A few buttons down the page are standard for all common property pages in Sticky Options: Copy and Paste allow to export a set of assigned values out of the page; click on Copy within the page where you have just defined a number of options, go to another page of the same type and click on Paste in it, - the copied parameters will be applied to the options in that page. Clicking on Reset to defaults will set all the page's parameter values to their default settings.
Options on this page will be applied to the active file (if the option is in the page that belongs to an Active Files-type object), or all files residing under a mounting point (if the page belongs to a Mounting Points-type object), or all files under MPs maintained by a Courier ... and so on, up to the case of the Main object's page, in which it will apply to all sticky files under SF.
Note that the assigned values will not be engaged until you click on the Apply button at the bottom of the Sticky Options dialogue - with the exception that immediate application of this page's parameters is not guaranteed for the Active Files-type objects.
Disable writing to sticky files (default: unchecked) : with this box checked, sticky files's hard disk contents will not be written out on the course of the file's download, whether explicit or background one. Instead, their contents either will be kept in the program's RAM memory, to satisfy the application's reading requests, or be written to a temporary storage in the Windows swap file (if the following, Write to the Windows swap-file, option is checked too). This will result in the file losing its contents once it's closed by the application and SF, and correspondingly, a portion of the contents possibly being retrieved once again from the remote source next time it is requested anew. Such pseudo-read-only mode could be useful, for example, when the remote source contains files of temporary interest that you don't want to keep, - say, picture files that you are browsing through; another meaningful example could be a collection of mp3 or video files played by a multi-media program in a streaming fashion from a fast remote server, when your download speed is rather high. In all other cases, checking of this option alone will be neither safe, nor efficient choice, since this mode is prone to a loss of data, redundant remote access operations and playback interruptions under low-bandwidth conditions, - unless the next option is also checked, that is. (Note that, in the case of this option checked, the file's used/home hard disk space values in the Sticky Shell info columns and the corresponding indicators in the Operation Progress Bar will have only a symbolic or transient meaning).
Write to the Windows swap-file (default: unchecked) : this option is usually chosen together with the previous one, Disable writing to sticky files, in order to provide with more efficient and data loss-resistant read-only operations. Since the file's contents is not being saved in its dedicated hard disk space, you won't waste the hard disk's storage unnecessarily, but you should be aware that the contents will be gone as soon the file is closed. Advantage of having this option checked is in the fact that the contents is still being saved to the Windows' temporary storage space in the swap file, and that allows to avoid excessive remote file retrievals. - as long as the file is kept open, that is. As the result, you get a possibility to move within the file's contents rather freely (e.g. with a multi-media program that is playing the file), and also save the file by making a copy of in Explorer without waiting for the already played parts of the file to be downloaded all over again, should you decide to keep it.
Disable sparse sticky files (default: unchecked) : checking of this option will disable making of so-called sparse files, a core feature of the NTFS file system utilised by SF that allows creating of sticky files with initially zero (or minimal) hard disk space usage, and allocate more of it 'as it goes', - along the course of incremental downloading of the file contents (while the file is seen as having a normal size by File Explorer and every other application in Windows from the moment of its creation). Obviously, this feature is essential for all the 'sticky' magic to work under SF and disabling it (which will create all sticky files having the hard disk space used equal to that shown by Explorer and filled with zeroes, though otherwise they will function as usual) will lead to unnecessary waste of hard disk storage, when any essential number of sticky files is being routinely created. To assist the user in getting of the right picture about the sticky files' used hard disk space at any moment, two special Shell info columns were introduced in SF, - you are advised to have them enabled at all times. Engage this option only if you feel ... uncomfortable with files having different space allocation than it is shown under Explorer, for some reason.
Include filter substrings/Exclude filter substrings (default: empty) : these two controls are only enabled for objects of the Mounting Points type. They allow to specify an arbitrary set of 'filter strings' used as matching criteria for SF to decide whether a sticky folder or file should be rendered during remote folder enumerations or not. This feature can be very handy to filter out, for example, a great amount of unwanted contents residing on a news server, when you are searching for some particularly-named files (use the Include ... option then). Another good example could be a folder resync operation combined with downloading/uploading option, where you want only specific folders or files to be transferred between the local computer and remote server (use the Include ... option then) and/or skip others (use the Exclude ... option then) . The matching logic is very simple in this feature, it's based on wildcard-matching matching of substrings (the '*' character is implied on both sides of them) defined in these controls, against folder- and file-names encountered during sticky folder rendering operations. Only the ',' (comma) character has a special (meta) meaning in such substrings; if you want a comma to be treated literally, surround it with double quotes. Preparing of include/exclude sets of substrings is very easy: click on the corresponding '...' ellipses button in the Files page and enter the substrings sequence one by one in the displayed pop-up window. Click OK when it's completed, to close the pop-up window, and then the Sticky Options's OK, to save the strings with the MP.
Safety Level, 0..10 (default: 5) : there is a trade-off in the internal logic of SF between the speed of processing of the I/O requests and degree of protection of the data during transfers. The Safety Level parameter governs this trade-off, such that the lower this parameter is, the higher the I/O requests processing speed and the lower the data protection, and vice versa. If you want to ensure the highest possible data protection level under SF, set this control to its maximum (10), - but this will come with a price of slightly slower I/O operations (downloads, uploads and random accesses within files), that you may or may not notice. Lowering the value of this parameter below the default 5 might help to increase perceived speed of operations on files under SF, but when doing so, you have to be prepared for occasional 'slips' in data transfers (like skipped areas inside files left filled with zeroes), which could result in applications displaying errors when processing a sticky file.
Ghost-write size, MB (default: 0) : this parameter is an alternative to the Write to the Windows swap-file one, it implements another kind of pseudo-read only mechanism in SF. (With the difference that you don't have to check the Disable writing to sticky files box together with engaging of this control). If you set this parameter to a non-zero value of X, sticky files that belong to the mounting point will get to grow on allocated hard disk space up to exactly X MB of size; every time they reach that size, the allocated hard disk space will be reset back to zero by SF and will start to grow again. This parameter can only make sense when you are on a very tight hard disk space budget and not interested in keeping of the files being created under the MP that this parameter applies to. Otherwise, this is a much less reliable and rather unpredictable read-only option than the Write to the Windows swap-file one, as there is always a risk of the file being nullified at the moment when an application is reading a portion of it (which can also lead to excessive remote retrievals of the file contents). However, one scenario where this option can come handy is the one where large video files (around 1 GB in size and up, say) are being streamed, and you don't want to keep such files after viewing, nor get bothered to erase them manually after viewing. In this case, using ghost-writing is better because it won't use a huge chunk of the Windows swap file (which can put a certain strain on the system), but rather the sticky file's own allocated hard disk space as a temporary storage. Just one bit of advise here: set this parameter as high as you can afford it (to minimise the risk of application asking for file data that has just been de-allocated), or - better yet - set it to the -1 value which will cause allocating of hard disk space equal exactly to the file's size (but in the sparse, dynamic manner) and automatic de-allocating of it after the file has been closed (upon finishing of the playback, in the example case). (Note: compare this option to choosing of the sticky auto-reinit resync option for the MP, that produces a bit similar effect).
Continue to the next section on the Sticky Options interface.