Konvertor - broad format file manager

[billon]

https://logipole.com/konvertor-en.htm

Konvertor is a fast and reliable two-panel, multi-tabs file manager for Windows. It has an intuitive interface, offers viewers for all popular file formats as well as uncommon and very rare ones (4291 in this version).
Konvertor is a way to work with files more efficiently.
(Konvertor does not change any settings in Windows, and does not hook itself into anything inside Windows.)

Can't test it, because it don't support XP. Somebody?

[joby_toss]

Only a small online installer is provided, so I used Sandboxie to install it (without additional plugins it got to ~60MB). Otherwise you have to install/copy/uninstall it (I don't know the result in this case).

Win7x64sp1: portable, not stealth. During installation you have to choose the same starting folder as the installation one (and, I assume, a folder outside Program Files for both).

No registry writing, just some unimportant leftovers in AppData (from both the main app and from some of the included plugins).

The GUI is too modern for me and there aren't too many options, so I won't test it in detail.

Verdict: beautiful package, but not for me.

[webfork]

This program does a LOT of things so it's definitely going to find some users out there. Ultimately I felt like the developer's goal was to make this work with as much as humanly possible without that making much sense to real users and real use cases. It's more of a file viewer than a file manager, but could definitely turn into something more powerful.

Program notes

• Footprint - It's very large with all the downloaded plugins (142 megs). I'm not sure why you'd use htis without the plugins, so that's pretty much the size you're working with.
• Archives - The compression manager is a little odd, showing all files and their folders expanded. You can't view the contents of a compressed file without extracting it first.
• False Positive - McAfee didn't like one of the filters the program downloads.
• Metadata - Lots of options here and includes the ability to remove metadata from any type of file, which is something I've been looking for. The program is essentially a another ExifTool frontend.
• File support - If the Associations box is any indicator, there are many other viewers on the site that cover MANY more audio, video, and graphics formats, but probably not all in one package the way this has done. One exception is the 3D file viewing: I don't actually know of another broad format 3D file viewer (Blender?).
  
  I have not yet tested the search tool, which I suspect does some cool things.

Problems

• User Interface - Lots of weird issues, including the "Show Ribbon" button. I don't know if it's that I was using the 64-bit version, but this seemed to lack the polish you'd want on a mature file manager.
• Unfinished? - Some of the screens seemed unfinished, such as the Color Selection settings box: http://i.imgur.com/3RoDlvc.png
• File view oddities - While it will view most any type of file, some views are a little weird. For example it'll try to open ODT and DOCX files like they're zip files (which you can do, but is pointless).

Wishlist

• Would like to see compressed files integrated into the file manager view, maybe with a big label at the top to make it clear that this is an archive. Right now they open up in a separate window.
• Move a lot of items that are in the ribbon to a settings submenu. For example, "Map Drive" is a tool you want to have quick access to while "put tab bars at the bottom" is a setting.
• Would love to see some of the cool interface bits that CubicExplorer had like quick preview, bookmarks, customizable interface, etc.
• The program should have an option to make a best-effort attempt to view files it doesn't have a filter for without resorting to either a text, hex, or external editor. I'm sure somewhere in this program for example there's an RTF viewer that might not be perfect, but would do pretty well.

[webfork]

This has seen some updates since it was first posted. It appears the dev is mostly focused on adding more format compatibility, but they also added a Youtube Video downloader. Very happy to see something else supporting APNG, which I've discussed at length.

75 new formats
download/view/convert videos from YouTube
write to APNG
quickview pane

Read more: http://www.softpedia.com/progChangelog/ ... z467xo7ylh

[webfork]

Update here: I tested the latest version (5.04 on Win7x88) and ran into some issues. Does this program require some dotNET installation or Visual C++ Redist? I re-downloaded on another machine didn't have these issues. Not sure what went wrong yet.

I can say that if you stop the installer mid-way it doesn't clean up after itself (just leaves the files at their destination).

Edit:

I tested the installer on another computer with a USB drive again. More crashing. Not sure what's up with this distro. Guess I'll retry at the next release.

[webfork]

The latest version of this program was released back in October and it lists the ability to install to a USB drive. Changelog: http://www.logipole.com/konvertorfm-whatsnew-en.htm Unfortunately this isn't quite portable as it requires a USB drive and doesn't embrace the idea of cloud or mapped networked drives.



On a related note, a Metadata editor program is available by the developer of this program. I'm not sure how many features included in this are also present in Konvertor. Still, more than once users in this forum have asked about ability to remove all metadata component noted on this softpedia screencap:

http://i1-win.softpedia-static.com/scre ... plus_1.png

[webfork]

I came back to this program after some time and tried again for some kind of portability verdict.

Steps:

1. Download and launch installer
2. Click Install the program now and Install optional add ons (this part requires an Internet connection)
3. Once finished, click Return to the Previous Window and Exit
4. Copy the resulting folder to a folder
5. Uninstall
6. Launch program

Verdict: Not portable. Writes to AppData and optional install tools (including GhostScript) write to non-portable folders as well.

Note that I also got the following error on launch (Win7x32):


EDIT 1: I resolved the startup issue by copying over msvcr100.dll from gPodder and saved it to the application folder and the program launched normally.

EDIT 2: I got more DLL errors when I tried to open a 7zip file, this time an mfc100u.dll file. Then the program crashed. I think I'm done testing this one.