Icon Overlays don't work properly in XYplorer

[TheQwerty]

Are these not the Dropbox/TortoiseGit icons?

They are.. and Dropbox is generally fine in XY except for two things:
1) As in grindax's screenshot "test.url" has the shortcut overlay in XY. In WE it shows Dropbox's instead, and I think that is the preferred behavior. As far as I can tell the possible reasons for this are:
A) The overlay handler itself is checking who is calling it and changing the priority or decision to show the overlay as a result.
B) The shell's internal rules for determining which overlay gets priority include something that is changing the priority based on whether XY or WE is asking for the overlay. It might be more a case of 32-bit vs 64-bit than the idea that Microsoft is intentionally crippling third-party file managers.
C) The way XY determines the overlay is not entirely correct and can be improved, or is in the very least not the same as WE.

I believe it's B or C and really hoping it is C because then there's a chance of it getting fixed.


2) The other problem is in XY the icons aren't always updated and kept in sync. I haven't looked into this and really don't know enough about how auto-refreshing is done to know even where to begin.



However, I think the more concerning problem has nothing to do with Dropbox but is rather that Mozy and Jungle Disk overlays don't show up in XY... That said this does not appear to be XY's fault, as it appears that neither registers a 32-bit icon handler and XY cannot use the 64-bit handlers until Don gives us the x64 version in 2011.

Jungle Disk has even bigger problems in that their's don't even show up in WE on Vista x64, which surprisingly no one seems to have mentioned on their forums. Now I'm debating if I care enough about this to open a support ticket.


EDIT: And also the problem with sysicons 1; only showing icons after they appear in the list means it's a little more difficult to determine if the problem is in the overlays being loaded into the system image list or that they are never displayed.

[j_c_hallgren]

The first issue (with Mozy overlays) seems to be present in all operating systems.

If they indeed don't work on 32-bit systems as well, then there's more to the problem.

And as I had mentioned in the other thread at http://www.xyplorer.com/xyfc/viewtopic. ... 601#p37601, I was having the same issue with Mozy and given that I'm on that ole W2K, it's obviously a 32-bit problem as well.

And I've been reading all recent posts but not replying much as have been VERY busy with my twice-a-year relocation (this time to my summer cottages on Cape Cod) since May 5th.

[admin]

And I've been reading all recent posts but not replying much as have been VERY busy with my twice-a-year relocation (this time to my summer cottages on Cape Cod) since May 5th.

Ah, I was already about to call the FBI...

[admin]

AFAIK to get the overlay images into the process' copy of the system image list I would need the actual files that show them. Therefore sysicons 1 only shows you the overlays that have already been used within the current XYplorer instance.

Conc. the LINK overlay overwriting the Mozy overlay I'll try something next version...

[grindax]

.

[admin]

I'll try something next version...

v9.10.0015 doesn't appear to have made any difference.

Mozy overlays still don't display at all.
Dropbox .url files still only have the shortcut arrow overlay.
Modifying a file tracked by Dropbox causes the overlay to dynamically change to the "syncing" one, but not the "synced" one afterwards.

Pff. That was my last idea for now.

[TheQwerty]

AFAIK to get the overlay images into the process' copy of the system image list I would need the actual files that show them. Therefore sysicons 1 only shows you the overlays that have already been used within the current XYplorer instance.

I was afraid this was the case but was really hoping you could do something magical.

Conc. the LINK overlay overwriting the Mozy overlay I'll try something next version...

It's overwriting the Dropbox overlay; Mozy's overlays don't show up at all, but they aren't registered for 32-bit apps either. Though, like grindax the new beta doesn't make it better.

[admin]

AFAIK to get the overlay images into the process' copy of the system image list I would need the actual files that show them. Therefore sysicons 1 only shows you the overlays that have already been used within the current XYplorer instance.

I was afraid this was the case but was really hoping you could do something magical.

Conc. the LINK overlay overwriting the Mozy overlay I'll try something next version...

It's overwriting the Dropbox overlay; Mozy's overlays don't show up at all, but they aren't registered for 32-bit apps either. Though, like grindax the new beta doesn't make it better.

Hmm, I have no time to re-read the whole thread. Please, can you state in short form what is expected but does not happen? (64-bit overlays are not expected to happen in XY)

[TheQwerty]

1) On Vista/7 with Dropbox, .url & .lnk files show the shortcut overlay in XY, but they show the Dropbox overlay within WE. I don't know if anyone with 32-bit OS has commented on this behavior.

2) The Dropbox overlays don't auto-refresh or are not kept up to date within XY.

3) Mozy & Jungle Disk overlays don't show up, but so far this looks to be a third-party or 32/64-bit issue and nothing to do with XY.

[TheQwerty]

Something else of interest... starting XY with "Run as Administrator" causes it to not display the Dropbox overlays, but the shortcut ones still work. However, WE acts the same in this scenario.

I'm having a hard time wrapping my mind around why this would be the case.

[nas8e9]

Something else of interest... starting XY with "Run as Administrator" causes it to not display the Dropbox overlays, but the shortcut ones still work. However, WE acts the same in this scenario.

I'm having a hard time wrapping my mind around why this would be the case.

I haven't followed this thread too closely, so I don't know whether displaying these overlays involves running external code instead of just a registry lookup. *If* so, "Run as Administrator" causes XYplorer or Windows Explorer to run in a different, elevated security context; the security boundary between elevated and non-elevated code may prevent XY/WE calling into the code involved in the overlay display, assuming that this runs in a non-elevated context. This would apply in particular when the external overlay-displaying code would need to run in-process: mixing elevated with non-elevated code doesn't make for a very secure system.

Then again, I may just have waisted my time and yours. For your consideration...

[TheQwerty]

@nas8e9: Yes this is the conclusion I came to as well, but it's extremely frustrating and disappointing because as far as I can tell this means the user cannot run the program as admin and still make use of the third-party overlays.

[nas8e9]

@nas8e9: Yes this is the conclusion I came to as well, but it's extremely frustrating and disappointing because as far as I can tell this means the user cannot run the program as admin and still make use of the third-party overlays.

Assuming shell icon handlers run in-process, there's no way short of disabling UAC and running as Administrator all the time, which I wouldn't recommend.

I don't know which Windows version you use, but Vista and Windows 7 with UAC do allow quite a lot after XYplorer asks for elevation (unpleasant as these prompts are, although Windows 7 in particular allows one to scale back the prompts without losing UAC completely). In practice, I rarely need to run XYplorer elevated (accessing other accounts' profiles is the only thing I can think of right now). Then again, I do cheat a bit by keeping an elevated command prompt open.

[admin]

1) On Vista/7 with Dropbox, .url & .lnk files show the shortcut overlay in XY, but they show the Dropbox overlay within WE. I don't know if anyone with 32-bit OS has commented on this behavior.

2) The Dropbox overlays don't auto-refresh or are not kept up to date within XY.

3) Mozy & Jungle Disk overlays don't show up, but so far this looks to be a third-party or 32/64-bit issue and nothing to do with XY.

1) I installed dropbox on Win7/64 but see no overlays/context menu in XY at all. Apparently it installed itself as 64 bit app. I cannot find a way to install 32bit dropbox on win7/64.

2) works fine here in XP.

[TheQwerty]

1) I installed dropbox on Win7/64 but see no overlays/context menu in XY at all. Apparently it installed itself as 64 bit app. I cannot find a way to install 32bit dropbox on win7/64.

On Vista x64 and Dropbox v0.7.110 definitely installed the 32-bit overlays as well.

I have entries for Dropbox in both:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\explorer\ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers
and
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers

You aren't running XY using Run As Administrator are you?