We are happy to announce the release of KO Approach version 0.5. It offers some cool improvements over the previous version.

Better Icon Handling

KO Approach now offers additional options that control icon handling. If you value speed over fancy look when browsing menus, you can now instruct KO Approach to display generic icons. These icons help identify item type (application, folder, or file) and consume the least possible amount of resources.

If you still want to see regular icons, similar to Windows Explorer, KO Approach now offers icon overlay support for shortcuts and items under version control. Plus, we have used sophisticated optimization techniques to speed up the process of retrieving icons.

Better Scrolling

Now you can see how many items are not visible in a menu. Scrolling arrows display a counter of remaining items to scroll in either direction. This also gives you an idea how many files there are in a folder. You can also control scroll arrow positioning. Scroll KO Approach menus faster, the way you want, by choosing one of three modes: both arrows at top, both arrows at bottom, or each arrow located at the respective menu edge.

Better Usability

We have improved the Options window to make it more friendly and more concept-oriented. It now consists of more intuitive categories: Features, Menus & Scrolling, Contents, Maintenance, Registration, and About. Everything is in place, although you may forget KO Approach is running as you get used to its handy features. We have made every visual aspect of the program compatible with scaled DPI modes. Should you choose 125%, 150%, 200% or even a custom DPI scaling ratio, KO Approach displays text and icons clear and sharp.

And, of course, there are other enhancements and bugfixes, so upgrade and have fun using KO Approach!

KO Software now has a YouTube channel featuring KO Approach demonstration videos. As of today, we've added two demonstrations.

The first video is an introduction to KO Approach. You will see how KO Approach really speeds up access to Windows folders and files.

The second video describes program downloading and installation completely from scratch. You will see that KO Approach installs in just a few seconds. Immediately after installation, KO Approach runs in the Unregistered mode. You can run the program under this mode for unlimited time with only a few limitations. The main features, such as quick file and folder access, are still available.

Please visit us at http://www.youtube.com/kirillosipov for more content!

I've updated KO Approach screenshots to make them appear more Windows 7 style. Also, the Buy Now page has been updated to look consistently with the Website.

This has been somewhat a hectic week. I'm gonna be off to Paris on Monday and Tuesday. Hopefully, after that we can concentrate on further Approach development. Take care,

Kerido

It's been almost three months since we announced we'd be releasing a new version of KO Approach. Finally, it's here! And it's better than ever! A lot of features have been redesigned from scratch to enable greater reliability and future extensibility.

Improved Compatibility

We are happy to let you know that KO Approach is now fully compatible with 64-bit Windows, including Windows 7, and that all the plug-ins have been thoroughly tested under the 64-bit architecture. We've also put a quite a bit of effort into optimizing Approach to reduce resource consumption on both 32-bit and 64-bit systems.

KO Approach now has an improved look-and-feel. Menus are always rendered consistently with the Operating System, no matter which version of Windows you are running. Approach works great with the Aero theme, too.

Feature Enhancements

The Approach Items feature has been completely rewritten to support not only file and folder lists, but also custom objects that can be added to the menu. As an example, we've included an item displaying a list of recent commands from the Run dialog box. Just open up the Approach Items menu, choose Run, and fire up a command from the menu that will appear. It's a huge time saver for commands that you use most frequently! With extensibility in mind, we will be adding new handy objects into upcoming versions of Approach, as well as create new plugins implementing similar functionality. As a matter of fact, there are some experimental objects already under development!

We've added new options into Titlebar Menus to improve user experience. Browse the entire folder hierarchy, from Desktop to the current folder, with CTRL+click on an Explorer window's title bar. Set Titlebar Menus to order items as you like: parent-to-child or child-to-parent. The current folder can also be automatically highlighted.

New Plugins

KO Approach now ships with four plugins, as we have added two more plugins to the application package. These include  InstantTxt, which now has been extended to support multiple text formats, and a brand-new plugin, ClipboardAssistant. The latter is an extention to KO Approach's contextual menus which allows you to copy to clipboard the full path to the selected item, the path to the target of a shortcut, and even the entire directory listing of any folder!

As always, Scope and InstantWave, the two familiar companions to KO Approach, allow for previewing graphics files as well as playing back sound files, right from KO Approach menus!

Get a Free KO Approach License

There are opportunities to receive a license absolutely free of charge! If you know a foreign language and have experience in software localization, please help us deliver a version of KO Approach to your compatriots! We will compensate your time and effort with free licensing of our product.

For registered customers, the upgrade to the new version is absolutely FREE! Simply download and start enjoying all the great new features right now! Otherwise, the Basic license is only $19.95.

We're working hardly on a new release of our flagship product – KO Approach. This release is going to catch up with all the new things that occurred to the Windows desktop computing world so far. The product is finally compatible with Windows 7 which will enable the users of this new OS to open files and folders even quicker!

Approach Items is being redesigned to display user-selectable items. From now on, this feature will be fully extensible allowing developers to provide custom content to Approach Items. As an example, we've included a custom item displaying a list of recently used commands from the Run dialog box. With these new concepts, the user will be able to better organize most frequently accessed items, files and folders.

We've added new options into Titlebar Menus to improve user experience. Browse the entire folder hierarchy, from Desktop to the current folder, with CTRL+click on an Explorer window's title bar. Instruct Titlebar Menus to order items as you like: parent-to-child or child-to-parent. The current folder can also be automatically highlighted.

As usual, Scope and InstantWave, the two companions to KO Approach, allow for previewing graphics files as well as playing sound files, right from KO Approach menus! And there are more plugins coming soon!

Approach will consume even less resources thanks to advanced optimization techniques. But most importantly, upgrading to KO Approach 0.4.4 will be completely free!