Crash reports are incredibly useful, they allow us a detailed look at the state of the software at the time of the issue. Some of the most gnarly and difficult bugs have been resolved through the use of crash reports.

But of all the crash reports we receive we only look at about 1-2%. Why?

We receive just under 2,000 crash reports a month. Guess how many of those are from legitimate installations of our software? Yep, around 1-2%. Those illegitimate crash reports are filtered out and never looked at because the software is designed to crash if the software detects program manipulation.

Fortunately, for legitimate users of our software crashes are very rare but if you do ever experience one please send it, every genuine report is investigated.

I’m pleased to report that Agent Ransack 2019 is now available for download.

Agent Ransack download page

This is a major new release for Agent Ransack and completes a big internal project to build Agent Ransack and FileLocator Pro from the same source tree. As I said in the Lite Mode post

Maintaining separate code branches for the Pro and Lite version is not an efficient way to develop the products. Over time the code diverges enough that it becomes harder and harder to apply patches from the Pro version to the Lite version. The loser in this patching battle is invariably the Lite version. Version 8 of FileLocator Pro has received nearly fifty enhancement updates since its release in 2016. The Lite version? Five.

So Agent Ransack will now be benefiting from the same update schedule as FileLocator Pro. Here’s just some of the new features that are now available in the Agent Ransack:

• High DPI support
• Faster file list loading, especially with ‘sticky’ sort.
• Improved PDF searching
• Updated language files
• Dedicated portable installer
• Freely available MSI files for unattended installations
• and many small fixes

Probably the most prominent change you’ll notice is when you start Agent Ransack for the very first time, you’ll be asked if you want to try the Pro features:

You can, of course, just click ‘Lite (free)’ if you want to continue using Agent Ransack for free but if you are curious about what the Pro features might offer you can switch them on for the trial period. After the trial period has elapsed you can either switch back to the free Lite mode or pay for a Pro license.

As always, if you have any opinions on this change please let us know at: support@mythicsoft.com

Back in Apr 2016 when I introduced version 8 of FileLocator Pro I ended with a ‘Roadmap’ of planned features for version 8:

• Customizable columns – the ability to add/remove columns and column options such as Author or Comments.
• Document preview – WYSIWYG view for the most common document formats.
• Thunderbird email searching.
• Allow file criteria to be included in Persistent Search Filters.
• Support for WPD attached storage (e.g. Phones).

The list was based on customer feedback and contained features I knew people wanted and would be disappointed weren’t in the initial release. I’m pleased to say that with build 2878 of FileLocator Pro the last of those promised features has been implemented. Over the last few years there’s been a lot of really nice new features added to the product which weren’t on the list but honouring the promises on the list was a major focus of the development efforts.

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If you’ve been paying attention to the release history of FileLocator Pro you may have spotted a new feature “Ability to switch to ‘Lite’ mode without installing separate product”, ie you can install FileLocator Pro but switch to FileLocator Lite functionality with just a few clicks.

It’s quite a major change and it’s going to affect the way we develop and distribute the Lite and Pro versions of the product. Rather than have a separate Lite product we’re going to be switching to a unified product that can switch Pro functionality on/off as required.

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