Software Alternatives & Startups

One Million Checkboxes VS ShellNewHandler

Compare One Million Checkboxes VS ShellNewHandler and see what are their differences

One Million Checkboxes

checking a box checks it for everyone.

No screenshot yet
Rating
0 reviews
ShellNewHandler

SourceForge.net: ShellNewHandler details page

Rating
0 reviews
Note: These products don't have any matching categories. If you think this is a mistake, please edit the details of one of the products and suggest appropriate categories.

Which is more popular?

Based on our record, One Million Checkboxes should be more popular than ShellNewHandler. It has been mentioned 4 times since March 2021.

social mentions
4 vs 2
Auctions popularity
100% vs 0%

Base details

Website, pricing, platforms and company facts side by side.

One Million Checkboxes
ShellNewHandler
Website onemillioncheckboxes.com sourceforge.net
Listed in

Features and specs

What each product offers, as listed by its team.

One Million Checkboxes 5 features
ShellNewHandler 0 features
  • Simple and engaging concept
    One Million Checkboxes has an incredibly simple premise — a shared page with one million checkboxes that anyone can check or uncheck. This minimalist design makes it instantly accessible and intriguing, requiring no instructions or onboarding.
  • Shared social experience
    All checkboxes are shared globally in real-time, meaning every visitor sees and interacts with the same set of checkboxes. This creates a unique communal experience where strangers collaborate (or compete) anonymously, fostering a sense of collective participation.
  • Emergent creativity and community
    Despite its simplicity, the project inspired remarkable emergent behavior, including users encoding hidden images, messages, and art within the checkbox grid. Communities formed around coordinating efforts, showcasing human creativity even within extreme constraints.
  • Interesting technical achievement
    Managing real-time state synchronization of one million checkboxes across potentially thousands of concurrent users is a non-trivial engineering challenge. The project serves as an impressive demonstration of web technologies, real-time databases, and scalable architecture.
  • Nostalgia and internet art appeal
    The project evokes the spirit of classic internet experiments and web art projects, reminiscent of initiatives like Reddit's r/Place. It captures a playful, exploratory ethos of the early web that many users find refreshing and charming.

Possible disadvantages

  • Limited long-term engagement
    Once the novelty wears off, there is very little reason to return. The experience lacks depth, progression, or meaningful goals, meaning most users will visit once or twice and never come back, leading to a short-lived lifespan.
  • Vulnerability to bots and abuse
    The open and anonymous nature of the project makes it highly susceptible to automated scripts and bots that can rapidly check or uncheck massive numbers of boxes, undermining genuine human interaction and frustrating users trying to participate organically.
  • No persistent individual impact
    Since anyone can undo anyone else's actions at any time, individual contributions feel impermanent and potentially meaningless. Users may feel frustrated that their effort to check boxes can be immediately reversed by others.
  • Performance and scalability issues
    With high traffic, the site can experience lag, slow loading times, or synchronization delays. Rendering and tracking the state of one million checkboxes in a browser is resource-intensive and can strain both server infrastructure and client devices.
  • Lack of accessibility and purpose
    The project offers no clear purpose, narrative, or outcome, which can feel pointless to many users. Additionally, a grid of one million tiny checkboxes presents significant accessibility challenges for users with visual impairments or those using assistive technologies.

No features have been listed yet.

Analysis

An editorial look at what each product does well and who it suits.

One Million Checkboxes
ShellNewHandler

Overall verdict

  • One Million Checkboxes is a fun, novelty web experiment where users collectively interact with a shared grid of one million checkboxes in real time. It's not a productivity tool but a lighthearted piece of internet culture showcasing collaborative, pointless-but-satisfying online interaction.

Why this product is good

  • Simple, addictive concept: click checkboxes and watch changes update live across all users worldwide
  • Demonstrates real-time websocket technology in an accessible, fun way
  • Nostalgic appeal reminiscent of early internet novelty sites and shared online experiences
  • No sign-up or cost required, instant access to interact
  • Interesting case study in emergent collective behavior and internet virality
  • Lightweight and works well even with massive concurrent user interaction

Recommended for

  • Casual internet users looking for a quick, quirky distraction
  • Developers interested in real-time web technology demonstrations
  • People who enjoy collaborative or communal online experiences
  • Fans of internet culture and viral novelty websites
  • Anyone curious about emergent behavior in large-scale shared systems

Overall verdict

  • ShellNewHandler is a niche, lightweight utility hosted on SourceForge designed to give users more control over the Windows 'New' context menu (the ShellNew menu). It can be considered good for its specific narrow use case, but it is an older, minimally maintained tool that may not suit all users, especially those on modern Windows versions.

Why this product is good

  • Provides direct control over customizing the Windows right-click 'New' menu, allowing users to add or remove file type entries
  • Lightweight and free, without bundled bloatware typical of some other free utilities
  • Simple and focused in scope, making it easy to understand for its specific purpose
  • Open distribution via SourceForge allows transparency and no-cost access

Recommended for

  • Power users who want to declutter or customize the Windows New context menu
  • IT administrators managing standardized desktop environments across multiple machines
  • Users comfortable with older utility-style tools and Windows registry-related tweaks
  • Not recommended for casual users seeking modern, actively supported software with regular updates

Category popularity

How often each product is chosen within a category, 0–100% relative to the other.

Score bands 0–20 21–40 41–50 51–60 61–100
One Million Checkboxes
ShellNewHandler
100% 100%
0% 0%
0% 0%
100% 100%
100% 100%
0% 0%
0% 0%
100% 100%

User comments

Share your experience with using One Million Checkboxes and ShellNewHandler. For example, how are they different and which one is better?

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Social recommendations and mentions

Recommendations tracked on public social media and blogs since March 2021.

One Million Checkboxes 4 mentions
ShellNewHandler 2 mentions
  • Encoding Jake Gyllenhaal into one million checkboxes
    Omcb is available but only in single player mode now: https://onemillioncheckboxes.com/. - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
  • One Million Chessboards
    Nope, just like his original site, one million checkboxes https://onemillioncheckboxes.com/. - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
  • Show HN: One Million and One Checkboxes. Running on Elixir and Mithril.js
    Hello! As soon as I saw eieio's https://onemillioncheckboxes.com/, I knew I wanted to try it out using Elixir. The original was created using Python and Redis (later Go and Redis) but this one is using just one Elixir server and HAProxy... - Source: Hacker News / about 2 years ago

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  • I recently got libreoffice, but now the new option in right click looks like a mess. Can someone help me get rid of them please?
    Use Shell New Handler. Run the portable app and simply untick the items you don't want to appear in your new context menu. Source: about 4 years ago
  • This menu should be easy to add/remove programs to... Who is really creating Access Databases from this menu often enough to keep it here? (Not me!) Is there an easy way to edit this?
    I've always used ShellNewHandler for this. It's a really simple portable utility that allows you to remove most of the items from that menu. Tested it out on Windows 11 and it's still compatible. Source: over 5 years ago

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