Property Lists
Once you assess your property strategy, you then must determine what properties should be shown in the Microsoft Windows Explorer user interface (UI), and where. There are various locations where properties are displayed in a read-only manner. Property editing, on the other hand, is enabled only in the Properties dialog. That dialog can be invoked either through the Edit Properties link in the Preview Pane or the shortcut menu of an item.
The property lists are semi-colon delimited strings which have the following form.
Prop:[flags]PropertyCanonicalName;[flags]PropertyCanonicalName;
The flags are taken from the following list.
| Flag | Description |
|---|---|
| * | Do not show the property in the Preview Pane as instructed in the PreviewDetails registry key value (discussed below) if that property's value is not set. |
Once you define a property list, you can store that string in the registry through the standard Shell file association system under HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT . The following table summarizes the values for which property lists can be assigned under a given file extension's registry key.
| Value | Description |
|---|---|
| FullDetails | Properties displayed in the Properties dialog's Details tab. This is the extensive list of properties the file type supports. |
| PreviewDetails | Properties displayed in the Preview Pane. |
| PreviewTitle | Properties displayed in the title area of the Preview Pane next to the thumbnail for the item. The maximum number of entries is 3. If the property list contains more than two entries, the rest are ignored. |
| TileInfo | Properties displayed when the list view is in Tiles view mode. The maximum number of entries is 3. If the property list contains more than two entries, the rest are ignored. Note: This value was present in Windows XP. |
| ExtendedTileInfo | Properties displayed for an item when the list view is in Extended Tile view mode. |
| InfoTip | Properties displayed in an Info Tip when a user hovers over an item.QuickTip. Note: This value was present in Windows XP. |
| QuickTip | Properties displayed when it is difficult to retrieve properties directly from an item, such as when the item must be accessed over a slow network connection. It is recommended that the properties named here, such as Type or Size, do not require opening the file stream to determine their value. Note: This value was present in Windows XP. |
The example below defines the PreviewDetails value for a .recipe file type, using a ProgID of RecipeKey.
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT
- .recipe
- RecipeFile
As detailed in the Shell file association system topic, file associations can be described for the most specific to the most general form. The most specific form is the single file extension and the most generic form is a key that applies to all files and file folders. Between those two extremes, you can also define a PROGID that groups a set of file extensions together (for instance, .jpg and .jpeg types grouped as jpegfile ). When you define property lists, you should define them for PROGIDs or, in some cases, specific file extensions. Avoid relying on broad entries such as the AllFileSystemObjects key.