Development History - (versions 3.00 and newer)

Version 3.92 - 14. March 2008

• The status of Search window within the application has been revised, and is now user selectable with two new window mode buttons in its status bar. Apart from being a child window of the main application, as before, Search window can now be detached and act as a standalone window. This means it has its own task bar button, can be independently switched to and from, etc. The second button set the window to always stick on top, even on top of other applications when in standalone mode.
• As Search window is now more exposed in the system, it got a new, high-quality window icon.
• Status bar in search window is now always visible in order to provide access to the two new window state options.
• Some Far Eastern system locales, most notably Korean, are extremely unfriendly to all data that is not pure UTF-16 Unicode. In many controls, system registry etc. 8-bit string data is modified/translated by the operating system, heavily interfering with using UTF-8 encoding. Several workarounds were implemented in different parts of the program. Additionally, all string data saved to registry is now UTF-7 encoded, instead of UTF-8 (existing UTF-8 entries are still detected and read for compatibility).
• Added icons to menu options handling disk scanning templates and report settings templates. As both Load and Delete submenus are very similar in nearby, icons should make it easier to prevent mistakenly selecting the wrong operation.
• A few minor tweaks on the CDDA plugin for better Unicode support and general handling.
• Updated DcrawPlugin to the latest version of dcraw.c.

• Added new description and thumbnail plugins for MS Office OpenXML documents, and OpenOffice.org documents. Plugins can extract embedded meta information as well as thumbnails if available, and are user-adjustable.
• Improved the Windows Metafile Thumbnails plugin, it now supports additional types of metafiles, and renders metafiles to larger bitmap images for the internal viewer.
• Fixed a drawing problem in custom icons selection, and improved quality of displayed icons where custom icon size may not match system icon size (commonly encountered on Windows Vista).
• Adjusted IMDB plugin for changes on IMDB.com and OFDB.de web sites.
• Fixed importing archive file comments from some archive file formats.
• Some other minor adjustments.

• Changed ordering process, available payment options, and online payment processor. All related documentation and web site were updated accordingly.
• Removed "How to Order Wizard" from the program, it became outdated and obsolete. The entire process is handled better with the online order form.
• Updated several plugins, including dcraw.c, IMDB plugin, and video-related description plugins.
• Fixed disk selection visual corruption in the Insert Media dialog.
• Several minor cosmetical fixes in various places.

• Fixed error message when setting up advanced searching by categories.
• Since the last build, Catalogs Info dialog did not show up. Fixed.

Version 3.91 - 18. January 2008

• Minor service release.
• Internal viewer now runs all plugins in a separate thread, with ability to forcibly stop them if they get stuck on processing some file.
• Fine tuned several details regarding language files, Language Editor, and Unicode support.
• Updated Video Thumbnails plugin with new configuration dialog and Unicode filenames support. Handled file types are now user definable.
• Adjusted the "OEM to ANSI formatting plugin" to detect and only handle non-Unicode descriptions, otherwise results may not be always desirable.
• Fixed the Matroska Media Files description plugin, it got broken while upgrading it to handle Unicode file names.
• Fixed running plugins on files compressed inside archives.
• Fixed importing File_id.diz from some archive files.
• Fixed some language specific, Unicode related cosmetic bugs.
• Updated DcrawPlugin to the latest version of dcraw.c.
• Lots of other fine tuning and miscellaneous minor improvements.

• Added support for very long file names in Unicode format (file names that would end up longer than 255 bytes when UTF-8 encoded). Catalog file format compatibility is preserved in both directions.
• Improved handling of some damaged JPEG files in the JPEG description plugin.
• Minor adjustments to the Generic Text description plugin.
• Fixed a bug most notable in report generator involving descriptions and file names containing double quotes.
• Fixed a minor bug occasionally occurring when searching by item paths.
• Search expression files have been upgraded to a new file version, as they now support Unicode. When loading saved search expressions, both new and old, pre-Unicode format are supported. Note, however, that supporting both types of saved files no longer allows to load search expressions files created with Unicode versions prior to this build (versions 3.90 and newer).

Version 3.90 - 8. December 2007

• Searching is now diactric insensitive by default, and will ignore diactric marks in file names and descriptions. In order to search for literal characters as specified in search expression, include your search expression in double quotes. Examples are in the help file.
• Search engine has been heavily optimized for speed, with most critical parts rewritten in assembly language for best performance. Recent additions such as Unicode support and diactric insensitive searching take their toll in increased processing required when searching. With the lastest batch of optimizations, searching speed in version 3.90 is on par with previous versions, and considerably faster when not using whole words searching, case insensitivity, or diactric insensitivity.
• Sorting by filenames in item lists now supports Smart Sorting instead of strictly using standard lexicographic sorting. With Smart Sorting, numbers in file names are detected and sorted as numbers instead of comparing them character by character. This way, Smart Sorting always lists files with smaller numbers first ("A2" comes before "A12").
• Searching by regular expressions now supports Unicode.
• Fixed searching being prematurely interrupted and aborted in some very specific cases.
• Fixed extracting files from some .zip archives with Unicode file name.
• Fixed an issue with password protected catalogs using non-ASCII characters in their passwords.
• Updated help file with some details about Unicode support is various parts of the program.
• Updated DcrawPlugin to the latest version of dcraw.c.
• Several other minor cosmetical fixes in various places, mostly related to handling Unicode.

• The program is no longer being distributed compressed in a ZIP package, executable installer is now directly downloadable, digitally signed for authencity, and can be executed and installed right from the link on the web site. ZIP package is still available for compatibility and existing external links on other web sites.
• The thumbnail plugin importing file .ICO icons will now always import the largest and highest quality available icon, up to 256x256 on Windows Vista, instead of always importing standard 32x32 icon.
• Added new description plugin for .ICO files, listing available icon sizes and color depths in the file.
• Fine tuned the behavior of updating multiple disks while running in the background. Program no longer pops up after each scanned disc unless there is some user intervention necessary. If the main window was maximized when sending the program to do its job in the background, it will be restored the same way.
• Prevented the system beep sound going off on several different keyboard shortcuts, like Alt+Enter for Properties dialog.
• Addressed a couple of rarely encountered bugs, resulting in error messages under very specific conditions.

Version 3.90 Beta 2 - 21. October 2007

• This version mostly patches up what broke while adding Unicode support.
• All editable combo boxes used in the program had problems entering non-ANSI characters via keyboard. Fixed.
• Saving catalogs on Windows 9x/ME did not work correctly. Creating .bak files did not work either, for the same reason. Both problems are fixed.
• Autoloading catalogs with no catalogs specified to load resulted in unnecessary error message. Fixed.
• Updated both Generic Text description plugins with Unicode file names support, and detecting and correctly importing as Unicode several different encodings of Unicode text files.
• Extended Monkey's Audio plugin to support .ape files version 3.98 and newer.
• Fixed several other minor, mostly cosmetical issues related to displaying Unicode text in different parts of the program.

Version 3.90 Beta 1 - 9. October 2007

• Added Unicode support. This required massive changes in most of the code throughout the program, and is the main reason for this version to be released first as a beta. Chances are things broke in the process, or some details may have been missed regarding Unicode support, therefore a period of testing is required.
• While WhereIsIt now supports Unicode, it does not require Unicode capable operating system to run, it still works on Windows 9x/ME with the same executable. Of course, Unicode functionality is not available on non- Unicode operating systems.
• All user editable data in WhereIsIt is now Unicode capable. This includes cataloging, opening and saving files with Unicode names, using Unicode descriptions, item names, categories, flags, search expressions, etc. All visual controls in the program are capable of showing Unicode text.
• Catalog files now support Unicode text as well, encoded as UTF-8. Catalog files from older versions can be used normally and are fully compatible. Vice versa works, too, however older versions of WhereIsIt are not able to detect, decode and display UTF-8 encoded text in catalogs created with the latest version (it would be shown as UTF-8 encoded).
• DescAPI interface now allows for UTF-8 encoded file names, alias names, and descriptions. All standard main plugins have been adjusted to support handling files with Unicode file names, and description plugins are able to return Unicode descriptions. Several plugins do in fact support and generate Unicode descriptions when encountered, for example MP3 description plugin.
• FreeDB/CDDB support was updated to protocol level 6, supporting Unicode.
• Archive files support handling Unicode file names as well. Some archive file formats that are Unicode capable (RAR, 7-Zip) also support listing and extracting Unicode-named compressed files.
• Drag&drop support in the program was completely rewritten and is now OLE based. Moving and reordering items in catalog is now much easier with insertion point showing in catalog tree, and allowing insertion before or after targeted item. Compare window showing actual files on disk now supports dragging listed files to other applications.
• Enhanced "Insert Media" dialog, now with detailed disk description.
• Search window now shows in the status bar the total search time needed for the last search operation.
• Added new simple description plugin, extracting URL shortcut information from *.URL files.
• Added new thumbnails plugin, Folder Thumbnails, extracting files like Folder.jpg as a thumbnail for the folder, in a similar manner to what Explorer does. There may be multiple files set as folder thumbnails, and are user-definable.
• Fixed a third-party problem in the PNG library that prevented the program from starting correctly on some Windows 9x/ME systems.
• Addressed some anomalies when comparing cataloged data.
• Thumbnails sharpening algorithm now works once again.
• Lots and lots of other minor changes, improvements, and optimizations.

Version 3.84 - 3. July 2007

• Completely rewritten and redesigned Properties dialog, with some added functionality. The new design does away with crowded controls, subdialogs etc., and uses about five times less system resources.
• A disk icon is now shown in top right corner for currently selected item when in categories view mode, offering quick access to disk's details.
• When scanning NTFS formatted drive, reparse points and symbolic links are no longer followed and re-cataloged, avoiding data duplication and inconsistencies on disk size/usage.
• Files that are compressed using file system compression (i.e. NTFS) are now marked as such in catalog, and show both compressed and real size in the Properties dialog.
• Update Wizard now checks if application folder is writable, and requests administrator privileges when necessary.
• Added documentation related to using the program in Windows Vista, with emphasis on User Account Control (UAC) restrictions likely to encounter.
• Changed the default locations for catalog files, templates etc. Default folders are no longer set as subfolders on the location where WhereIsIt is installed, as this would typically place them inside "Program Files" folder, causing problems on Windows Vista with UAC. Note that this only applies to new installations, existing settings will remain unchanged.
• Eliminated slowdowns when updating disk images with extremely high count of subfolders within the same parent folder.
• Adjusted detecting Recycle Bin folder in Windows Vista.
• Updated IMDB plugin for changed search results formatting on the IMDB web site.

• Minor maintenance release, addresses several small issues.
• All three audio CD related plugins now have an option to include track numbers in custom formatted descriptions.

Version 3.83 - 21. February 2007

• Catalog tree view and categories tree view now support automatic horizontal scrolling when running in Windows Vista.
• Progress bars throughout the program now support substates under Windows Vista, and will visually indicate when process is paused or canceled.
• Changed the appearance of dragbars, for easier visual location. All resizable windows now include visible dragging grips, and dragbars react to mouse entering and leaving dragbar area.
• The Back/Forward control now comes in several different sizes, which one is used depends on current screen DPI setting.
• Reports exported to XML format now always use UTF-8 Unicode encoding.
• Addressed several small memory leaks throughout the program and plugins.
• Fixed a bug causing occasional random thumbnail corruption after multiple disk image updates.
• Tweaked the PDF description plugin to prevent processing rare malformed PDF documents with recursive entities in an endless loop.
• Removed option to disable multilanguage support, this is now always enabled as it takes care of a lot more than just translating visible text.
• Fixed low quality of thumbnails imported from 8-bit colored PNG files.
• Removed progress bars flickering in Windows Vista.
• Tweaked error handling when trying to save catalog in a protected folder with insufficient write privileges, commonly encountered with Vista.
• Several other minor tweaks and fixes.

• Extended capabilities of temporary file storage, it now allows temporary file to grow beyond 2 GB in size, take in more data if needed, and offers better recovery options in case of errors such as running out of disk space. Additionally, when located on a NTFS 5.0 formatted volume, temporary file is managed as a sparse file, resulting in considerable performance improvement as moving data around inside temporary file is no longer necessary.
• Improved quality of icons scaling in Windows Vista.
• Implemented a workaround for a rare 'Invalid image size' error occurring during startup on some pre-Vista systems with unusual display DPI settings, icons size, or display driver.

• Fixed slow catalog loading if "Disable smooth expanding of catalog tree" option was enabled in program's UI settings.
• Fixed missing thumbnails after scanning media on some systems.

• In description plugins added support for AVI files larger than 2 GB (OpenDML AVI format), added support for Matroska MKV files larger than 2 GB, and updated known codecs names with some 50 additional new ones.
• Updated DcrawPlugin to the latest version of dcraw.c.
• Fixed importing EXIF details, if one certain EXIF field was encountered processing the rest would be terminated prematurely.
• Implemented a workaround for thread race condition, which in combination with some display drivers resulted in resource leak during thumbnails importing, and eventually caused thumbnails failing to import.

Version 3.82 - 17. January 2007

• WhereIsIt now natively supports High DPI and declares itself as such under Windows Vista. The program was tested up to 200 DPI, and no longer uses Vista's WDM bitmap stretching above 96 DPI.
• The ListView's View Mode button has an entirely new, Vista-style dropdown selection popup. Apart from selecting view mode, using slider for selection also allows selecting thumbnails display size on the fly.
• Setup program now registers WhereIsIt in Default Programs under Windows Vista, making it easier to handle associated file extensions.
• Graphics in all wizards available in the program was replaced with more up to date versions.
• Back/Forward control offers additional support for associated mouse buttons without relying on vendor's mouse driver to provide this functionality. Back and forward mouse buttons now work in WhereIsIt with generic mouse drivers.
• Windows Vista version and edition is now reported in the About box.
• Considerably reduced memory load when scanning large quantities of digital camera raw files.
• Updated 7-Zip decompression engine.
• Updated DcrawPlugin to the latest version of dcraw.c.
• Tons of other minor adjustments, mostly UI related.

Version 3.81 - 26. December 2006

• Replaced old listview header with crumbread navigation control. The breadcrumb navigation bar provides visual indication of the path taken to arrive to selected item, as well gives direct access to all parent items, their summarized descriptions in tips, and commands in pop-up menus.
• Removed browse history buttons (Back, Forward) from the main toolbar, and replaced them with a new, dedicated control for that purpose, located in the header above listview.
• Added recognition support for several new CD/DVD types, including double-layered DVDs, Blu-ray disks, and HD-DVDs.
• Non-modal resizable dialogs (Search window, User List window etc.) that no longer have maximize button available in the title can still be maximized or restored by double-clicking window title.
• Changed default application font handling. On Windows 2000 and newer, "MS Shell Dlg 2" is now used by default, which resolves to Tahoma, the recommended UI font on newer Windows systems. If some other font is preferred, it can be overridden by setting it in the active language file.
• Updated DcrawPlugin to the latest version of dcraw.c.
• Fixed missing text on all controls in one of the dialogs when multi-language support was disabled.

Version 3.80 - 26. November 2006

• Windows Vista is included in supported operating systems.
• A lot of adjustments for Windows Vista compatibility, mostly to support Vista look&feel. Many controls were adjusted for Vista visual styles, and many details addressed according to Vista design recommendations.
• Window and dialogs hierarchy are completely redesigned and worked around compared to what Delphi does by default. This was necessary in order to properly support Flip3D and window thumbnails.
• All dialogs throughout the program, about 100 of them, were revisited and controls rearranged in a standard, consistent way. There is typically more space between controls, resulting in dialogs appearing less crowded and easier to use, especially in small DPI environments. Dialogs also better handle larger fonts, like new Segoe UI 9pt recommended for Windows Vista.
• A lot of icons used through the program were updated, redesigned, or enhanced with additional sizes and color depths. They look better on Windows XP, and scale better on high-DPI Vista systems. Icons intended for representing WhereIsIt's registered file types also include new Vista 256x256 PNG compressed icons.
• Thumbnails view on all systems has a new look, closer to what Vista uses in its Explorer.
• Additional caption buttons that used to appear on some windows are no more. That concept is outdated, it interferes with Vista's glass interface, and those buttons haven't had much to offer to end users.
• The same as above goes for the '..' folder, it's a part of DOS inherited history and is gone for good. It's just not used anymore nowadays.
• Optimized the Locate in Catalog toolbar layout; text label is now integrated within edit control on systems that support the new edit control.
• Changed a bit how non-removable media is handled in the program, such as cataloged hard disks. When attempting to access actual files on a fixed drive which is not found, the program now gives a chance to connect the drive and retry, instead of simply notifying user of failure. This offers more options when working with drives that are non-removable by definition, but are really not - for example, hard disks connected externally via USB, firewire, or external SATA connectors, and support hot-plugging.
• Message boxes on Windows Vista now more closely match the new Vista style.
• Open/Save dialogs on Windows Vista support new Vista-style dialogs.
• Updated Tips window.
• Catalogs with active read-only limited access now show a lock icon in the status bar.
• Fixed a problem introduced in the previous version, after using searching on some catalogs random errors would be reported while browsing.
• Fixed handling of Ext column in reports.
• A LOT of minor user interface tweaks and improvements throughout the program.

Version 3.75 - 11. October 2006

• Minor maintenance release.
• Completely removed flickering of all list view windows when resizing (Windows XP or newer with active visual theme is required to benefit).
• Added optional fast image resampling (halftoning) in the Internal Viewer. Correcting stretched images is almost instant in the fast mode, but quality is somewhat lower than with full resampling.
• Rewritten the Video Player plugin, it's now based on Windows Media Player common control and offers better compatibility and frame grabbing support for different video types.
• Tweaked docking logic and resizing of the description window.
• Optimized searching through the "Locate in Catalog" toolbar.
• Fixed showing file list in the File Viewer when viewing files from the Compare results list.
• Fixed a possible Access Violation error occurring in certain cases when starting to update an existing disk image.
• Other minor cosmetical adjustments.

• Removed leftover debugging code from File Management routines.
• Tweaked support for printer options in the Report Generator.

Version 3.74 - 4. September 2006

• The new "Locate in Catalog" toolbar allows you to quickly search for a specific item through loaded catalogs right from the main window, without having to open the search dialog. It locates the first found item following current position - repeating search can be used to find subsequent matching items. Searching can be done for specific types of items, and by different criteria, such as names, descriptions, disk numbers, categories etc. - settings are available.
• Quick searching and advanced searching by names or descriptions now all support regular expressions. Regular expressions are a widely used method of text matching, extremely powerful and versatile, but requiring knowledge typically beyond novice users. The implementation as available is a subset of Perl RegEx language.
• The program now supports opening catalogs from the command-line using file masks. Multiple file masks or locations may be specified.
• The Search button in the main toolbar is now equipped with a drop-down menu, gathering available search-related options.
• Several plugins were updated or enhanced.
• Many other minor adjustments.

Version 3.73 - 1. May 2006

• Changes in this release are concentrating on updating program's visual appearance and usability of user interface. Most of features are a small glimpse into custom developed client versions.
• Settings dialog has been reorganized, options are easier to access and browse. Did away with tabs altogether, sections are now available through a more modern, WinXP-style taskbar control. Settings dialog is now also fully resizable and will remember its size and position.
• Standard command buttons in dialogs like "OK" and "Cancel" are visually separated from the rest of dialog's contents throughout the program. This helps reduce dialog clutter a little bit.
• Toolbars and non-themed buttons have (optionally) a more modern, shaded three-dimensional appearance on hi-color enabled displays.
• Most status bars now support themes, a few exceptions were left out on purpose as they fit dialogs better when displayed the old way.
• Several dialogs that were previously fixed in size are now resizable.
• A few other adjustments mostly dealing with user interface.

• Internal file management functions now support copying and moving files larger than 2 GB.
• Maintenance release, several other minor issues were addressed.

Version 3.72 - 27. March 2006

• Minor adjustments for better Windows Vista compatibility.
• All standard plugins and most of the main program are now using default system font in their dialogs. This also allows the program to fully comply with settings like ClearType font smoothing.
• Tooltip popup windows are now themed, and some visual controls have been adjusted for proper display under all DPI settings.
• Rewritten scanning thread synchronization to compensate for plugins using thread-unsafe code, and affecting scanning stability. Scanning process now uses less CPU cycles, is a bit faster, and no longer runs with higher priority than other system processes. Additionally, scanning thread has assigned lower priority when scanning in the background, and will give away additional CPU cycles to foreground processes when reaching full load.
• Windows Bitmaps Thumbnails plugin now tolerates and allows for importing bitmap (.BMP) files with some incorrect details in their bitmap headers.
• Updating disk images from script files now correctly defaults to settings and plugins last used for scanning that image.

Version 3.71 - 15. January 2006

• Lifted restrictions on imported thumbnails size a bit, with certain reservations. Thumbnails in catalogs can now be larger, up to 192x192 (previously 128x128), with two additional new intermediate values. In order to soften the impact of larger thumbnails on catalog size, memory requirements, performance etc., thumbnails larger than 128x128 are stored in progressively lower quality. On average, replacing 128x128 thumbnails with 192x192 ones will result in about 20% larger catalogs, at the cost of lower thumbnails quality.
• General settings related to plugins such as max. imported description size and thumbnails size are now more readily available when scanning disk images or manually running plugins.
• Updated DcrawPlugin to the latest version of dcraw.c.
• Adjusted some details on how alias names are assigned to files and folders when edited inline, and what and when is considered a file extension in edited alias name.
• Fixed variables handling in the IMDB plugin when using custom formatted descriptions.

• Fixed sending plugin settings to runtime plugins, adjusted visual layout of some runtime plugins to support larger thumbnail sizes.

• Fixed the error message occuring after scanning a removable media using options to eject media after scanning, and redisplay Add/Update Disk Image dialog.

• Added new "Maya IFF Thumbnails" plugin.
• Added new script command, ShowTrayIcon(). It shows WhereIsIt's icon in the system tray while script file is executing, and it's tooltip shows current line and command being executed.
• Fixed several issues related with running script files.
• Fixed processing of certain JPEG files for EXIF extraction, some JPEG files saved in a bit different file format failed to extract EXIF record.
• Fixed exporting disk numbers in report generator to some file formats.
• Adjusted processing and error handling for 16bps RLE compressed SGI files.

Version 3.70 - 6. November 2005

• Disk numbers are now allowed to be alphanumerical and no longer limited to 1-65536 range. Markings like "A-B123-45C" are now allowed. Disk renumbering function as well as suggesting first available disk number when adding new disk image had to be adjusted accordingly - for both, the last found numerical sequence in disk number marking ("45" in the above example) will be considered the number part.
• Thumbnails now maintain aspect ratio when downscaled to 16x16 size icons in file lists, and use better downscaling algorithm for improved quality.
• Added recognition of various H.264 and related codecs in used AVI and MP4 files.
• Added support for ID3v2 Unicode LE and BE encoded tags.
• Added support for .CR2 files to the Canon Raw Files description plugin.
• Updated DcrawPlugin to the latest version of dcraw.c.

• For compatibility reasons, disk numbers that translate to be entirely numerical are now sorted as numbers, instead of alphanumerically.
• Rewritten EXIF and IPTC support in all relevant plugins. Plugins now allow for extracting any available EXIF or IPTC tag through their tag numbers instead of fixed variables. Data formatting for many EXIF tags was improved as well. Added support for EXIF makernote tags for several digital camera manufacturers (Canon, Nikon, Casio, Fojufilm, Olympus).

• Added rudimentary 7-zip (.7z) archive file support, provided through a third-party library.
• Minor update wizard adjustment, it will now check and report new version build numbers as well.
• Minor bug fixes.

Version 3.69 - 9. September 2005

• Added optional automatic view mode switching. If selected, the program will automatically choose the most suitable view mode for the current context. For example, if more than a certain percentage of listed items have thumbnails available, the program will switch to thumbnails view mode for the current folder.
• Updated DcrawPlugin to the latest version of dcraw.c.
• Added new NTFS File Summary Information plugin, extracting file properties (editable under Properties/Summary tab in Windows Explorer) that may available on drives formatted with NTFS 5 or newer file system.
• Updated the Nikon Digital Camera Raw Files description plugin, added support for extracting IPTC data from NEF files.
• A few dozens of other minor improvements and adjustments in various parts of the program.

Version 3.68 - 10. July 2005

• Maintenance release.

Version 3.67 - 6. May 2005

• Minor maintenance release only.
• Updated DcrawPlugin to the latest version of dcraw.c.
• Improvements to the Video Player runtime plugin; added multi-monitor support, added new popup menu with basic options to help novice users get around in full screen mode, some other minor improvements.
• Fixed sorting by certain columns in certain windows, in some cases resulting order wasn't as expected.
• Fixed a problem with searching in catalogs where custom icons are assigned to folders.
• A few minor bugfixes and adjustments.

Version 3.66 - 4. March 2005

• Minor maintenance release only.
• Updated DcrawPlugin to the latest version of dcraw.c.
• Minor updates to some of the description plugins.
• Added a workaround for a removable drive where its driver incorrectly reported presence of audio tracks.
• Provided better handling of certain marginal case scenarios, cleared up some of the error messages.

• Added detection of 64-bit Windows.
• Updated DcrawPlugin to the latest version of dcraw.c.
• Fixed remembering between sessions the last column files were sorted by in the main window.
• Fixed setting date in the Lending Disks dialog.
• A few other minor fixes.

Version 3.65 - 6. January 2005

• Improvements to the internal viewer; added optional icons/thumbnails navigation through available files on the source list for easier browsing, added full-screen display option when in image view mode.
• Tweaked mouse wheel scrolling support in the internal viewer and report preview windows, positioning mouse cursor over the window is now enough to be able to scroll it.
• Included additional hi-color icons and animations.
• Updated IMDB plugin for changes on the IMDB.com web site, updated DcrawPlugin to the latest version of dcraw.c.
• Added a workaround for improved stability on some P4 hyper-threading enabled systems.
• Optimized and adjusted some details in the Matroska Media Files plugin.
• A few dozens of other minor improvements and adjustments.

• Fixed rebuilding catalogs with changed encryption setting, minor updates to the internal viewer and some of the bundled plugins.
• Tweaked multi-monitor support; adjusted logic for selecting which monitor will new windows open on, and allowed for storing and restoring window positions on non-primary monitors. Windows with stored positions outside of any currently available monitor space will be shown on default position on the primary monitor.

• Included the Video Files Thumbnails plugin in the distributable package, it was previously separately downloadable with full source code. The plugin can import video frames from given playtime offset as thumbnails. Note that this plugin is not supported.
• Improvements to the internal viewer. Added popup menu in the image view mode, the plugin used for importing viewed image is now directly accessible and configurable, keyboard shortcuts are now shown within toolbar button's hints. A few details are fixed or optimized as well.
• Updated DcrawPlugin to the latest version of dcraw.c.
• A few minor bugfixes and adjustments.

Version 3.64 - 21. December 2004

• All toolbars, menus, buttons and some other graphics are upgraded with hi-color icons. New graphics will be used automatically on all systems where display settings support at least 16-bit color depth. Old 16-colors graphics is still included and will be used on low-color displays, active high-contrast color schemes, or when specifically requested with -Force16colors command line parameter, in case someone prefers using old icons. If changing system display settings in runtime, switching between 16-colors and hi-color graphics is automatic.
• User interface handling has been internally reorganized and optimized, WhereIsIt now uses about 25% less system GDI resources on startup.
• Printed/previewed and HTML reports can now use items coloring, as set up in the main program. Items in reports can now be colored by categories, flags, locations etc. as they are on screen. Items coloring in reports can be disabled in Report settings, Report Details tab.
• Adobe Illustrator description plugin: added support for importing some additional PDF-based details.
• Fine tuned EXIF orientation tag support in TIFF and JPEG files, added photo orientation information to EXIF description text.
• Enabled IPTC support for TIFF files.
• Added APE tags support to MP3, Ogg Vorbis, and FLAC description plugins. Rewritten tags detection to recognize and support any combination of ID3v1, ID3v2, and APE tags that may be present in a file.
• Fixed handling 16-bit grayscale TIFF images.

Version 3.63 - 2. December 2004

• Updated report generator engine.
• Added a new option to display and navigate through page thumbnails in the report print preview.
• Allowed sorting items by categories when generating report from the main window and not browsing by categories.
• Updated JPEG code, tweaked support for CYYK, CMYK JPEG files, and certain types of TIFF files (plane-separated).
• Added a new option to JPEG and TIFF thumbnail plugins, allowing pictures to be rotated according to the EXIF tag, if available.
• Updated the "Assign Picture as Thumbnail" runtime plugin.
• Updated IMDB plugin for changes on IMDB.com and OFDB.de web sites.
• Updated DcrawPlugin to the latest version of dcraw.c.
• Disabled the Minimize button on Search, User List and Compare windows. It serves no practical purpose and was sometimes causing difficulties to some users with having problems to locate minimized windows.
• Mouse cursor in the internal viewer now indicates busy state when picture is being resampled in the background.
• Fixed startup problem on some AMD64 systems running with WinXP SP2.
• Addressed a problem with rebuilding catalogs after making changes to catalog password protection, encryption, or compression.
• Fixed placement of newly added or updated disk images in catalog according to the set sorting order.
• Tweaked handling RAR and ZIP archives with localized characters in filenames.
• Fixed exporting category headers in HTML reports.
• Other minor fixes and adjustments.

Version 3.62 - 20. August 2004

• Added a few enhancements to the Description window, including custom zoom option for the thumbnail. Thumbnails in description window can now be displayed enlarged up to three times, using high quality resampling and sharpening algorithms.
• Added support for .cbr and .cbz archive files (comic book format, compressed in RAR or ZIP format).
• Updated JPEG image library, added support for JPEG CYYK images to the JPEG thumbnails plugin.
• Updated DcrawPlugin to the latest version of dcraw.c.
• Fixed an error occurring in some cases when moving or deleting files listed in one of the categories or flags in Categories view.

Version 3.61 - 5. July 2004

• New and updated plugins - added new plugin for Zeiss LSM file format, updated TIFF plugin for 12-bit grayscale images in TIFF images with separate color planes, updated DcrawPlugin to the latest version of dcraw.c and added additional supported RAW files.
• Added capability to search by whole words when using Quick Search, or searching by file names or descriptions in Advanced Search. Combining whole words searching with wildcards is also allowed.
• Redesigned Catalog Setup dialog with added new functionality, including sorting, reverting data, auto expanding/collapsing categories etc.
• If automatic expanding/collapsing tree nodes is selected, all catalog nodes will no longer be expanded automatically, but left unchanged instead, leaving it to the user if available disks should always be visible or not.
• More robust handling of CRC calculations when scanning disks, certain specific cases of locked files could cause scanning to abort.
• Disk or folder currently being scanned is now more clearly marked as such in the catalog tree.
• Added optional ASPI drivers check in the setup program, provided by Adaptec's AspiChk.exe. Checking the state of ASPI drivers is highly recommended as broken ASPI support on the system is by far the most common cause of problems when cataloging CDs or DVDs.
• Documented command line installation switches for the setup program in the Install.txt file, including switches for silent installs.
• Optimized web site for W3C compliance and Mozilla/Firefox compatibility.

• Fixed searching for item names by file masks.
• Disk scanning now always skips folders named .AppleSingle and .AppleDouble, if they exist on the media. Those are special folders created by certain software when accessing PC files from a Mac, and they contain modified, invalid copies of files which can cause problems for plugins trying to process them.
• Deselected folders under Folder Limitations button in the Add/Update Disk Image dialog are now always reset for each affected drive when doing batch disk image updates through the Update All Disk Images function.
• Some other minor adjustments.

• Added new Zeiss LSM description plugin, complementing existing Zeiss LSM thumbnails plugin.
• Fixed inability for plugins to change disk's name while cataloging.
• Some other minor changes and adjustments.

Version 3.60 - 21. May 2004

• Added new thumbnails plugin for decoding digital camera raw photos. DcrawPlugin is a wrapper around Dave Coffin's dcraw.c project, adjusting it to be used as a plugin in WhereIsIt. dcraw.c currently supports 109 different digital cameras. dcraw.c home page: http://www.cybercom.net/~dcoffin/dcraw/
• Adjusted a few details with handling network drives, exposed last known UNC address for cataloged network drives in a few different places, like drive popup descriptions, insert media notification, Properties dialog...
• Adjustments to the Adobe Acrobat (PDF) plugin.
• Lots of other minor changes and adjustments.

Build 3.60.604

• Updated DcrawPlugin to the latest version of dcraw.c.
• Addressed a performance problem in Report Generator when handling large numbers of items in generated reports.
• Fixed error messages occurring on some systems when changing view mode on compare results list.

Version 3.59 - 27. April 2004

• Editing categories, flags, and disk location assignments is now possible directly from item lists, for both individual items and multiple items at once. Just select wanted item(s) and right-click, double-click, or edit- click in the area of the appropriate column. In-place editing like that is now available in the main window, search results, and user list.
• Alias names are now also directly editable in search results list and user list. Just edit-click an item, or press F2. The same was already available before in the main window.
• Existing Ogg Vorbis plugin is extended to handle generic Ogg multimedia files, including Ogg Media format (*.OGM), supporting video tracks, audio tracks, and subtitles.
• It is now possible to start another instance of WhereIsIt in scripted mode even if WhereIsIt is already running in normal mode at the time. This should allow scheduled scripts to execute normally, rather than being aborted if WhereIsIt is being used interactively at the time.
• A few changes were made in the About dialog, reported WhereIsIt version now also includes build number, and operating system version detection is more descriptive and includes service pack information.
• Changed a few keyboard shortcuts in the English language version, adding disk image is now accessible through Ctrl+D instead of Ctrl+A, while Ctrl+A is now left reserved for its usual default action, selecting all items on a list (also accessible as before through numerical "*").
• Addressed possible negative disk free space being reported after copying files using internal file management functions, and selecting to have target disk image in catalog updated with data being copied. Negative free space could result if target disk image was not previously up to date with the actual state on disk.

Version 3.58 - 26. March 2004

• Added new Matroska Media Files (*.MKV) plugin.
• IMDB plugin: Changed URL encoding to be compatible with RFC 1738. This allows using some more unusual characters in movie title queries.
• IMDB plugin: Added support for importing movie thumbnails in GIF and PNG formats. 99% of IMDB site has thumbnails in JPG format, however there are some movie entries with GIF thumbnails as well.
• Sorted column is now shaded when running on a system with XP visual styles enabled.
• WhereIsIt now terminates faster when exiting the program, especially after dealing with large amounts of data, like scanning large hard disks.
• Some minor changes in generated SQL exported reports.
• Implemented a workaround for Logitech mouse drivers, with mouse pointer loosing acceleration setting if showing WhereIsIt's startup logo was turned off. In such cases, Logitech mouse drivers were incorrectly detecting WhereIsIt "as a game" (one of the plugins happens to use DirectX) and may have turned off mouse acceleration if so set up in the mouse driver. Related FAQ entry is now also removed as it no longer applies.
• Addressed a few minor issues related to running WhereIsIt in special localized environments, like using Microsoft's AppLocale utility to change system locale per application bases. Scanning media in such cases was sometimes terminated when encountering a filename containing localized characters. Note that using AppLocale with WhereIsIt is not recommended, as it can not provide a proper environment for the program to run in, Windows should be booted with appropriate language setting instead.
• A few minor changes for Windows XP SP2 compatibility when running on AMD64 and Itanium processors.

Build 3.58.404

• Catalogs opened at the time of exiting WhereIsIt are added once again to the MRU list, as they were in versions before 3.58.
• Windows Task Manager no longer shows 100% CPU usage when scanning disks. Note that this is a cosmetical change for the benefit of Task Manager, actual CPU usage is exactly the same as always.

Build 3.58.406

• Fixed slow disks scanning experienced on some systems.

Version 3.57 - 18. February 2004

• WhereIsIt now uses RichEdit control v2.0 or newer if available, depending on the operating system type and version. RichEdit control is mostly used for displaying and editing descriptions, and new version brings some additional functionality, such as multilevel undo/redo, auto-detectable and clickable URLs in text, improved multilanguage support etc. A command line switch is available for troubleshooting purposes, forcing the program to use old, compatibility-mode RichEdit 1.0 control.
• Media type in WhereIsIt's catalogs is now user changeable in disk's Properties dialog, with certain limitations. Only media types that are "compatible" and do not affect basic media properties and functionality can be selected. For example, it is allowed to change CD-ROM media to CD-R or DVD, but you can not change CD-ROM to a hard disk or network drive, or vice versa. Generally, WhereIsIt will autodetect the correct media type, changing it manually may only come handy in cases where precise detection is not possible due to hardware limitations (i.e. CD-R media in a regular CD-ROM drive).
• Added a new description plugin extracting digital camera information in CIFF format from Canon raw files (CRW).
• Added support for additional video file formats in IMDB and Video Player plugins, fine tuned search results parsing for the IMDB plugin.
• Added option to compare by file extensions to Compare Files to Catalog and Compare Cataloged Data functions.
• Redesigned user interface and editing behavior in Lending Disks editor. All disks are now presented in a catalog tree structure instead of a simple list, still sortable, and edited changes are instantly visible on the disks list.
• Removed a lot of listview flicker, especially when updating/editing item's descriptions.
• Adjusted a few details with inline alias names renaming.
• Many other minor fixes and adjustments.

Build 3.57.219

• Fixed error occuring on columns resize under certain conditions.

Build 3.57.305

• Quick searching now allows combinations of quoted expressions and masks in the same search parameter, i.e. *"bla"?"a b"*c.
• Changed internal ASPI processing to allow for better handling for corrupt/non-functional ASPI drivers.

Version 3.56 - 21. January 2004

• Added image resampling support to the internal viewer. Images that are stretched to fit the window can now be (optionally) resampled to viewed resolution, instead of just bitmap being stretched. While resampling image takes some time to complete, it produces notably better quality stretched images without jagged edges. Resampling in WhereIsIt's internal viewer runs in a separate thread at low priority, and does not interfere with browsing and viewer's responsiveness. After changing viewed image, you will just note a small delay before resampled image kicks in.
• Added Locate in Catalog button and menu option in the internal viewer, and activated keyboard and mouse navigation keys for scrolling and previous/next navigation when viewing images.
• Added a "Clear Results" button to the Compare results window. It is recommended to clear Compare results when no longer needed, to free up system resources and speed up catalog processing. Dragging along compare results means they need to be updated to be kept valid as catalog changes, and this can slow down some operations.
• Lots of changes to handling compare results, mostly fixing a few bugs related to deleting cataloged data while that same data was listed among compare results. Compare results should now be updated correctly.
• Recordable CD and DVD media are now correctly marked and handled as removable, and allow audio-specific processing like CDDB queries when recorded as audio.
• Updated IMDB plugin for latest changes on IMDB.com web site.
• Minor adjustment to the JPEG decoder, addressing a compatibility issue with some very rare JPEG files.
• Fixed Monkey's Audio plugin (fixed support for .APE files created with Monkey's Audio v3.95 and later, APE tag details were not always extracted)

Build 3.56.123

• Fixed a bug occuring when manually closing catalog or removing cataloged data after using searching.

Version 3.55 - 15. December 2003

• Added CD media type recognition, as far as your hardware supports it. WhereIsIt can now tell apart the following types of CD media when it is inserted in drive: CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-ROM, DVD-RAM, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW, DVD+R, DD CD-ROM, DD CD-R, DD CD-RW. Note that not all drives can recognize all media types. Typically, a regular CD-ROM drive is not capable of distinguishing between CD-ROM, CD-R, or CD-RW media, for example, only write-capable devices can do that. Functional ASPI drivers are required on Win9x/ME for this to work, internal SPTI will be sufficient on Win2K/XP.
• Added DeleteDisk and RenameDisk script commands, and provided better handling for some types of incorrectly written scripts.
• Included in the package is the latest new description plugin, AVI Video Files, extracting technical details with codecs recognition, as well as providing support for three different types of data tagging formats, with additional information about video files such as title, director, casting, rating etc.
• Fixed a problem where some disk groups would occasionally loose their attached pictures when catalog was saved more than once in a session.
• Fixed "Invalid floating point operation" message appearing in report generator when dealing with catalogs with damaged thumbnails, or encountering low system resources situations.
• Updated FAQ for the slow Logitech mouse issue in WhereIsIt's window, the problem is caused by Logitech's MouseWare drivers.
• Other minor changes and improvements.

Build 3.55.1231

• The MP3/WAV Audio Files plugin was added support for Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) MPEG-4 files (including ID3v1 and ID3v2 tags), a new configuration dialog and extended support for ID3v2. MPEG-4 plugin now supports *.M4A and *.M4V files as well.
• Added a new description plugin, handling Monkey's Audio file format (*.APE), also supporting ID3v1, ID3v2 and APE tags. Support for ID3v1 and ID3v2 was added to Ogg Vorbis plugin as well, and many existing plugins have renewed and optimized configuration dialogs.
• Added Nikon NEF Raw Files description and thumbnail plugins.
• Streamlined the IMDB plugin for faster processing, minimizing user's interaction. The most likely choice in search results is now preselected, and the longest available plot summary can be imported automatically instead of asking user to choose one. In most cases, IMDB query can be processed with two Enter keypresses.
• Bundled all the latest standard plugins.
• Fixed sorting of disk groups by disk locations.

Version 3.54 - 14. October 2003

• Changed a bit the strategy on comparing cataloged data, regarding multiple matching items on both source and target locations. A single source item is now allowed to report multiple matching items on target location if compare criteria can not tell them apart. This should provide clearer compare results.
• Added Properties button and menu option in the internal Viewer, allowing access to changing description, assigning categories, flags etc. while viewing files.
• Added support for changing media serial number on FAT32/NTFS formatted removable media.
• Minor changes in handling corrupted catalog files, additional load progress tracking will allow to report more details about the part of catalog found to be corrupted.
• Fixed a problem with Compare Catalog Data function, selecting target group items often did not allow for selecting folders beyond root level.
• Fixed searching limited by folder levels, in certain cases folders laying below specified limited were also returned.
• Fixed duplicates searching with more than 4 active compare criteria.

Build 3.54.1027

• When saving a new user list, a list of existing user lists is available as a drop down for easier replacement.
• A few other minor fixes and adjustments.

Version 3.53 - 21. September 2003

• Renewed compressed archive file support for most of internally handled compression file formats. Added support for some additional variations of compression formats, including ZIP64 (very large .zip files, >2 GB).
• Report Generator now supports settings templates for both printer and paper settings and report setup settings.
• Updated IMDB plugin to adjust for changes on IMDB.COM web site.
• Fixed hiding extensions in file name column in Search Results and User List.
• Other minor fixes, changes, and improvements.

Version 3.52 - 2. September 2003

• Enhanced searching by categories. You can now optionally select that categories are hierarchically dependant when searching, meaning that searching for a child category will also match all items assigned to one of parent categories. For example, if there is a category "Plants" and it has a subcategory "Trees", searching for items assigned to "Plants" will also return all items only assigned to "Trees".
• Added a new option to show assigned categories and flags in item's popup window, alongside with item's description and thumbnail.
• Added new description plugin, handling MPEG-4 (*.MP4) audio and video files. This plugin will extract technical details about available tracks, and it supports ID3-like embedded information used on audio MP4 files.
• Improved and adjusted EXIF digital camera info handling in JPEG and TIFF images.
• Word-wrap setting in the top Description Assistant's window is now saved.
• Fixed the Compare Cataloged Data function, in some cases all file details had to match regardless of settings used.
• Adjusted SQL exporting for better MySQL compatibility.
• Fixed a resource leak in the Cursor Images thumbnail plugin.

Version 3.51 - 23. June 2003

• Added recognition and support for Windows 2003 Server operating system.
• Bundled all new and improved plugins released separately since version 3.50.
• Report generator now includes an option to choose between ISO and Windows code pages being generated in exported HTML reports.
• Fixed compare cataloged data function for dealing with archive files and files compressed and cataloged inside archives.
• Implemented some changes to allow plugins being executed on files with very long full paths (more than 256 characters).
• Fixed a problem with WhereIsIt sometimes crashing on exit if Video Player runtime plugin was used during the session. Updated Video Player plugin to better handle problematic environments (older versions of DirectX installed than required, etc.)
• Lots of other minor changes and fixes.

Version 3.50 - 8. April 2003

• The freeware version of WhereIsIt, WhereIsIt Lite, was updated to 3.50 code base and is now released together with 3.50 shareware version. WhereIsIt Lite is catalog browser only, it can be freely used to browse and search, but it can not make any changes to catalogs.
• HTML exported reports now use relative file name links to other pages and included images, instead of full-path file names.
• Removed remaining debugging code from different parts of the program, some resulting in notable speed-ups.
• A few minor adjustments for better fitting translations in certain languages.
• Adjusted some details for handling RAR archives and updated to the latest version of UNRAR.DLL.
• Added UTF-8 decoding support to the Ogg Vorbis plugin, improving support for non-English languages.
• Fixed a bug with updating folder data in existing disk image, resulting in GPF under certain conditions.
• Lots of other minor changes and adjustments.

Build 3.50.422

• Included updated DescAPI 2.20 documentation in HTMLHelp format, added one additional runtime plugin allowing to assign any picture as a thumbnail for any cataloged file or folder, a few other minor changes and enhancements.

Build 3.50.514

• Added new runtime plugin, a simple video player with ability to capture and assign selected frame from video file as a thumbnail. DirectX 8.1 or newer is required. There is a lot of room for improvements with this plugin, and some new features will be added in future versions. For now, consider it a beta release.
• Runtime plugins can now be executed on disk groups as well.
• Fixed a problem with updating disk images with virtual run through script language.
• Using Save as Default option when scanning disk images no longer turns off all runtime plugins in program's settings.
• Adjusted handling of older .DWG files in the AutoCAD description plugin.
• A few other minor adjustments.

Build 3.50.525

• Fixed a problem with loading disk images, where non-root folders had assigned custom icons. In some cases not entire disk image was loaded when opening the catalog the next time.

Version 3.50 Release Candidate - 18. March 2003

• Categories selection tree in Properties and Advanced Search now displays categories in their assigned colors, where available.
• The text for font preview when selecting fonts is now customizable, just double-click displayed preview text to change.
• A few sample HTML templates to be used in report generator for HTML exporting are included in this release. Templates allow for customizable look and layout of generated HTML exports.
• Implemented a workaround for a problem occurring on Windows XP with visual themes active. When resizing window, list view was not repainted properly when in mode other than "details". This appears to a problem associated with the new Comctl32.dll v6 library shipping with Windows XP. The current solution causes some flicker while resizing, but at least it paints properly.
• F5 shortcut was added in all main windows, refreshing / redrawing window on demand, just like in Explorer.
• A few minor changes on the new installer software, allowing for better compatibility with older, previously installed version.
• Report generator bug fixed, some types of exported reports contained no data.
• Lots of minor bug fixes and cosmetical enhancements, i.e. added shadow on all tooltip windows when running in Windows XP.

Version 3.50 beta 3 - 21. February 2003

• Added a new option in program's settings, for optionally showing small icon overlays in the top right corner for folders and disks when in thumbnail view. This could be useful for telling apart files and folders when all you can see is a thumbnail.
• A new Word Wrap option is available in the report generator for description column. When enabled, description column on printed reports will adjust its width to available paper, while text inside is word-wrapped. Useful for non-formatted descriptions without line breaks.
• IMDB plugin v1.1 - additional filtering of HTML tags in plot outlines and user comments, added support for OFDb (DE) site (German language database), added ability to directly enter movie's URL instead of searching on target web site.
• Updated MP3 plugin, added support for VBR tags where available, resulting in a few times faster processing of VBR MP3 files.
• New keyboard shortcuts are available in treeviews for expanding/collapsing nodes in addition to standard ones. Use Ctrl with *, -, and + keys on numerical keyboard.
• Improved support for browsing through system namespace folders.
• Fixed importing data through runtime plugins twice in the same session for the same item, only results of the first run would be saved in catalog.
• Fixed missing column headers on the top of printed reports pages, and addressed some spacing and page break issues with large thumbnails being included in reports.
• Open/Save dialogs are again available in extended format, as in previous versions.
• Some other minor changes and adjustments.

Version 3.50 beta 2 - 6. February 2003

• Beta 2 now ships with Internet Movie Database (IMDB) plugin, the first runtime plugin available, also serving as technology demo. Runtime plugins are not automated and don't provide descriptions and thumbnails while scanning the media, they are manually run later through menu options, and typically require user feedback or work with user through UI. The IMDB plugin retrieves movie details such as title, year, runtime, plot summary, cast, user comments etc., as well as movie's cover image as thumbnail, if available. If you are wondering how such descriptions look like, open the sample catalog, there is a new DVD movie disk image added, equipped with the results of IMDB plugin.
• "Copy to clipboard" command was added in the internal viewer and description viewer window, placing viewed images or thumbnails to clipboard.
• Fixed searching by lending disk date.
• Fixed duplicates searching where CRCs were set as a secondary criteria. In certain combinations of settings involving CRCs and data being processed, not all duplicates were reported.
• Made adjustments for the toolbar buttons order issue. If previous version of WhereIsIt was installed, the default buttons order in version 3.50 was taken from older version when used for the first time, together with other settings, which looked a bit strange as buttons in version 3.50 are a different. Beta 2 will fall back to the default order for version 3.50.
• A dozen of other minor fixes, cosmetical adjustments, etc.

Version 3.50 beta 1 - 19. January 2003

• Changed installer software, and stopped shipping 50COMCTL.EXE update in the distribution package to save on download size (it's very rarely needed, and is available as a separate download where necessary).
• New internal assembler-optimized memory management is in place, handling the most basic memory allocation all around the program. Some memory intensive operations resulted in a notable speed boost.
• Plugins for importing descriptions and thumbnails can now be run manually as well, on request and for selected set of cataloged items only. This allows much better manual control on which files to process than with scanning the media.
• A new plugin type is introduced, intended for interactive, non-automatic plugins that can't do their job without some feedback from the user. These plugins are available for manual running only, and they are directly available as separate menu options for items they apply to. For example, such plugins could be some sort of specialized description editors that can work with the user to prepare data to be imported. Their primary task, though, is to allow for importing of data that can not be imported automatically, without some sort of assistance or input from the user. New plugins support importing both descriptions and thumbnails.
• The internal viewer has been considerably improved. It now allows for switching viewed files (previous/next file) directly from the viewer, and has support for optionally skipping unavailable files. Viewed images can be resized to fit in window, and can be viewed with optionally predefined brightness/contrast/gamma adjustment. Text files have a switch available for showing them as DOS or Windows text (switching code page used). Viewed files can now be launched in the associated application from the internal viewer.
• Added a new diagnostic tool, analyzing the structure of catalog file and indicating how much space each disk image or folder take in the catalog file. You can use this tool to help you optimize catalog size, find which parts of the catalog are hogging most of the space and locate them in the main window, there you can remove unnecessary thumbnails, long descriptions, contents of archive files etc.
• New feature added for tracking disk lending and borrowing. Each disk image in catalog can now be equipped with indicator whether it is available, lent out, borrowed from someone, or not available altogether (i.e. damaged). All three states include optional one-line comment, while lending and borrowing information can also indicate the name and date of the person disk was lent to or borrowed from. Disk status is indicated when browsing catalog in a form of additional overlay status icon displayed over the disk's icon, while details appear in the disk's popup hint along with its description.
• New data comparing capabilities, allowing to compare files in selected groups of cataloged disks and folders. Compare results include list of files unique to each group, file that are the same in both groups, and files that have the same name but are otherwise different, possibly changed. Comparing cataloged data is particularly useful for comparing disk images of the same media to track changes.
• Advanced searching now includes a new criteria for searching by disk's lending and borrowing information, including disk's state, name and date of person lent to or borrowed from, and associated comments.
• Added support for catalog group files (.ctg), simple text files combining one or more catalog files or other catalog groups into a selected group. This allows for easier one-step loading of predefined groups of catalog files for users with lots of catalogs. A new catalog group editor with preview and catalog details is built-in the program.
• Added new Report Generator Wizard. Intended mostly for novice users, this wizard provides a way to prepare the data for some of the most commonly used report types. While it offers nothing that couldn't be done before, it simplifies preparing some predefined report types and teaches users how to get the same result on their own.
• Report Generator now supports custom-sized icons and thumbnails (definable separately) in printed reports, or in print preview. You can simply define how much space (mm/inches/pixels) icons and thumbnails should take on paper.
• Entirely rewritten HTML exporting in Report Generator. Exported HTML files are now based on templates, through which the layout and styling of the generated HTML pages can be customized. Thumbnails and icons can optionally be a part of generated HTML page, exported as JPEG and GIF files, and page indexes can be included in templates for multi-page HTML files. Additional files such as graphics or CSS definitions can be linked from templates and copied along exported HTML data, too. A few predefined custom templates are included.
• Added an option in report generator settings to limit the allowed number of description text lines when printing or exporting reports.
• Changed report generator settings dialog, printer and paper-related settings were moved to a separate dialog.
• Added a new option in the Add/Update disk image dialog, to automatically save the catalog after scanning media completes.
• Added Flags and Disk Location columns to most item lists, adjusted names of a few columns for better clarity and consistence between different lists, and tweaked a few other related details, like the default order and state of columns on individual lists. All new columns are now available for the report generator as well. Due to these changes, columns order and state will be reset to default if upgrading from previous versions.
• File management operations like moving and copying files now allow for inserting of needed disks in any order. For example, if copying 5 files from 5 different CDs, the program will no longer demand one of the needed CDs to be inserted, but will list all five and proceed with whichever becomes available first.
• Added Back and Forward browsing buttons in the main window, keeping track of browsing history.
• Catalog files (.ctf) on local disks known to be unavailable or deleted are now displayed as grayed on "most recently used" catalogs lists, like in the File menu or Open button's menu.
• Included support for submitting DGENRE and DYEAR information to the freedb database.
• Improved themed user interface support, especially for the WinXP users using new XP style. Checkboxes in all lists and treeview are now displayed with theme-compatible check marks instead of default, painting buttons has been adjusted for better support for other third-party themes etc.
• Easier plugins management. All lists of plugins now support multi-selection, and allow for related operations like checking/unchecking and changing priority to be done for multiple plugins at once.
• The Launch File command was extended to support manually selecting the application used to run the selected file with. If holding down Shift, "Launch File" command becomes "Launch File with...", which lets you select the application to be used instead of the default associated program. Note that the standard Windows dialogs and methods are used for selecting application to be used for launching file, and implementations may differ between different versions of Windows.
• All language files now default to the system default font. The typeface and size of this system default font is determined in run-time for each specific system instead of using predefined settings. This makes sure WhereIsIt's dialogs have the same default appearance as all other Windows applications, regardless of screen DPI settings and video drivers.
• A new file name matching option was added to searching for duplicates, allowing for files to optionally differ in file extensions yet still pass the same filename criteria (i.e. Readme.txt" and "Readme.bak").
• Advanced searching was extended with a new criteria for searching by thumbnails. It is now possible to search for items with or without thumbnails, or for items with thumbnails of certain size.
• The Compare Files to Catalog function now supports searching for matching items inside cataloged archive files (of course, only if their contents is available in catalog).
• You can now assign a disk picture from clipboard as well as from file.
• Optimized processing of certain combinations of compressed archive files and options used while scanning disk. For example, processing large solid archives while importing descriptions only and not cataloging archive contents is now a lot faster.
• The separator character for CSV exports in report generator is now user- definable (the default remains to be semi column, as used by Excel and other related applications. Some prefer comma though).
• Updating disk images now allows for files in catalog to keep their existing descriptions, categories and thumbnails if their name and CRC did not change. If CRC is not available in catalog, or is not set to be calculated during media scan, files must still have the same name, size and date/time stamp to keep their cataloged properties, as before.
• Added a new option in program's settings regarding the scope of browsing through available network resources. The program now defaults to listing connected resources only, i.e. mapped network drives instead of trying to find everything available on the network. The latter mode of operation is still available, but can cause long delays when Windows tries to find and enumerate available computers, shared drives and printers etc.
• Scanning report for the Update All Disk Images command now includes some additional details.
• Added recognition support and separate drive icon for DVD media.
• System default drive icons are now used instead of custom ones for drives like Zip, Jaz, and DVD drives, when running in Windows XP.
• Charset handling for custom fonts is now more flexible, allowing users to have more control when working with international fonts.
• JPEG thumbnails plugin was updated to support some of the newer JPG files.
• Removed support for importing Floppy Master databases. This has been obsolete for a long time now.
• A LOT of other minor changes, improvements, adjustments,...

Version 3.26 - 10. June 2002

• Added two new thumbnail plugins handling Adobe Illustrator files (*.AI) and Canon EOS digital camera raw files (*.CRW), and a new description plugin for Adobe Illustrator files.
• Optimized processing of certain combinations of compressed archive files and options used while scanning disk. For example, processing large solid archives while importing descriptions only and not cataloging archive contents is now a lot faster.
• Added support for extracting from multivolume RAR archive files using the new .partxxx.rar naming scheme.
• Improved themed user interface support, especially for the WinXP users using new XP style. Checkboxes in all lists and treeview are now displayed with theme-compatible check marks instead of default, painting buttons has been adjusted for better support for other third-party themes etc.
• Catalog files (.ctf) on local disks known to be unavailable or deleted are now displayed as grayed on "most recently used" catalogs lists, like in the File menu or Open button's menu.
• Improved support for handling menus with accessibility software, such as screen readers aiding visually impaired users.
• Lots of other minor improvements and adjustments.
• Build 615: Fixed a problem where under certain events some disk pictures and descriptions assigned to disk groups would get missing or corrupted.

Version 3.25 - 10. February 2002

• Added support for RAR 3.0 archive files.
• Importing the description entry from ID3V2 tags in MP3 files has been re-enabled and uses a bit different approach to avoid problems with some invalid tags.
• The HTMLHelp window is now no longer forced to stay on top of the main window, you can switch between the two freely.
• Optimized processing of archive files during scanning.
• Implemented a workaround for some Windows NT 4.0 systems which had problems dealing with custom icons. Saving a catalog containing certain kind of custom icons would fail under Windows NT 4.0.
• Many other minor adjustments, fixes and changes all around the program, mostly transferred over from version 3.50 development.

Version 3.24 - 12. January 2002

• Added an option to choose version of the file format when exporting to Excel. You can choose between Excel 97/2000/XP file format, and Excel 5.0/95 files. If you have file compatibility concerns or problems with exporting localized characters, the older file format may be a better option.
• Added a new thumbnail plugin, extracting attached pictures from ID3v2 tags in MP3 files, where available.
• The CD-Text plugin was added SPTI support to be used instead of ASPI on the NT-line of Windows. This was the last part of WhereIsIt still using ASPI on those systems, so ASPI is now no longer used or required when running in Windows NT/2000/XP.
• Added a minor extension to the DescAPI interface, all plugins now receive a handle to the appropriate parent window, in case they need to display modal dialogs or windows on their own.
• The Quick Search page was added a help button next to the edit field, providing a quick link to the appropriate help file, explaining how to use quick search expressions and stating a few samples.
• Adjusted support for handling audio CDs, allowing for some more unusual (typically home-burned) audio tracks to be recognized and handled as audio.
• Fixed a problem with removing files from catalog, where both compressed files within archives, and parent archive file were selected for removal.
• A few other minor adjustments.

Version 3.23 - 24. December 2001

• Fixed a problem with some password protected catalogs ending up corrupted after being used in version 3.22. This build also contains recovery capabilities, allowing to read and properly save such catalogs.
• Fixed a bug with missing tag name for the file name column in XML exports.
• When exporting custom reports, some data types like dates and integers were exported as empty in certain cases, although data was available. Fixed.
• Made a few changes and implemented a few additional checks to better handle failed save attempts, due to catalog files being opened in other applications, or by other users.

Version 3.22 - 14. December 2001

• Improved damaged catalog recovery capabilities. All catalog files saved with version 3.22 and newer now contain a small recovery record, which can help the program to salvage data from badly damaged catalogs. Catalogs with damaged basic structure were not readable in previous versions, while this addition allows the program to skip damaged parts, and salvage the rest of data.
• Some systems were confirmed to have a problem with retrieving disk size and free space for remote network drives, if they were addressed by their UNC address. This problem was limited to Win2K/XP systems, and could also interfere with saving catalog files on network drives using UNC addressing. Fixed.
• Addressed a certain scenario where a previous failed save attempt could leave the catalog corrupted the next time it was saved.
• Fixed GPF errors when working with compare results window, and having description window undocked from the main window. Cosmetical error only, no effect on stability or data integrity.
• A dozen minor changes and improvements.

Version 3.21 - 18. November 2001

• The new HTML Help file is now finally completed and included in this release, replacing the old and tired WinHelp edition. While most of the text inside has remained unchanged, the new help file system offers better design and functionality, and will be easier to maintain and translate. The new help file features heavily cross-linked topics through the "See Also" tags, directing you to related topics. Over 500 additional links have been added this way. While existing WinHelp files are still supported and will continue to work in WhereIsIt, all new help file development will now be in HTML help format.
• Added support for switching active help file on the fly, while program is running. For example, if old WinHelp .hlp help file was used, and the new HTMLHelp file was just downloaded and made available, WhereIsIt will start using the new help file without restarting.
• Added SPTI support. SPTI is Microsoft's alternative to Adaptec's ASPI, and is more reliable to use, avoiding the mess with different third-party ASPI drivers. WhereIsIt now always tries to use SPTI first, if possible. Note that SPTI is available on the NT line of Windows only (Windows NT, 2000, and XP), and you must be logged in with administrator privileges in order to use SPTI. If SPTI interface fails or is not available, WhereIsIt will still fall back to using ASPI.
• Changed a few details about handling files compressed inside archives. Except in the main window, file path inside archive was moved from the file name and is shown appended to the Location column instead.
• Language manager now automatically maps the default "MS Sans Serif" font to the newer "Microsoft Sans Serif" font, if it is available on the system. While both fonts look the same, the new Microsoft Sans Serif is an OpenType font and supports additional visual enhancements, like ClearType font smoothing in Windows XP.
• Fixed a bug where items were shown in wrong categories in the view by categories mode under certain conditions. This was a cosmetical issue only, it did not affect catalog's integrity and all items are still assigned to their correct categories.
• Transferring items with assigned custom icons between catalogs will now retain the custom icon setting.
• Custom icons in 256 colors were sometimes stored in catalog as 16 color icons. Fixed.
• A set of other minor changes and improvements.
• Finally fixed the real source of problems with repainting listview column headers in Windows XP. All previous 3.2x releases contained a workaround for this issue, however the error has still surfaced on some rare occasions.

Version 3.20 - 1. November 2001

• Only a few minor and cosmetical changes were implemented since beta 3, and all known problems pending confirmation were reported as fixed. Debugging code was removed and version 3.20 is now released as final.
• Added a new optional command-line parameter '-noASPI', disabling ASPI layer support in WhereIsIt. This switch is for troubleshooting purposes only, intended for users who are having problems accessing devices like CD-ROM drives with WhereIsIt. On some systems which have an ASPI layer installed, ASPI interface is not functioning properly, mostly because CDR software is installed and it uses non-standard third-party ASPI drivers. While reinstalling Adaptec's ASPI layer is recommended in such cases, you can also use this switch to set WhereIsIt to avoid using ASPI. Do not use this parameter if adding audio CDs to catalog, as ASPI is required for proper CDDB handling in special cases.

Version 3.20 beta 3 - 27. October 2001

• Added hi-color icons for the Settings dialog's side bar, for all systems using 16-bit or more colors. More of those will follow in future versions.
• Extended "Audio CD Track Files" plugin with option to include track number in assigned alias names.
• Network drives mapped to a drive letter now show their original UNC address in the Add/Update dialog, in a form of tooltip displayed on the drive's button.
• The scanning progress window now shows the name of the disk being scanned, and a few more details are available as a tooltip.
• Optimized display thumbnails caching, browsing lists with lots of thumbnails is now faster as smoother.
• Changed a few details about scanning thread settings in attempt to improve on scanning stability. While beta 2 worked fine for a vast majority of users, there a few reports about randomly occurring problems during scanning.
• Fixed a GDI resource leak on Windows XP when displaying thumbnails.
• Fixed extracting from RAR multivolume archives, where extracted file was split between volumes, and one of the volumes was missing.
• Made a few changes to RAR and ARJ archive handling for better support of files using international characters in file names.
• Improved support for international characters when exporting to XML.
• The Time column in the compare results was showing file date instead of file time. Fixed.
• Changed a few details about drag&drop support for setting up categories in the Catalog Setup dialog.
• Columns and data in report generator were switched if report was generated from the categories view. Fixed.
• Fixed sorting by the CRC column.
• The timer measuring elapsed time during disk scanning now stops when scanning is interrupted using the Cancel button, and waiting confirmation whether to proceed or not.

Version 3.20 beta 2 - 7. October 2001

• Added a new feature to copying/moving files with build-in file management functions. If target file already exists, you can now choose to copy new file under a different name, instead of just overwriting or skipping it. Generated file names use sequential numbering, i.e. "Readme[1].txt".
• Two different options for exporting to XML are now implemented, one is classic XML, and one adjusted for XML DataPacket formatting.
• Improved responsiveness to canceling media scanning in certain stages of the process.
• Tweaked a bit message handling and thread settings for the media scanning process when running in Win9x/Me systems, resulting in faster scanning.
• Fixed issues with GPFs occurring in the Report Generator and other windows containing listview controls. The problem was limited to Windows XP running with classic user interface.
• Changed a few details in the XML exporting, and fixed a bug where field names in XML file were not matching exported data in some cases.
• Field names used in XML and SQL exports are now fixed and no longer depend on currently selected language.
• Fixed exporting to HTML, some tags like <BR> were incorrectly converted.
• Fixed a minor bug in CDDB processing, in some random cases data CDs were allowed to be queried for CDDB details, which is redundant.
• A few minor cosmetical and user interface enhancements.

Version 3.20 beta 1 - 30. September 2001

• Support for Windows XP is now officially added in this release. WhereIsIt now supports true color icons and new themed user interface.
• Exporting capabilities in the Report Generator have been considerably enhanced. New export destinations now include CSV files, SYLK text files, SQL script files, XML documents, as well as exporting to the clipboard in ASCII text format.
• Most of the textual exported formats have been added preview possibility, where you check how exported file will look like. Preview support includes reports exported as ASCII, CSV, or SYLK files, SQL script files, and XML documents.
• Exporting to Excel has been completely rewritten and now no longer utilizes DDE communication with Excel, but rather writes XLS files directly. This way, Excel is no longer required or used, exporting to XLS is faster, and there won't be any issues with changed DDE support in Excel like in the latest Office XP version.
• There are some major changes in approach to archive file processing during media scanning. The new system is a bit faster, allows for better use of disk caching, and most of all, it allows one-pass archive file processing. The latter shows as a big performance improvement when processing files inside long solid archives and CAB files. Overall, about 25% average performance improvement in scanning time has been measured when processing archive files, and a lot more when dealing with solid archives.
• The timer showing elapsed time during scanning is now more precise and running smoothly during the process.
• Updated ACE archive support for ACE v2 files. Handled a few issues with extracting from solid multi-volume RAR archives.
• The DescAPI plugins interface has been enhanced and updated to version 2.1. Two new plugin types have been introduced, allowing for additional operations, as described below. The DescAPI documentation has been updated accordingly.
• The first new plugin type allows modifying a visual appearance of file and folder names being cataloged, namely allowing to adjust their character case. The ptFileNameFormatting plugins are given a chance to adjust file names before they are cataloged, and can do that according to user's settings, through plugin's configuration dialog. Accordingly, a new plugin has been added to the default plugins module, featuring a configuration dialog where you can select how should file and folder names be imported.
• The second new plugin type handles automated importing and storing of custom icons to be used for disks or folders in catalog instead of the default system icons. These plugins could be used to provide customized icons for drive or media of specific type, assign special icons to folders found to be holding certain kind of data, etc. A new plugin of this category has been included in the DescPlugin module, importing custom disk icons based on disk's autorun information.
• Added functionality targeted in preserving changed sorting order inside disk groups without having to re-save the catalog.
• Cosmetical enhancements, such as shadowed glyphs on buttons and menus.
• Alias names returned from plugins are no longer accepted and stored if they are the same as item's real names and therefore redundant.
• Updated program's main icon with 16x16 and 48x48 256 colors icons.
• Switched title and author information when exporting audio CD details to CDPlayer.ini; using default plugins settings on import, they were reversed.
• Printer handling in report generator was adjusted for cases where printer drivers are installed, but the printer is remote and not available at the time, also resulting in limited printer driver functionality.
• A few minor changes in the CDDB plugin's user interface, such as showing the horizontal scrollbar in the multiple hits dialog when necessary.
• Updated the MP3 and WAV Audio Files plugin, certain small WAV files with no data information were confirmed to cause problems when handled by this plugin and could cause scanning to abort.
• Bundled with the latest version of plugin modules, including updated MP3, Vorbis Ogg, and PDF plugins.
• Countless other minor changes, improvements and adjustments, including performance improvements.

Version 3.11 - 12. July 2001

• Changed a bit the appearance of menus used in WhereIsIt, keeping up with the latest trends. Additionally, active buttons in dialogs are now painted a little bit brighter from the rest of the dialog. Note that both UI enhancements are only available on systems with 16-bit or more colors, users working on 256 or even 16 color displays will notice no change.
• Added plug&play support for help system in newer HTML Help format (*.chm), while still retaining compatibility with current WinHelp (*.hlp) files. WhereIsIt is now capable of using help files in either of the two formats, whichever is found to be available. English help file is currently being translated to HTML Help, and will replace .hlp version in a near future.
• A new description plugin has been added to the Main Description Plugins module, handling Windows Media Format files, including ASF, WMA, and WMV.
• Updated the CDDB/freedb plugin to handle new level 5 protocol, introducing genre and year information to CDDB entries.
• Two buttons were added to the Check for Update Wizard, allowing to quickly check or uncheck all items listed as available updates.
• The state and order of columns in report generator will remain unchanged if selected report destination is changed.
• Improved native mouse wheel support in item lists. Generally, mouse drivers handle the wheel better than Windows' native support, but if you are using a generic mouse driver, this one may come as an improvement.
• Made a few cosmetical fixes for systems running in 256 colors mode.

Version 3.10 - 2. July 2001

• The help file and the rest of documentation is now up to date for v3.10.
• Fixed a problem on program's startup, appearing on some system using custom shell icons. Addressed in beta 2 build 626.
• The virtual root folder setting in Add/Update Disk Image dialog was not working. Addressed in beta 2 build 626.
• Fixed an error in compare functions, when trying to compare disk image against a very large drive (containing more than 32.767 folders).
• Many other minor cosmetical changes.

Version 3.10 beta 2 - 23. June 2001

• The CDDB plugin and CDDB posting in the main program have both been revised considerably to ensure proper CDDB/freedb support on both local and remove queries, as well as for posting new entries to freedb database. The CDDB plugin was also added support for multiple matches on local CDDB queries. WhereIsIt is now officially certified to be freedb compatible, thanks go to Joerg Hevers from freedb.org for extensive testing.
• Drive and media type detection is now dynamic and in real-time, based on media change notifications. This should allow for better compatibility with drives that can change their media type in runtime, such as LS-120.
• The method used to detect drive type under WinNT/2K was changed and should now be more reliable on systems with plenty of IDE and SCSI devices.
• Detecting existing disk images in the Add/Update Disk dialog is now set to search in the entire catalog, not just in currently selected disk group.
• A few minor changes for better WinXP compatibility. Note that WinXP is not yet officially supported at this time, although most of possible issues are expected to be cosmetical only.
• Improved support for translations in some user interface areas.
• Fixed a problem with folders appearing duplicated in very specific cases, such as combining search and compare functions over the same data in a certain way.
• WhereIsIt is now more resistant to handling corrupted catalogs, and was added some new auto-repair capabilities on loading data. If you were dealing with damaged catalogs, chances are this version will be able to at least load and recover undamaged parts. In such cases it is still recommended to delete damaged or incomplete disk images from the catalog, and replace them with newly scanned data.

Version 3.10 beta 1 - 11. June 2001

• This version features a largely redesigned compare functions, from both functional and user interface points of view. The new compare results layout concentrates primarily on files on the media, as they are most commonly handled after compare operations. At the same time, each same or changed file will show related cataloged files on the second file list, allowing for manual comparisons, inspecting changes, etc.
• Added a new, fifth display mode "Thumbnails View", comparable to a similar feature available in Explorer. The size of displayed thumbnails is adjustable in program's settings.
• Thumbnails display caching feature has been implemented, considerably speeding up scrolling and reducing screen flickering when working with item lists showing many thumbnails.
• Extended quick search expressions capabilities. Quick searching now works in a manner similar to most web search engines, allowing to use both AND-type (space-separated) and OR-type (comma-separated) expressions. More details about forming quick search expressions with samples are available in the help file.
• Columns used in Report Generator can now also have fixed, specified width besides the automatic width selection based on column data. When printing, previewing or exporting reports to RTF format you can optionally fix selected columns to specified number of units in mm, inches, or pixels, or set them to automatic mode as before.
• All generated reports can now have their data custom sorted by one or more columns, as set up in the Report Generator dialog itself. You can select desired sorting when setting up report columns, or you can have report generator keep the existing order of items, as stated on source list. This is really nothing new in terms of functionality, you can have reports sorted in way you want as it is by properly preparing source data, but this way it is more obvious and easier to use.
• Added a new ordering option to the Report Generator, items in report can now be sorted by categories and optionally equipped with category headers.
• The Report Generator dialog was made a bit bigger, allowing for larger windows showing report columns and custom report settings.
• Enhanced the Add/Update Disk dialog with a set of new options about updating disk images. Now you can select how existing descriptions, aliases and thumbnails will be handled when updating disk image - will they be kept, discarded, or replaced with newly imported versions.
• The Properties dialog for multiple selected items was added a new page, containing functions for batch processing of descriptions and alias names of selected items. You can now find and replace parts of text, or insert additional text before or after existing alias names and descriptions.
• The Advanced Disk Properties dialog was added a new tab, showing disk scanning statistics, including time needed for scanning, the number of imported descriptions and thumbnails, plugins used in scanning, etc.
• It is now possible to manually assign a picture to disk image entries. Thumbnail plugins take care of providing support for graphics file formats, so you can add any kind of graphics that can also be imported as thumbnails. Pictures for disk images can be imported a bit bigger than regular thumbnails, up to 512 x 512 pixels.
• The Program Settings dialog has been reorganized a bit to make space for some new options.
• Added a new file list option for customizing columns width behavior. You can choose whether you want columns to auto-adjust their widths based on data displayed (as before), or you can have columns stick to the same width and manually adjust them as needed.
• Double-clicking action can now be combined with the Alt key and can be selected from the list of available actions, the same as regular double- click. This way, you have two customizable double-click actions, one for just double-clicking file, and one for double-clicking with Alt button pressed.
• WhereIsIt now supports posting audio CD entries to the freedb.org database. Both posting through HTTP and email is supported; as the latter is used through MAPI, it can be used to post offline as outgoing messages will be waiting in your email client's Outbox. Sending details for multiple CDs at once is supported, and you can and should manually edit or verify all data before it is posted to freedb server.
• Moved all three CDDA related plugins (CD-Text, CDDB, and Generic Audio Track plugins) to a separate module. The CDDB plugin has gone through a major rewrite, it now supports local CDDB databases as provided by freedb (both Unix and Windows formats), and is in general much more configurable.
• Both CDDB and CD-Text plugins have been added a new option to include track number to alias names, assigned to audio CD track files. This can also help with sorting track entries by their track numbers.
• The CD-Text plugin features another new option for including performer info as a part of assigned alias names.
• The SoundEx algorithm, used for sounds-alike searching, was slightly modified to ignore diacritic characters and use their base characters instead. This can help locating names and descriptions where diacritic marks were not used consistently in all items.
• Improved or added UNC addressing support in a few different parts of the program.
• Added two options in program's Settings dialog for enabling/disabling UNC network support and network browsing. Both options were available before as well, but as command-line switches only.
• Updating existing disk image will now preserve its position in the catalog or disk group. Previously, updated disk image was added to the end of list if custom disk ordering was active in the parent catalog / disk group.
• Added support for drives that can change their media type (such as LS-120) or for cases when a drive is dismounted from a drive letter, and a different type of drive is mounted on that same drive letter.
• Improved support for custom icons with more than 16 colors.
• The "Compare To Media" function had returned incorrect results when run on disk images which were cataloged through their UNC drive addresses instead of assigned drive letters. This issue was limited to comparing to remote network drives only, addressed through UNC address. Fixed.
• Fixed searching by size criteria larger than 2 GB.
• Fixed a problem with occasional missing folder icons after moving/copying folders through file management functions and updating target disk image.
• The Audio Files Plugin in DescPlugins module can now better handle invalid or non-standard MP3 and WAV files.
• Addressed a set of minor cosmetical user interface issues.
• Lots of other minor changes, fixes, improvements...

Version 3.03b - 19. March 2001

• Another minor release.
• Added support for browsing and extracting from new and promising .bz2 and its derived archives, including .tar.bz2 and .tbz2. The later two combinations are handled as nested archives, the same as .tgz.
• All disk images scanned with this version now include disk scanning statistics, such as time needed for scanning, the number of imported descriptions and thumbnails etc. This information will be available on request in the next version as a part of disk's Properties dialog.
• When saving to a new, non-existent catalog file, a warning message would unnecessarily pop up. Fixed.
• Occasionally the contents of newly scanned nested .tar.gz or .tgz archive was not saved correctly, resulting in empty archive file contents the next time catalog was loaded. Fixed.
• Removing file extensions on file lists has incorrectly removed a part of filename for some files without extension and compressed inside archive files with nested folders. Cosmetical issue only, fixed.

Version 3.03a - 12. March 2001

• A very minor update only.
• The main description module packed with the program has been updated to include the latest version of CDDB plugin, set to use by default the freedb.org database instead of cddb.com.
• Addressed an issue related to Report Generator where the only available and default printer was a network one, and was not currently accessible.
• Assigning flags in Properties and Description Assistant dialogs was disabled in certain types of catalogs, as if they were read-only. Fixed.
• The dialog for editing disk descriptions was added a new button, which inserts at the place of cursor some scanning statistics details as a part of disk's description.
• Changed a few details about updating target disk images after file management operations like copy an move.

Version 3.03 - 4. March 2001

• Added a new column to most file lists, showing file CRC values where available in catalog. The new columns are hidden by default, you need to specifically turn them on if interested in file CRCs.
• CRC codes for individual files in catalog are now also shown in their Properties dialog, if available.
• Changed a bit how disk space charts in Advanced Properties dialog are drawn, to better cover for special cases such as virtual disks, disks without content in catalog, etc.
• Added a new command line switch for easier debugging of scanning problems, caused by one of the plugins. WhereIsIt now recognizes the "-debugplugins" parameter when started from a command line, resulting in all plugins activity during media scan being logged to the "Plugins.log" file. Inspecting the log file after failed scanning should tell you exactly which plugin was active at that time, and which file on the media was being processed by that plugin. More details are available in the help file.
• Some restrictions about optional updating disk images after file operations like "Copy to..." and "Move to..." have now been resolved and are no longer necessary. If updating target disk image is selected for file operations, all disk images matching the target drive in all loaded catalogs will be updated accordingly, including disk images inside disk groups.
• Optimized processing of nested .tar.gz archives, if importing descriptions for files compressed inside archive file is enabled. Note once again that enabling this option includes heavy performance impact by the definition of it, and should only be used where really necessary.
• Thumbnail plugins are now set to be disabled by default in new program installations. Apparently importing thumbnails is commonly used by new users without any reason or need for it, and thumbnails only end up bloating catalog files considerably.
• Adjusted handling for some .tgz files that do not include the name of .tar file compressed inside, processing the .tar file inside was skipped with such files.
• Improved handling of archive files containing illegal file names, such as filenames reserved by OS for system devices (aux.*, prn.*, etc).
• Under certain circumstances an "Index out of bounds" error message would appear when right-clicking on of the columns. Fixed.
• In previous versions it was possible to add to user list the three root items from Browse by Categories mode ("Categories", "Flags", "Disk Locations"), which doesn't make much sense and could eventually lead to problems. Fixed.
• When removing the contents of archive file from catalog and converting the archive file into a regular file entry, file size reported in catalog could end up a lot larger than it really is. Fixed.
• A few other, mostly minor cosmetical changes.

Version 3.02 - 2. February 2001

• Nested .tar.gz files are now processed down to the .tar level, for both cataloging and extracting. While nested archives are not processed in WhereIsIt, this exception has been made as .tar.gz files are very commonly encountered in this combination. If a GZIP file is encountered with a single .tar file inside, the .tar file is temporarily extracted and processed. Support for .tgz files has now been added as well.
• Rearranged and extended EXIF digital camera information retrieved by graphics description plugins.
• The MP3 plugin will now calculate and display the average bitrate for VBR MP3 files, if calculating VBR play time is enabled in the plugin.
• Extended support for large disks, mostly emulated or accessed through network, that may not provide sufficient details about the media organization. This version should be able to process most of such drives. Please note that in some rare cases large drives like hard disks may need to be updated in catalog if the above described change causes them no longer to be recognized against their cataloged image.
• The folder tree under the Folder Limitations options now includes system or hidden folder as well, and makes them available to be excluded from scanning.
• Adjusted and added keyboard shortcuts to controls in Search and related dialogs, allowing easier keyboard-only access.
• Added default double-click item actions and keyboard shortcuts to several item lists in the program.
• Moved the description text optimizing code from the program to a separate, user-adjustable formatting plugin. Previously, the program used to always remove empty lines, leading and trailing spaces etc. from descriptions, now this can be optional.
• Extended the TIFF thumbnails plugin with support for TIF files based on JPEG compression, and included some additional safeguards for handling invalid TIF files. There are still suggestions that some rare TIFF files can cause problems to this plugin and interfere with scanning - if you have such file, please contact me for providing a sample.
• Adjusted support for WMF files, some rare WMFs can take a lot of GDI resources while processing them, possibly causing the system to run out of resources and initiating all kinds of errors. The WMF thumbnails plugin now tries to detect such files in advance and skips them.
• When trying to view or launch a file compressed inside archive file, the program needlessly reported an error in some cases, mostly when handling ZIP files. Fixed.
• Addressed some issues with extracting whole RAR archives with embedded folder information.
• When updating multiple disk images at once, certain combination of settings and events could lead to an GPF error. Fixed.
• Fixed a problem with advanced search expressions, some expressions were incorrectly reporting missing closing parenthesis.
• Fixed a possible problem that could in some cases cause catalogs to get corrupted when they are saved, if they are using disk groups and previous save operation has failed for some reason.
• When moving disks or disk groups, some of internal catalog details were not updated properly in certain cases, causing the disk groups layout not being saved properly - disk groups were organized differently when catalog was opened the next time. Fixed.
• Fixed a problem in the Update Disk dialog with one of the combo boxes displaying corrupted text. The problem was cosmetical only and only appearing if multilanguage support was disabled.
• Adjusted handling of default scan settings used when updating a disk image last created with older version of WhereIsIt. All disk images created with version 3.00 or newer include information about settings used, and those are set to the same state when disk image is about to be updated the next time. Disk images created with older version have no such information though - the default scanning settings will now be used for these, as they are when adding a new disk image.
• A set of other minor fixes and performance improvements.

Version 3.01 - 30. December 2000

• Opening large catalogs stored in the new 3.0 format with lots of disks inside is now much faster and comparable in speed to opening version 2 catalogs.
• Support for extracting from solid archives and CAB archives during disk scan has been significantly improved in this release. This mostly only affects the option to import descriptions for files compressed inside archive files (this option is otherwise recommended to be off by default, which is probably the reason why you like to use it so much). The option requires that individual files are extracted from archives during disk scan as requested by plugins, and this is by definition a very slow process in large, solid archives. If there are a lot of files to be extracted, or solid archive file is a very big one, scanning can take extremely long. This release implements a prediction scheme for solid archives, so multiple files are extracted in one pass, expecting they will be later requested by plugins. While this approach requires some more temporary disk space available, processing solid archives is a lot faster, even up to 100 times.
• Using plugins when updating existing disk images has been optimized and performance is now comparable to version 2.xx in most cases. Plugins in version 3.0 have tasks other than providing descriptions only, and they get to be used more often than in previous versions.
• Sorting by names or extensions in file lists now takes into account alias names, when available and active.
• WhereIsIt can now correctly catalog files larger than 2 GB.
• The window showing media scanning progress is now movable.
• Added a new option to enable CRC checking in the Compare to Media function. If this option is checked, all files in catalog that have a CRC available will be checked for matching CRC against the file on the media, before both files are pronounced to be the same.
• Both "Compare to Media" and "Compare files to Catalog" functions are now equipped with Cancel button and progress dialogs, as processing with new CRC checks enabled can take notably longer as before.
• Made a few changes to Zip archive support in an attempt to handle .zip files, created on operating systems other than Windows. Such files may be using file names that can appear different or even invalid when used on Windows.
• Improved exporting audio CD details to CdPlayer.ini.
• Improved report generator with better support for new disk groups.
• The JPEG thumbnails plugin was enhanced to be more tolerant to partially damaged or incorrect files, and will also better handle badly damaged ones.
• Version 3.00 had some compatibility problems with software that changes shell icons and replaces them with custom ones, resulting in a couple of error messages before the program was allowed to start normally. This release includes a workaround that prevents similar problems.
• The "Compare files to Catalog" function did not in all cases carry out CRC checks against files on the media, even if the appropriate option was selected. Fixed.
• Fixed a problem with some thumbnails missing in encrypted catalogs.
• Some mostly WinNT/Win2000 systems with certain video drivers were experiencing very low quality of imported thumbnails, if using the default "resize" method ("resample" was much better). A workaround has been implemented.
• The Query CDDB Server didn't always work on some systems. Fixed.
• Fixed a minor problem in the JPEG thumbnails plugin, some JPG files with a bit unusual color encoding were not decoded properly and have appeared rather greenish.
• Fixed a few minor cosmetical issues in the Check for Update Wizard and improved responsiveness to canceling download in progress.
• Addressed a few issues with extracting files from multivolume CAB archives, when the file to be extracted was divided between two CABs.
• Fixed a minor bug in MP3 that caused some MP3 files to be incorrectly recognized as far as their technical details are concerned (bitrate, sampling frequency). Very few MP3s were affected though, this issue went unnoticed although it was present in all 2.xx releases as well.
• Implemented a few user interface optimizations, to better accommodate translations and reduce flickering/repainting.
• Countless other small changes, fixes and improvements.

Version 3.00 - 10. November 2000

• Made a few user interface adjustments to accommodate translations.
• The option to show thumbnails as icons is now only available on systems with more than 256 display colors, due to palette issues occurring when many different hi-color images are shown at once.
• Fixed some archive file related issues, extracting from some archive files did not always work properly.
• There were some cases where searching inside selected disk group did not work correctly. Fixed.
• The 32-bit executables plugin has been rewritten for handling .exe files. There are some .exe files created by InstallShield's PackageForTheWeb product that are corrupted by design and cause problems during scanning. Those same files also crash Explorer if trying to inspect their version info through Explorer's Properties dialog. This workaround avoids using Windows functions for retrieving version information.
• Many little internal optimizations and adjustments.

Version 3.00 Release Candidate - 2. November 2000

• This version is now shipping with completed help file and the rest of documentation, and has multi-language support back online. Translations to other languages can now begin, the Slovene language file for version 3.00 is already available.
• Added a new option in program's settings, for adjusting brightness of imported thumbnails.
• Added a few minor details, such as popup hint on the Active Plugins button in Add/Update Disk dialog, quickly showing the number of currently active plugins of each type.
• Changed a few pages in the Quick Setup Wizard.
• The JPEG thumbnails plugin was found to have problems with some rare JPG files, created with some Adobe software, that were not complying with the JPEG standard themselves. In extreme cases, this could even lead to system freezing during media scan. The entire plugin has been replaced and now uses a different JPEG implementation that tolerates those faulty JPGs as well.
• A couple of other minor changes, adjustments, and fixes.

Version 3.00 beta 5 - 20. October 2000

• Added a new small button in the status bar of Add New Disk dialog, allowing you to locate in catalog existing disk image of selected media, if one available.
• Improved 32-bit executables plugin with a config dialog and handled some other minor issues.
• Help file is slowly getting there, too. Context-sensitive help is completed - all dialogs are now properly equipped with help popups, while the main, browsable part still remains to be handled.
• Completely rewrote the plugin handling *.WMF files, in order to work around a GDI resource leak occurring inside Windows. The new plugin was designed to use a different approach and avoids buggy GDI function. This resource leak was also the cause for many scanning related problems in previous betas.
• Addressed a thread synchronization problem where some users have experienced occasional random errors being reported during scanning in all 3.00 betas, mostly when working with large media as chances of error occurring increase with number of files handled.
• Fixed a problem where items were sometimes missing on lists in the categories window, even though they have assigned categories, flags, or disk locations.
• Fixed an issue with copying custom icons from one catalog to another in the Catalog Setup dialog.
• Addressed a few other minor issues.

Version 3.00 beta 4 - 9. October 2000

• Added support for recognizing supported removable drive types by name on Windows NT/2000 as well. This allows having drives like Iomega Zip and Jaz presented in catalog by name and special icon instead of generic "Removable drive". Windows 95/98/ME users have had this capability for a long time, since first WhereIsIt versions.
• Added a new option to the Folder Limitations button, allowing to catalog disk entry only, without its contents (files and folders).
• Replaced the questionable "Disk Info" button in the Add/Update dialog with more useful "Troubleshooting" button, giving some hints on how to handle media which fail on scanning, and how to locate the source of problem.
• Added a "Copy From..." button to Catalog Setup / Custom Icons page, allowing to copy custom icons from other loaded catalogs.
• Almost completely rewritten support for Open/Save dialogs, allowing for some extended options in Windows 2000/ME, and improved handling for sizing and centering dialogs.
• Added the ability to extract icons from other application files, (such as *.exe, *.dll, *.ocx, etc.) when adding new custom icons to a catalog.
• Added a new thumbnail plugin, extracting application default icons (*.exe) and storing them in catalog as bitmap thumbnails.
• Enhanced the Adobe Acrobat (*.PDF) plugin, it now has its own config dialog and can optionally import the bookmarks index tree (index).
• Fonts in Report Generator now include and honor the charset specification. This is a workaround for WinNT 4.0 issue where some users may not be able to see localized characters in some fonts. By default, font charset is set as system default and depends on system's input locale setting, however WinNT 4.0 has some problems with that. You can now instruct the program to use specified character set when selecting Report Generator fonts.
• Added Word Wrap option to all edit windows in the program.
• Added a new option to file management dialog when moving or copying single files, allowing files to be moved or copied under a different name.
• Extended DescAPI 2.0 with a new optional function that allows plugins to set their default (enabled/disabled) state.
• Addressed some issues in file management commands; attributes are now preserved when copying files and folders, moving or writing over files with system or read-only attributes is now better handled.
• Fixed an issue on Win9x/ME only, where some disks (mostly hard disks) have remained locked and inaccessible from other programs after scanning them with WhereIsIt. Disks would become accessible again once WhereIsIt has terminated. This issue was only occurring if the option to eject media after scanning was selected on a media that does not support ejecting.
• Fixed a problem when preparing catalogs to be sent by email was canceled.
• Fixed sorting large (>2 GB) folders by size.
• Many other minor changes, fixes, and improvements.

Version 3.00 beta 3 - 11. September 2000

• The last major addition, managing and storing user lists, is now finally activated and functional in this beta release.
• Changed a bit how the description window