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Honken is a media player, with pretty much the same functionality as Windows Media Player or Real Player. The good thing about Honken is that you don't have to live with all the pointless "features" of these applications. Honken is not designed to "make it easy for you to discover, download, organize, and play your digital media—from music to video, pictures, and recorded TV". Honken is designed to do just what a media player is supposed to – playing media files. You don't have to register your copy, give away your email address or anything. Honken is truly freeware. Disk and memory footprint is about 100 kB, compared to the horrendous 32 MB of RealPlayer.
This is what the program looks like (localized version). All controls should be self-explanatory.
Honken uses no hidden system files, a.k.a. "playlists". The fact is that Honken does not use play list files at all. The reason behind this is that the operating system already has wonderful feature for organizing your files, namely folders. Using the Play directory on the File menu, you can play your albums, favourites or whatever in the selected folder. The files are played in alphabetical order. User a numbering prefix to play the files in the same order as on the album. The files are displayed in a toolbarish window to the right of the application window if you press F5 to open it.
What formats you can play in Honken depends on the installed DirectShow splitters/codecs. Generally, if you can play a format in Windows Media Player, you can also play it in Honken. Use Types on the Tools menu to select the extensions that should open i Honken. The format list is hard-coded. Use Tools->Folder Options in Explorer to assign more file types to Honken. You have to have DirectX installed to play files in Honken. Click here to download DirectX.
Some formats, such as QuickTime and RealAudio, have codecs that have no native support för DirectShow. To play these formats in Honken you need to install a DirectShow splitter. Splitters for these formats are provided free of charge at Free Codecs. Check for "QuickTime Alternative" and "Real Alternative" under Tools to the left.
Two options in the Options dialog box may need some explanation.The option One Instance Limit means that another instance of Honken should/should not open when you double-click a Honken-associated file in Windows Explorer. The option Play Subfolders tells the application to include subfolders when you are using File->Play Folder. If the checkbox is unselected, Honken will only play the files in the selected folder.
There is no installation program. This is a design decision. The entire application consists of one file. Install Honken by opening the zip file. Uninstall by removing the file. Unfortunately, Honken has to use the dreaded Registry to be associated with file types. This means that another of the design principles of Esaro must be abandoned: no contamination of the Registry. To completely remove all traces of the program, you must also remove the following Registry keys:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Esaro/Honken
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT/Esaro.Honken.Media
Other than that, everything is perfect.
Download international version
of Honken (version 1.0.005,52.1 kB zip, Win32)
History:
| 1.0.001 2005-03-30 | Released. |
| 1.0.002 2005-09-09 | Screen saver disabled when playing clip. Player returns to first clip after finishing directory. Window size retained between clips and sessions. |
| 1.0.003 2005-10-17 | Added play list, changed color of background window, some smaller fixes. |
| 1.0.004 2005-10-31 | Fixed resizing and splitter bugs. Added resizer bitmap to status bar. |
| 1.0.005 2006-01-03 | Clip just stops when finished playing (if no more clips in playlist) instead of being reloaded. |
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Source code available on demand. Write a nice mail to
astham{@}esaro{.}se.
