What's New in CleanUp! 3.0

With the release of CleanUp! 2.0, I saw the number of downloads, as well as the number of avid users grow tremendously - far more than I had ever expected. Due to the increased number of e-mails, as well as an increased workload (in my professional life), the release of CleanUp! 3.0 is long overdue. Finally I have made time to update it for the latest browsers (Internet Explorer 6 and Netscape 6) and added support for the Opera browser too.

Thanks to all the users that have offered suggestions and ideas for future versions of CleanUp!. Many of these improvements have made it into CleanUp! 3.0. Here's a list of some of the main improvements and enhancements over CleanUp! 2.0:

Functionality Improvements:

Added support for removal of user-defined filenames (can use wildcards) from user-defined directories. This "future-proofs" CleanUp! against browsers updates and also includes support for any application not implicitly supported by CleanUp!.
Improved (more secure) file deletion when selecting the "Wipe Clean" option. CleanUp! now overwrites the file three times with different data, then renames it 27 times before deleting it.
Deletes all files from the Windows XP "prefetch" directory (Windows XP only).
Support for the Opera web browser, versions 2.x through 6.x. Cleans up Opera cache, download files, cookies and (optionally) the bookmarks.
Support for Internet Explorer 5.x and 6.x. Cleans up Internet Explorer 5 and 6 cache, history file, cookies and (optionally) the bookmarks. CleanUp! nows supports Internet Explorer versions 1 through 6.
Support for Netscape Navigator 6.x. Cleans up Netscape Navigator 6 cache, history file, cookies and (optionally) the bookmarks.
Multi-user support: optionally, CleanUp! attempts to remove temporary files for all local users.
More advanced options for Netscape users.
Many under-the-hood changes to provide a better/cleaner implementation of the main cleaning engine, resulting in a more modular, more reliable and more flexible CleanUp!.
Improved emptying of recycle bins from all fixed, local drives.
Resets Paint and WordPad Most Recently Used (MRU) lists.
Resets the most recently used (MRU) lists for Search for Computers, Files and Folders containing text, and Files and Folder names (Windows 2000 and later).
More complete CleanUp! of various temporary files in the Windows directory. Optionally deletes *.bak, *.chk, *.tmp, and *~ from each hard drive (not network drives) when performing a scan for temporary files.

Usability Improvements:

Simpler installation - just run the download file. An additional benefit of this change was a smaller download file too (less than 300K).
Allowed advanced users to customize the sound played when CleanUp! starts and when CleanUp! completes.
Added a welcome message to the CleanUp! log window at start-up.
CleanUp! now runs quietly in the background during restart.
Added hyperlinks for the CleanUp! web site, discussion list and my e-mail address to the About dialog.
Improved and expanded the on-line Help.
Removed references to "The Strangely Green Chicken Co." (never a real company as such) and replaced with the more serious "stevengould.org".
While not really to do with the CleanUp! program itself, I moved the CleanUp! web site to a more permanent home (http://cleanup.stevengould.org/).
Improved and expanded the FAQs on the CleanUp! web site.