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I have a long list of stuff on my todo list and this one has been here for long enough that it was just time: trying out some of the in-development Coffee/CAFE Mod alternatives over at PA.

First there's eXpresso 1.3.1 by gluxon over at PA. It looks mostly like Coffee with several more languages, and uses a little more RAM (4.5 megs vs. 4.1 megs). Although it doesn't appear to be under active development, its obviously WAY ahead of Coffee.

Although the program has many features well ahead of Coffee, it seems unfinished. There's a 'glass' setting that the program openly admits looks pretty ugly, there's a launcher "type and run" tool that I couldn't figure out. Also couldn't decipher what the "Convey" menu was about. Still, I'm not sure any of that is really a negative; I have programs I use daily that never see 1/2 of their features used.

Second, there's PortableFileAssociator, but oddly the zip file was password protected so ... *shrug*

webfork wrote:Also couldn't decipher what the "Convey" menu was about.

Confused me as well. After reading the comments over there I got it. It conveys, or copies all links in Data/Links to the hosts SendTo menu, allowing you to add your own SendTo entries. ReConvey basically refreshes everything on the fly. Really handy option and probably the only one that really sets it apart from Coffee.
But yea, it's got a rather unfinished feel, especially the icons in the menu's look drab. But I can live with that. The basic functionality is simply great. I only discovered eXpresso about a month ago and the Convey/SendTo is what got me hooked.

webfork wrote:Second, there's PortableFileAssociator, but oddly the zip file was password protected so ... *shrug*

never heard 'em doing that before. Pass is in the file name though and well, all scans are negative. So that's positive. Looks ok but I'll stick with eXpresso.

What about PEM?
Did anybody test it on 64-bit OSs?
It doesn't work for me, altough is an interesting idea.

dany wrote:

webfork wrote:Second, there's PortableFileAssociator, but oddly the zip file was password protected so ... *shrug*

never heard 'em doing that before. Pass is in the file name though and well, all scans are negative. So that's positive. Looks ok but I'll stick with eXpresso.

That was done to avoid AV scanners flagging it as a threat. Read http://portableapps.com/node/15583#comment-172765

lautrepay wrote:What about PEM?
Did anybody test it on 64-bit OSs?
It doesn't work for me, altough is an interesting idea.

What about PEM does not work? I haven't given it extensive testing on x64, but I'll bet that if I could just compile it with a 64-bit version of Autohotkey and it would fix any of the problems you might be having.

FreewareWire wrote:

lautrepay wrote:What about PEM?
Did anybody test it on 64-bit OSs?
It doesn't work for me, altough is an interesting idea.

What about PEM does not work? I haven't given it extensive testing on x64, but I'll bet that if I could just compile it with a 64-bit version of Autohotkey and it would fix any of the problems you might be having.

That would be nice, thanks.

I've just migrated to eXpresso from Coffee and my initial thoughts are it's a lot better than Coffee, even if the glass theme feature is missing (due to lack of support in AHK I believe.)

I found a major problem in Coffee that makes the application 'not Stealth' so this was the main reason for migrating to the new version and the fact that Coffee is over 2 years old. I believe that if people start using eXpresso a lot more will give the developer (gluxon) motivation to continue development. I know that if no one gives me feedback then I firstly don't know there is a problem and secondly feel it's a lost cause if I'm just updating for myself.

An update for PortableFileAssociator: someone posted a version over on PA with associations filled in: https://portableapps.com/comment/233738#comment-233738

Here's the VT analysis of the included EXE files:

* https://www.virustotal.com/#/file/ad5a3 ... /detection
* https://www.virustotal.com/#/file/99310 ... /detection

Double Commander and XYplorer also can handle file associations. There might be other file managers with that option as well.

TP109 wrote:Double Commander and XYplorer also can handle file associations. There might be other file managers with that option as well.

Good point. I believe muCommander will as well, but I haven't tested any of these tools yet.

If you dig back through my posts years ago, I had a small project trying to get CAFE/Coffee working with a host of different programs here on the site. It's a pretty amazing thing to quickly open any of open any of 100s of different file formats.

webfork wrote:I believe muCommander will as well

Nope. Just checked.

Q-Dir also has file associations for portable use
Extras menu-->...more options-->Association tab