operation according to selected or not

Sometimes, I need to execute a program or not according to file(files) been selected.

For example, In Explorer (in CabinetWClass or ExploreWClass window), I draw the "C" geasture, it will colse the window if none file are selected. I draw the "C" geasture it will use the Beyond Compare to compare two files if two files are selected in window. In this case, StriteIt will run Beyond Compare with two parameters, which refer to the selected files. If only one file is selected, I draw the "C" geasture it will copy the selected file to the special directory.

Another example, if none file are selected, I draw the "U" geasture, It will undo the lastest operation. But if I have select one file or more files, It will open this file or these files with UEStudio.

If Strikeit can do different operation according to something having been selected or not, I can use one geasture to do more works. The StrokeIt will be more useful. If Strikeit can do different operation according to what have been selected or how much things hava been selected, the StrokeIt will be much more useful.

I recall someone already asked why StrokeIt does not have any knowledge about the application where the gesture was drawn.

While your ideas seem to increase StrokeIt usability and add to its features, actually they would degrade performance and kill the goal to keep StrokeIt quick, small, and easy to maintain.

First of all, Jeff would have to make StrokeIt able to detect if there are any selections at all in the window in which the gesture is drawn. And if we are at that level, why restrict it to files? There are many different windows/panels containing objects of many different types, not only files.

And then again, why restrict it to Windows Explorer? I haven't used it in years on my machine, and would not use it even on other computers if I weren't explicitly forced to. There are many others, some of them much better than Explorer, like Total Commander, Directory Opus, etc. possibly each of those using different functions/apis/whatever to achieve their goals with objects selected. You would have to implement an interface to each those and that would mean an enormous and constantly growing collection of functions because everyone would ask why is "replace-with-your-application" not supported?

To go further, what if you selected 3 files/object? And what about selecting 4 or 5 or 6? Or any other arbitrary number? This would create a mess.

Fear not though :) not all is lost. The pro version of StrokeIt is also capable of running Lua scripts besides the built in commands. Lua is a quite powerful script language able to call dlls. If you can get docs for your favorite application (or at least know how to call its functions), you can do whatever you want in it based on whatever you want it to be based on (including the number of the files selected, or even the count of letter 'e' in the selected files, just to give an extreme example). I use it to save the file that is currently played in WinAmp or FooBar to a specific location by drawing gesture 'S' when listening to music while I work. It should not be much harder to figure out how to start a specific program or execute a command based on how many files are selected in Windows Explorer.