SpaceMonger is a tool for keeping track of the free space on
your computer. Each file or folder on a given drive is displayed in
a box in the main window whose size is a relative comparison to all
the other files in your system. So, for example, if the "Windows"
box takes up 90% of the screen, the "C:\Windows" folder and all its
sub-folders and files are taking up 90% of your "C:" drive.
Version 1.4.0 is the last free version, with:
- Internals rewritten to support multiple foreign languages.
Currently foreign language support exists for British English,
American English, and French (possibly with grammar errors).
- Supports popup info-tips that can display the full filename, the
icon, the date, size, and attributes of any file or folder.
- Supports popup name-tips that prevent names from being obscured
by not having enough space to display them.
- Open dialog box now uses large icons.
- Includes rollover boxes that highlight the current folder.
- Files display their sizes and dates if there is enough room.
- Option to save the current window position.
- Fixed zero-size bug that caused divide-by-zero errors with some
audio CD disks.
- Minor changes to color palette to handle rollover boxes.
- Numerous other bug fixes.
- Added support for the Windows Property dialog box.
SpaceMonger is not a terribly complicated program to use,
so the current version doesn't come with a user's manual. At
the bottom of this page you can find a few helpful
instructions for using it if you need them.
SpaceMonger supports some foreign languages. The current version comes with
support for American English, British English, and French.
Download spcmn140.zip - Version 1.4.0 - Win95/98/NT/2K/XP
Installation Instructions
Unzip the provided zip file to any folder you choose. The zip file
contains only two files:
- SpaceMonger.exe - This is the actual program file. You
can put this in any folder you want. Double-click on it to
run it.
- ReadMe.txt - Update information about the current version,
as well as usage and installation instructions.
If you're new to zipping/unzipping, the easiest install is to
just extract the SpaceMonger.exe file to your desktop.
Once it's there, just double-click it to run it. To
uninstall it, just drop it in the Recycle Bin.
First-Time Instructions
When you first use SpaceMonger, follow these instructions
if you don't know what to do:
- When you first open it, you will initially be presented with
a blank window. Click "Open".
- Click on a drive, like drive "C", and hit "OK".
- Wait patiently while the program collects statistics on your
drive. My, don't you have a lot of files!
SpaceMonger will then show you the contents of your drive as
little rectangles. The larger the rectangle, the more space
something is taking up. In the screen-shot on this page, above, which
you can click to enlarge, "Windows" is taking up a full 20% of this drive.
Rectangles that have other rectangles in them are folders.
Rectangles with no other rectangles in them are files.
Colors are used to show how deeply the files and folders are
nested.
You can get more information on a given folder by clicking on
its title and then clicking "Zoom In" (or by double-clicking on its
title). The window will change to show a larger, more detailed view
of the folder and its files. You can zoom in as many times as you
want. "Zoom Out" will take you back out (up) by one folder. "Zoom
Full" will take you all the way back to show the whole drive.
If you see files or folders you want to delete, click them and
hit "Delete". They will be moved to the Recycle Bin. If you want to
see what they are first, click on them and hit "Run or Open", which
will try to run them if they are programs or open them if they are
files.
Disclaimer: If you don't know what something is,
don't delete it. Deleting things at random is a good way
to break your programs or Windows itself. 'Nuff said.
If you click the "Setup" button, you can change some aesthetic
things about the program. You can't damage anything with the Setup
dialog box, so feel free to try various options until you like how
SpaceMonger looks and feels.
Frequently-Asked Questions
Does SpaceMonger support Windows 2000 or Windows XP?
Yes. SpaceMonger 1.4 has been tested on both platforms and
found to work just fine.
Why doesn't SpaceMonger show some of my directories or files?
or Why does SpaceMonger only seem to show C:\Windows and C:\Program Files?
Remember that every folder appears in the map sized relative
to its contents. So if you have a big folder, like C:\Windows, it
will appear very large, but small folders like C:\Recycled may
not show up at all. If it looks big, then it is big; if it looks
small or is too small to see, then it is small.
You can make SpaceMonger show more folders on your disk by clicking
on "Setup" and changing the "Density" to "Very Many Files" or
"Too Many Files". And you can zoom in on folders to see small
files and folders within them that don't appear in the big display.
And you can turn off "Free Space" to get more room in the big display.
But some really small folders still won't show up no matter what
you do, because they're just too small to count.
What do the empty rectangles mean?
When SpaceMonger finds a bunch of folders and files that are too
small to be seen at the current level of zoom, it puts them all
together into one rectangle without a name. You can make some of
these rectangles appear as their constituent files or folders by clicking
on "Setup" and changing the "Density" to "Very Many Files" or
"Too Many Files".
The French translation is terrible!
Well, yeah, it's pretty bad. And no, we don't need any more
offers to fix it. Version 2.1 will be translated by somebody
who speaks French natively, and there will be good
translations for a lot of other languages too.
I deleted a file and SpaceMonger crashed!
This is a bug that only seems to appear on certain systems.
If you're one of the unlucky people who has this problem, well,
there's not much that will be done about it in version 1.4. Stay
tuned for version 2.1, which definitely won't have this bug.
Can I change the colors?
Not in version 1.4. Color control has been requested
many times, but you'll have to wait for the next version
to get it.
In case you're curious, SpaceMonger's display-layout system is
not unique; it uses a technique called treemaps that were
originally developed at the University of Maryland's
Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory
by Dr. Ben Schneiderman.
You can learn more about them on his
Treemaps Page. SpaceMonger
doesn't use any of their code, but it uses a similar idea.
