Q: What is the item manager?
A: In short, it's the world's greatest war-themed hat-simulator-themed inventory simulator. But really, it's a Windows desktop application that allows you to manage your TF2 inventory without having to open Team Fortress 2!

Q: Wh-- why would I need that?
A: Well, it's so th-- um, it's for those t-- I... I don't know.

Q: Can I get VAC banned or punished for using this?
A: Back when I just started working on this, I asked Robin Walker (VALVe employee and one of the founders of TF) whether it'd be alright (this was after the idling incident), and he said it was okay as long as I don't give you guys huge advantages over the in-game inventory handler.

Q: How do I get it?
A: You'll need the MSVC++ 2010 Redistributable (you'll get an msvcX100.dll error if you don't), and then you can download the ZIP here.

Q: How do I craft items?
A: Hold control, click on the items you want to craft, and then click "Craft." Important notes: First, there's no blueprint selection (yet), so ambiguous blueprints might not give you what you want. For example, 3 Blutsaugers can give you a medic token or a primary weapon token. Second, non-tradable items aren't reported by the manager yet, so be warned that the result will also not be tradable.

Q: What are those slots on the bottom left for?
A: They're items that haven't been placed in the inventory (or that are overlapping other items [this probably doesn't happen anymore]).

Q: How can I carry items to different pages?
A: Either drag the item to the edge of the screen (in the direction of the page) or press the left and right arrow keys while carrying an item.

Q: Why are the "equip" and "sort" buttons disabled?
A: They're not implemented yet; I just wanted to release a working craft/move manager, since that's what was most wanted.

Q: I'm stuck on "waiting for steam message."
A: This usually happens if you have a game opened on Steam or you quickly open and close the item manager. Try close all Steam applications (except Steam) for a few seconds and try again.
New: if a SteamOverlayRenderer.log file appears with mention of a hooking mutex, the problem is likely caused by an anti-virus or firewall (such as Microsoft Security Essentials) preventing Steam from hooking into the application. Add an exception for the entire Steam folder, and it should work properly (thanks to ReBoot for figuring this out).

Q: Should I report bugs and request features?
A: Yes. Yes yes. Yes yes yes. Yes yes ... yes_[n-2] yes_[n-1] yes_[n]. You can post such things in the SPUF Thread or email me here. That said, there are some planned features and known issues, so I'd appreciate if you'd check them out below before emailing.

Planned features (by hopeful chronological order):

1. Equipping and sorting.
2. Scrolling through excluded/new items.
3. Moving selected items to a page (which will be paired with selecting all items on a page).
4. Blueprint selection and perhaps auto-crafting duplicates.
5. Trading (only when everything else is working).

Known issues:

1. Some Windows 8 systems as well as older systems have difficulty rendering the round rectangles (they appear on the bottom-right).
2. Dragging an item after crafting it may cause a crash.
3. Strange weapon names not ranked, kills not reported.
4. Crate series not shown.
5. Item counts (i.e, dueling mini-game and noise-maker uses) not shown.
6. Paints and painted hat colours not shown.

Thanks:

1. Didrole for huge item interfaces help since ISteamUserItems.
2. Asherkin for pretty much doing all of the protobuf work for me.
3. Mave for testing expanded backpacks.
4. Pikachu for testing and helping debug the XP SP2 font crash bug.
5. A Noobcake for strong Norwegian man-love.
6. Rick for help with hyper beta testing and debugging multi-threading issues.
7. Everyone else.