good idea - the desktop will mess you up if there are too many items. Except creating shortcuts, many launch softwares also provide fast folder access. The price is that the launcher takes some room on the screen. Today, I would like to introduce a freeware called Folder Guide.



Folder Guide is a lightweight tool. The version 1.2 has a size of only 769Kb. After installation, Folder Guide appears in the context menu of the Windows Explorer. By just clicking your right mouse button, you can access to your frequently used and favorite folders. This function is excellent especially in the Open/Save environments.

In the official website, the software is described as follows.

With Folder Guide, you no longer need dozens of mouse clicks to navigate to your desired folder. Now reach your favorite folders in just 2 mouse clicks. Select from right click menu "Folder Guide" then click on your desired folder. Folder Guide runs automatically as part of the Windows Explorer context menu, so you will never need to start the program otherwise you want to edit the list of folders. It also works from the desktop, the Start button.

Though Folder Guide is not perfect (for example, it doesn't work in My Computer), currently, as far as I know, Folder Guide is the only freeware that provides fast folder access in the form of Windows Explorer context menu. So if you need such handy software, why not give a go? The official website is http://www.freeware365.com/desktop/folderguide.htm where the figure in this post comes.

TeXnicCenter is back!

In my opinion, TeXnicCenter is the best Latex editor among a number of freewares and sharewares. However, lacking of developers, TeXnicCenter seemed to fade away after releasing the Beta 7.01 in June 2006. Last week, when I visited their website, found that a new maintainer for the software development joined. Moreover, a new version Beta 7.50 was released in June 2008.

Although TeXnicCenter versions always come with "Beta", it has been proven to be stable. The developer will release a stable version at the end of 2008, with Unicode support.

LED is another great software with so-called Unicode support. The newest version was released in May, 2008. An annoying bug with LED is that, you cannot type in Chinese. If you do so, the editor cannot display the characters correctly. This issue has been reported with the coming of 5.x version of LED last year. But it seems that it is not a problem to the software author at all.