NXPowerLite 11: Conversation with Mike Power

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      Mike Power started Neuxpower 29 years ago, which means a big anniversary is coming up next year! Neuxpower is the company behind the popular file compressor, NXPowerLite, the cool PowerPoint add-in, Slidewise, and the soon-to-arrive Word add-in, Wordwise. Mike loves designing useful software, and right now he’s focused on making Slidewise even more powerful and easy to use.

In this conversation, Mike talks about the new NXPowerLite 11.

Geetesh: Mike, NXPowerLite 11 introduces a more transparent approach to file optimization, particularly with the new View details feature. How does this approach change the way users understand and manage file bloat across formats like PowerPoint, Word, Excel, and PDF?

Mike: The new View details feature in NXPowerLite 11 completely changes how users understand and manage file bloat by giving them clear insights into the size composition of their files. This feature can be used before or after compression and is available from the main toolbar as well as Explorer/Finder.

Where users previously had to guess why a file didn’t compress as expected, View details now serves as a helpful diagnostic tool. This feature enables users to:

1. Pinpoint Compression Blockers: The tool breaks down the file’s total size, showing which content—such as high-resolution images, embedded videos, or hidden data—is dominating the space and, preventing NXPowerLite from achieving better compression.
2. Self-Service Problem Solving: Instead of needing to contact support and share the large file for analysis, users are empowered to help themselves. They can instantly see why a file is large.
3. Access Targeted Guidance: For supported file formats (PPTX, DOCX, XLSX, PDF), the feature links directly to guides (see help link at the bottom of the view details window). These guides offer specific tips for manually reducing file size, based on the content identified as the blocker.
4. Pre-Compression Analysis: Additionally, the feature can be used to analyse a file before attempting compression. This allows users to quickly determine the likelihood of a successful compression and decide if they want to proceed, saving time and setting realistic expectations.

NXPowerLite 11 shifts the user experience from a blind “try-and-hope” to a well-informed targeted compression process.

Geetesh: With both Windows and Mac versions emphasizing improvements to the compression engine, what were the key technical or user-driven challenges that shaped these enhancements, and how do they translate into tangible benefits for everyday users?

Mike: The latest compression engine improvements primarily address user-driven issues related to modern file features and third-party tools that our previous code couldn’t handle. I can share these three examples of challenges and benefits:

Challenge: Large Excel files from Pictures in Cells. Microsoft’s new insert pictures in cells feature created incompressible images, leading to huge files. Although the feature has been available for a long time, it’s only more recently in the last year that customers started using it more extensively. Neither NXPowerLite nor the built-in Compress Pictures feature could compress pictures in cells, so customers had no good options.

Benefit: The engine now identifies and compresses these images placed in-cells, effectively reducing Excel file size for sharing.

Challenge: Over-compression and blurring of Canva presentation files. Presentations downloaded from Canva (as PPTX) contained an obscure image composition that the old logic miscalculated, causing blurry, low-quality results.

Benefit: A fix to the size-calculation logic specifically for Canva’s grouped shape fills ensures image quality is maintained without blurring.

Challenge: Poor compression for Word documents with Grouped Images. Grouping images triggers a Word compatibility feature that saves each image three times, rapidly inflating file size. We’ve written about how grouped images in Word inflates file size here. Previous versions of NXPowerLite skipped these images.

Benefit: The engine now understands the XML structure of grouped images, significantly boosting compression effectiveness for these Word documents.

Geetesh: How do you approach feature parity between the Windows and Mac releases of NXPowerLite. Could you share the thinking behind platform-specific priorities, and how you see feature parity evolving between the two moving forward?

Mike: A primary goal is to maintain feature and interface parity across the Windows and Mac versions of our software. We recognize that many users frequently switch between operating systems, and a consistent experience is essential to ensure you are always comfortable with our software’s layout, regardless of the platform.

Our development process typically involves completing all work on the Windows version first. This allows us to finalize the UI adjustments that inevitably arise during testing as we identify and resolve minor usability issues. Once the Windows UI is set, we translate those changes to the Mac version, striving for functional similarity while adhering to native Mac design standards.

You can see how similar the application is between Windows and Mac in the images below.

The Mac version uses the same NXPowerLite SDK as our other file compressor apps, and we aim for near-identical performance on both platforms. While the use of various third-party libraries for file compression may introduce minor, unavoidable low-level differences, we test a standard suite of files on both platforms. This ensures that the results, in terms of both file size reduction and quality, remain comparable.

For anyone that’s curious about NXPowerLite, it comes with a 14-day trial on Windows and Mac. It’s $59 with volume discounts from 10 users and we also offer a non-profit discount on our website.

The views and opinions expressed in this blog post or content are those of the authors or the interviewees and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer, or company.