Reply To: Unhappy with version 2

[SvanteSpectator]

Hello kz,

Re “dokan”, well actually it does require tinkering with system files, very much so. It’s a kernel mode driver implementing a user mode file system on Windows. That’s what I mean with tight integration with Windows. While it does offer many advantages, we don’t want to go down that road for a number of other reasons. For example, it’s not possible to make a non-privileged portable desktop app since it requires installation of a kernel mode driver. This means it can’t be run or installed on a computer without permanently modifying the operating system and it requires administrative permissions. AxCrypt can run as a pure portable standalone without installing anything. Also, although it’s fairly mature, it’s scary to install a kernel mode driver and be responsible for that and there’s also a big risk with incompatibility with future versions of Windows. It requires something entirely different to work on the Mac and/or Linux, so maintenance and development costs goes up. These are just some of the reasons why we’ve decided to not do it like that.

A more likely scenario for us is indeed to implement a folder mirror, where we work as normal, and just copy / delete files between them as they appear and disappear – but only encrypted files to the secure folder, not plaintext files. There are some UX challenges with that, but we’ll see.

Thanks for the input!