(ShortCut Files [*.LNK]) GENERAL INFORMATION ON SHORTCUTS

Photo Jockey can view ShortCuts just as though they were any other normal image file. As long as the ShortCut file points to a valid file on your system, the image/movie will be displayed.

Technical Information About ShortCuts

Why people use ShortCuts...

Let's say that you have a program that you use a lot and would like QUICK access to the program. In order to run the program, normally, you would have to go to the appropriate folder that the program EXE is located in. Then double click on the program EXE and then the program will run. The time it takes to locate the program file can be annoying. So, there are 2 things you can do. You can either COPY the program file to your DeskTop, or you could create a SHORTCUT to the program file on your DeskTop. If you just COPIED the program file, that means that the 7MB program file would also take 7MB on your DeskTop, thus consuming an additional 7MB of hard drive space. Also, when you run the program, it may not find the needed associated help files or dlls etc.... that are located in the programs real folder. So, really the SHORTCUT is the best method, because the shortcut file is tiny 1KB AND you don't have the problem of finding its associated files.

Let's say you have a folder of vacation photos. And let's say this folder has 150 photos in it. Let's also assume that there are a few photos that are REAL GOOD and a few that are REAL FUNNY. So naturally, you would want to create 2 subfolders called and inside the main vacation folder. And then most people would COPY the best photos into the BEST folder and copy the funny photos into the FUNNY folder. Although this is not a problem, it does consume a lot more disk space than is necessary. PLUS if you decide at a later time to edit and fix the colornig of one of the BEST or FUNNY photos, then you would have to RE-COPY the edited file to the appropriate folder(s) in order to keep all the photos up-to-date. This can become quite a chore. The solution is to use ShortCuts. So, INSTEAD of copying your best photos into the BEST folder, you would create SHORTCUTs in the BEST folder to those photos that you are interested in. These ShortCut files would be very tiny and any updates to the original file, would be reflected in the BEST folder.

Another great usage of ShortCuts is when you are burning a CD-ROM of photos. If you place COPIES of files into the BEST and FUNNY folders, it's possible that you may not have enough space on a CD to burn all the photos. But , if you use ShortCuts, you may then be able to burn the CD.

What is a ShortCut...

A ShortCut file is NOT a copy of the source file, it's merely a tiny file (1KB) that contains a link/pointer to the real file. So, when you open up a link file, it looks inside of it to determine the full path to the target file. Then the target file is then loaded. For example: You could open up a shortcut at:

C:\BestStuff\Image_001.Jpg.lnk

And the image displayed on the screen could have come from:

H:\AllPhotos\Vacations\Europe_06\IMG_0121.jpg

This is because the link/shortcut file contains the path to the real file. Of course if you move/rename the source/target file, then the shortcut won't work. You would have to update the shortcut file as well. Photo Jockey does this for you automatically.

Potential Problems With ShortCuts...

Now that you know what a shortcut is and why you would want to use them, let's discuss some of the potential problems with ShortCuts.

ShortCuts become Broken or Invalid
If you rename or move files or folders, then any ShortCuts that had pointed to those files will then be broken/invalid. The nice thing about Photo Jockey is that it will automatically update all appropriate shortcuts when you rename or move files or folders inside of Photo Jockey. If you rename or move outside of Photo Jockey, then of course you will have the potential for broken links, but when viewing these broken links in Photo Jockey, they will attempt to re-link themselves to the proper target files. So, if at all possible, try to do all your renaming or moving inside of Photo Jockey.

Confusion Factors
If you are not real familiar with shortcuts, you may think that you are deleting a real file, when in fact you are deleting a shortcut and thus the real file is still on your hard drive. Just remember that shortcut files are shown in the thumbnails list with a curved arrow on top of the thumbnail. Shortcut files are also shown in the files list with an EXTENSION of  ".LNK".

Jump to Help table of contents...

---