XYplorer 17.70 has been released on 06-Mar-2017. Here’s a quick introduction to the main new features:

• Hover Box
• Keyboard Navigation
• Live Filter Box

• Hover Box. When hovering a file icon or caption of an image file a popup shows a thumbnail and basic file, image, and photo information. A highly addictive zero click preview.

  

  To hover.

  This feature has to be turned on. It’s not enabled by factory default. Ensure both of these are ticked to get the Hover Box:
  Configuration | File Info Tips | Show file info tips
  Configuration | File Info Tips | Show image info and preview

  

  Watch your ticks.

  It’s recommendable to confine the popups to the icon (instead of icon and caption) else you might see too many of them. Tick this:
  Configuration | File Info Tips | Show info tips only when hovering file icon

  Finally another example. If available then photo information it is shown in the box:

  

  Danger is hovering over him.

  At the moment there is nothing to configure about the Hover Box. Colors, layout, and dimensions are hard-coded. This might change in a future version.

• Keyboard Navigation. Now you can navigate the list and open files and folders right from the Live Filter Box. Productivity boost for typers.

  A prerequisite for the following exercise is a tick at Configuration | Filters & Type Ahead Find | Type Ahead Find | Redirect typing to Live Filter Box.

  

  Detail of "Configuration | Filters & Type Ahead Find".

  Going after Billy

  Now let’s look for a picture of Billy Bob Thornton in Goliath, and open it, using no more than 4 key strokes (and no mouse).

  Initial Situation

  A folder with a bunch of image files. Not so many in this screenshot but it would work just the same if it were thousands.

  

  Bunch of files.

  Key Stroke #1: b

  The Live Filter Box opens, the "b" goes in there, the list gets filtered.

  

  Narrowed to files containing "b".

  Key Stroke #2: i

  The list gets smaller. We already spot the Goliath_Billy.jpg file at the bottom of the list. (If you already saw it in the previous step you would have made it in 3 key strokes.) But the focus is still on the first file (pink highlight).

  

  Narrowed to files containing "bi".

  Key Stroke #3: PageDown

  This will select the last file in the view which is the one we want. Alternatively we could have used the Down key two times. Note that the cursor (the keyboard input focus) is in the Live Filter Box all the time! Yet we can navigate the list from here.

  

  Narrowed to files containing "bi".

  Key Stroke #4: Enter

  This will finally open the selected file with the associated application. Also this is done from within the Live Filter Box!

• Live Filter Box. Now you can type a space to see only those items with at least one space in their name. Sounds lame but File Explorer can’t do it.

  A space has been typed into the Live Filter Box (bottom left) and one file matches this filter. You cannot see the space in the box, but you see it in the olive information bar above the list. To make it visible the space is symbolized by a place holder character, the Unicode character 'OPEN BOX' (U+2423):

  

  Space.