Opus 10 manual re-write complete and online

The new manual for Directory Opus 10 is now finished.

The old documentation has been completely re-written for clarity and completeness. Screenshots are used extensively and, particularly in the sections about internal commands, many more examples are provided. This should be a great benefit to old and new users alike.

If you're wondering why the help-file and installer have grown in size recently, it's all the screenshots included in the documentation!

The new manual is in a format which makes it very easy for the team to make changes. So, if you find anything missing or unclear, or even just a typo, let us know and we'll fix it.

• You can read a web version of the manual now.
  
  Note: If you have read the web version before, you may need to clear your browser's cache. I found that the table of contents (left panel) would not refresh until I did so.
  
  
• You can now download a PDF version, for printing. See the next post.
  
  
• The forthcoming Opus 10.0.2.0 update will have the new manual built-in and available via the Help menu (or F1 hotkey).
  
  
• (The 10.0.1.6 beta update released a couple of days ago included an almost-complete version of the new manual.)

Directory Opus version 10.0.1.6 (Beta)

This is a beta version. If you aren't comfortable running the very latest version of Opus then you may like to wait for the next stable release.

Directory Opus 10.0.1.6 is available now for all Opus 10 users:

• Directory Opus beta x86 (32 bit)
• Directory Opus beta x64 (64 bit)

• Directory Opus beta Deutsch x86 (32 bit)
• Directory Opus beta Deutsch x64 (64 bit)

Changes:

• Fixed some problems Tiles Mode had with background colours and blending.
• Improvements to List mode column widths:
• If auto-size columns option is on, columns will auto-size due to file renames / copies (as for Details mode).
• If auto-size columns option is off and a specific width is set, columns will be fixed to that width.
• BitLockered removable drives now display a password prompt when trying to access them in Opus (same as in Explorer).
• PDF documents no longer display 01/01/1601 for Document Created and Last Saved columns when the dates are unset.
• Now supports 2-bpp grayscale PNG images.

The re-written manual has also been updated, as with previous Opus updates, and is now almost complete. The few remaining pages will be finished before the next non-beta release (10.0.2.0).

Universal Graphics Viewer Plugin

A new Directory Opus viewer and thumbnail plugin has been released by ZwickySoft, adding support for additional image formats.

The plugin is based on the GFL SDK, a component for decoding various images which was written by Pierre E. Gougelet, the creator of the XnView image-viewer.

The plugin adds support for the 'HDR' format, which I know a several people have requested over the years. For a list of the (many) other formats, and further discussion of the plugin, see this thread at the Opus forums:

• Universal Graphics Viewer Plugin

Viewing SVG files in the Opus preview pane

If you have Internet Explorer 9 or above, you can view SVG files in the Opus viewer pane.



To do this, open the Opus ActiveX plugin configuration, select the "Internet Explorer" line near the bottom, then add .SVG to the list on the right.

(If you're on 64-bit Windows, you have the choice of using 32-bit or 64-bit IE. With current versions of IE, the 32-bit version is the best one to choose.)



Note that this only affects the viewer, not thumbnails. There may be thumbnailers for SVG out there, though.

Directory Opus version 10.0.1.5 (Beta)

This is a beta version. If you aren't comfortable running the very latest version of Opus then you may like to wait for the next stable release.

Directory Opus 10.0.1.5 is available now for all Opus 10 users:

• Directory Opus beta x86 (32 bit)
• Directory Opus beta x64 (64 bit)

• Directory Opus beta Deutsch x86 (32 bit)
• Directory Opus beta Deutsch x64 (64 bit)

Changes:

• CLI DOSPROMPT color= argument did not parse the supplied color string properly.
  
• Page Up/Down in power/details mode would jump up one line before paging down if visual styles were disabled (or on XP).
  
• Fixed issue with archives that could cause a progress bar to open and never close when copying files to the clipboard.
  
• 'Open in New Tab' from the context menu on an items in the Favorites menu now works correctly.
  
• If the status bar used an MP3 time field ({tmp3} etc) the times are now properly calculated in the icon modes.
  
• Fixed crash when trying to load a 2-bpp PNG image.
  
• 32-bpp BMP thumbnails were invisible when part of Opus-generated folder thumbnails.
  
• Raw camera thumbnails were not properly rotated in Opus-generated folder thumbnails.
  
• Updated to latest libpng (security fixes).
  
• Context menu items flagged with "LegacyDisable" are now hidden. This in turn means disabling items using NirSoft's ShellMenuView now works with Opus, and Opus no longer shows duplicate Foobar2000 context menus on folders.
  

FAQ: Help file does not display correctly

A few users have found that the Opus help file does not display correctly, instead showing the underlying raw HTML/XML code, or a blank window, or similar.

This is caused by something breaking part of the .htm filetype in your system's registry. Microsoft's HTML Help components will go wrong if a particular registry value is set incorrectly.

You can fix this automatically via a .reg file we provide or, if you'd rather do it by hand, via a simple registry edit.

See the FAQ entry for more information. (I'm just linking to it here so that if any updates are required we can do them in one place.)