Messages

101

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Desktop progress meter

« on: January 07, 2013, 04:31 PM »

I have now tried Progress Bars of Life, and surprisingly, it has a different purpose than Barbecue -- not suited to my need.

PBoL is focused on tracking time progress: set the time or date target, and it counts down for you. But it is cumbersome for tracking irregular progress in concrete units such as pages or chapters read (what PBoL calls "manually set range"). To add units requires 7-8 clicks:
- View
- Options
- Progress Bar Items (if not already focused)
- Name (double click)
- Current Value
- Accept
- Accept

I don't want to go through all that every time I add a unit or two of progress. Obviously PBoL is optimized for automatic time progress, not manual addition of progress.

Furthermore, the bar color -- green to yellow to orange as the time limit approaches, then red as the limit is passed -- is more suited to a time countdown than, say, tracking the number of games played.

Barbecue is focused on tracking non-chronological units rather than time. For this it is slightly easier than PBoL because only 5-6 clicks are required:
- Tray icon (two clicks, depending on configuration)
- Title (if not already focused)
- Number
- Show meter bars
- Close or Escape

This could be improved, as I suggest in my comment below.

102

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Desktop progress meter

« on: January 07, 2013, 08:37 AM »

Actually I did look at Progress Bars of Life before posting, and for some reason felt it wasn't as suited to what I need. Maybe it was the attractive colors and solid bars in Barbecue's screenshot that tipped the balance? Or perhaps I was thrown off because all the PBoL screenshots use time units, whereas my use would be concrete units similar to Barbecue's examples. I'll have another look at PBoL.

103

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Desktop progress meter

« on: January 06, 2013, 05:50 PM »

Wish: Provide an option to specify the number of decimal places reported in the % done. Currently two places are displayed, but none or at most one would be fine for me. I think fewer decimal places is simpler and easier to read. And if I'm reading a 500-page book, a few hundredths of a percent difference is not significant, so I don't need or want to see it. Thanks.

104

Find And Run Robot / Re: Pause/Break hotkey sometimes blocked by other programs

« on: February 16, 2012, 11:00 AM »

2. Does anyone know how to run the offending programs without requiring this UAC approval every time? ...

-Scott_Y (February 15, 2012, 03:37 PM)

This has been recommended to me, but I haven't had a chance to try it yet. Let me know if it works for you.

Elevated Program Shortcut without UAC Prompt
http://www.sevenforu...c-prompt-create.html

105

Find And Run Robot / Re: Pause/Break hotkey sometimes blocked by other programs

« on: February 15, 2012, 03:37 PM »

I finally noticed the pattern to this problem. Not surprisingly, it is related to User Account Control. (I am using Win 7/64, but it almost certainly applies to Vista as well. It was not a problem in Win XP.)

In every case the offending program requires approval of the UAC message "Do you want to allow the following program to make changes to this computer?" The problem disappears if UAC is turned off (set to "Never notify"), which confirms that it is associated with UAC.

Questions:
1. Can other users confirm this pattern?

2. Does anyone know how to run the offending programs without requiring this UAC approval every time? I have experienced it with CCleaner, Revo Uninstaller, and Paragon Backup & Recovery, and it is reasonable that programs of that type would require higher security permission. But I also have the problem with two text-based database programs which are no security threat at all. In any case, I would like to permanently approve these programs so they can run without specific UAC approval. (I am using an Administrator account.) Thanks.

106

Find And Run Robot / Re: Pause/Break hotkey sometimes blocked by other programs

« on: February 10, 2012, 03:55 PM »

Add Paragon Backup & Recovery 2012 Free to the list of programs which block the Pause/Break hotkey.

107

Find And Run Robot / Re: How to not show folders in results?

« on: February 04, 2012, 09:36 PM »

Actually, "Show matching folders by default" sounds like the control I would want here. So perhaps it isn't working? Just a thought.

108

Find And Run Robot / Re: How to not show folders in results?

« on: February 04, 2012, 09:01 PM »

There should be an option for it -- let me look again.

I've been remiss in not updating FARR in a while -- I've been very busy with my imminent release of Screenshot Captor v3.

-mouser (February 04, 2012, 08:47 PM)

Ok, thanks very much, Mouser. I'll check back when you have time. All your work is really appreciated.

109

Find And Run Robot / Re: Pause/Break hotkey sometimes blocked by other programs

« on: February 04, 2012, 08:59 PM »

just remember that you can set multiple hotkeys to trigger farr, so you can always set some backup ones to use if the normal key is blocked.

-mouser (February 04, 2012, 08:56 PM)

Got it, Mouser. And indeed, Alt + Space gets me past the problem. Nevertheless, it is strange that some specific programs block Pause/Break. I guess I'm mostly asking if anyone knows what the cause is. As we said above, Win 7 is a suspect; I wasn't suggesting it is FARR's fault. It's just strange.

110

Find And Run Robot / Re: Pause/Break hotkey sometimes blocked by other programs

« on: February 04, 2012, 08:56 PM »

Similar situation here for VirtualBox 4.0.10.

-ewemoa (February 04, 2012, 08:46 PM)

Do you mean that VirtualBox is blocking Pause/Break for FARR, similar to my experience with Revo Uninstaller?

Alt + Space... Not here.

-ewemoa (February 04, 2012, 08:46 PM)

I presume you have Alt + Space enabled in FARR Settings > Hotkeys.

I don't know what is going on in any detail, but I'm under the impression there may not be anything that can be done about it -- happy to be wrong about that

My testing was with Windows 7 Pro 64-bit.

-ewemoa (February 04, 2012, 08:46 PM)

Yes, I suspect it has something to do with Windows -- in which case, tough luck. I'm using Win 7 HP 64-bit

111

Find And Run Robot / Re: FARR and Indexing Option - Feedback Requested

« on: February 04, 2012, 08:43 PM »

Previously when entering a search string could be so slow, yes, I thought indexing would be a good thing to speed up FARR. But now that Armando has solved that problem ( https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=29756.0 ) I don't wish for indexing any more. But my search needs are not very demanding.

112

Find And Run Robot / Pause/Break hotkey sometimes blocked by other programs

« on: February 04, 2012, 08:36 PM »

Some programs are blocking the Pause/Break hotkey when they have focus (and only then -- no problem if they are running but not the focused program). Under that condition, Pause/Break does not open FARR, although Alt + Space will open it. One program which does this is Revo Uninstaller. This might be specific to Win 7 because, as I remember, I didn't have this problem in Win XP.

Has anyone had this experience, or have an idea about what is going on? Thanks.

Scott

113

Find And Run Robot / Re: How to not show folders in results?

« on: February 04, 2012, 08:25 PM »

Thanks for a quick reply, Mouser. I already had that unchecked, so that isn't the solution. But I think what I have in mind would be something like that, i.e. a single setting on/off.

Any other ideas? If not, I'd like to submit that here as a wish.

114

Find And Run Robot / How to not show folders in results?

« on: February 04, 2012, 07:10 PM »

I would like to not show folders in search results. For example, when I search for the string "mn" I get two results for Mnemosyne (the program I want to launch). The first result below shows the icon for the executable, while the second shows the icon for the folder containing the excecutable.

I never need or want to go to folders, just executables, documents, etc. So I would like to exclude results which point to folders. The difficulty is that both results shown below are  to a .lnk -- the first result is a .lnk pointing to C:\Program Files (x86)\Mnemosyne\mnemosyne.exe (the one I want), while the second result is a .lnk pointing to C:\Users\Scott\AppData\Roaming\Mnemosyne (the one I don't want).

Is there some way to directly exclude folders like the second result? I don't see a way to distinguish them, for example, by file extension restrictions in Search Folders. Thanks.

-------
Mnemosyne.lnk
C:\Users\Scott\Desktop\Shortcuts - Programs

Mnemosyne.lnk
C:\Users\Scott\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Recent
-------

115

Find And Run Robot / Re: Farr freezes : solved but...

« on: January 31, 2012, 11:50 PM »

Your description of the delay is perfect: Wondering if it wouldn't be faster to go through the Windows Start menu. Heh.

Oh my... IMMEDIATE speedup after adding FARR to the Excluded Processes list for MSE!!! I didn't exclude anything else.

Now all the characters appear in the search box as fast as I can type them -- no more waiting for the second character to appear, wondering "What in the world is FARR doing???"

Simple yet brilliant solution, Armando! Thanks so much! FARR is like a whole new program now -- stunning! Win7/64

116

Find And Run Robot / Re: Farr freezes : solved but...

« on: January 31, 2012, 09:08 PM »

I sometimes experience overly-long delays such as after two keystrokes, the second character does not appear in the search box while I am waiting, waiting, waiting. And I do have MSE running, so perhaps this is the same problem as you report here, Armando.

Question: What do I enter in MSE's settings to exclude "farr's process entirely"? Thanks.