Balloon Tips
USBDLM can show a balloon tip with information about the assigned mountpoints of newly attached drives.
[BalloonTips]
Enabled=1
Timeout=6000
Timeout is the duration the balloon tip is shown in milliseconds.
5 seconds (5000 ms) plus an additional half second per mount point are default.
The timeout starts again when the mouse is moved over the balloon tip.
Since V5.0 USBDLM can show balloon tips on removal:
[BalloonTips]
Enabled=1
EnabledOnRemoval=1
Timeout=6000
TimeoutOnRemoval=4000
Default for EnabledOnRemoval is the value of Enabled, default timeout is 2/3 of the Timeout value.
USBDLM includes text resources for some languages. You can change some or all text snippets in the USBDLM.INI:
Sample for the build in English texts:
[BalloonTips]
Text_drives=drives
Text_partitions=partitions
Text_media=media
Text_cddvd=CD/DVD
Text_mounted_to=mounted to
Text_and=and
Text_safely_removed=Safely removed
Text_unsafely_removed=Unsafely removed
Text_removed=Removed
Text_ejected=Ejected
Text_NetworkDrive=Network Drive
Text_SubstDrive=Subst Drive
For Text_safely_removed and after I would like to add text resources for French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese as USBDLM V4 already has for the first six...
Resulting sample texts are
- for attached drives with one volume, as flash drives or harddrives with one single partition:
mounted to P:\
- for disks with multiple partitions:
2 partitions mounted to P:\ and O:\
- for devices with multiple drives, as multislot cardreaders
3 drives mounted to J:\, P:\ and O:\
- for an inserted media, as a flash card (only with NoMediaNoLetter)
media mounted to P:\
- for an inserted CD, DVD, BD (only with NoMediaNoLetter)
CD/DVD mounted to P:\
If in your language "mounted to" differs in singular and plural, then you can use the additional item Text_mounted_to_plr.
In Slavonic languages the plural for 5 or more is different from 2..4. Here we can configure Text_drives_5, Text_partitions_5 and Text_mounted_to_5, which are used when 5 or more drives or partitions are to show.
Many different variants of putting together the texts are considered. Therefore a fully free configurable balloon text is too much effort.
But for a simple single drive mounted to a drive letter it's no problem.
Sample for a balloon tip with drive letter, volume label, file system and USB speed:
Text_singledrive=mounted to %Root% "%VolumeLabel%" [%FsName%] - %UsbSpeed%
Results in:
mounted to X:\ "Backup" [NTFS] - SuperSpeed
%Root%, "%VolumeLabel%" and %FsName% are USBDLM variables{linkID=}
To get "%VolumeLabel%" [%FsName%] in the upper sample right aligned, a "center" can be defined. The placeholder for this is " !! ". It is replaced first by six space chars. Is there more space because of a long balloon title, then more spaces are added.
To get some distance to the right border, adding spaces does not work because they are removed when the INI is read in. Use underscores instead, they are replaced by spaces when used at the end.
Sample:
Text_singledrive=mounted to %Root% !! "%VolumeLabel%" [%FsName%]____
For inserted CD/DVD there is Text_singleCdDvd and for other removable media Text_singleMedia (both only when a mountpoint is assigned on insertion).
Since V5.0 the Balloontips can be customized way more flexible, see Balloontips Customized{linkID=9}.
No Balloontips for certain drives
More and more often we come across USB devices as printers, web cams or WLAN sticks which have a "SelfInstaller". It's a fake CD-ROM drive which is used to install their drivers by means of the Window AutoPlay facility for CD-ROM drives.
USBDLM shows a BalloonTip for these CD-ROMs. To prevent this, the BalloonTip can be disabled for certain drives by their hardware ID or their "friendly name". Sample:
[BalloonTipsExclude]
DeviceID=USB\VID_057C&PID_62FF
DeviceID=selfinstall
The ID has to be eight or more characters or using Wildcards{linkID=115}. You can use UsbDriveInfo to get the string, see [Letters by DeviceID]{linkID=39}
Actions on click on the Balloontip
Similar to autorun events you can define actions on left, right and middle click on the balloon.
;on left click, open a simple Explorer window with the drive
[OnBalloonClick]
open="%windir%\explorer" %drive%
;on right click, open a foto software
[OnBalloonRClick]
open="C:\Program Files\FotoSoft\fotosoft.exe" %drive%
You can define several events depending on criterions as shown for [AutoRun]{linkID=90}.
When more than one drive is shown in the balloon, then the event works for the first one which has a drive letter only.
Under XP explorer /e shows an Explorer windows with a drive tree. Don't use this here because XP needs about 4 seconds to put a new drive into the tree. If you use it before then it may create an empty item in the tree for the new drive...
Several more settings for balloon tips{linkID=8} can be made.