Topics

1

Post New Requests Here / IDEA: tool to allow resizing controls inside windows of other apps

« on: September 30, 2009, 03:40 PM »

ok... stay w/ me here..   I have some poorly coded apps that have very tiny dialog boxes with very tiny edit boxes, list controls, etc.  These days most of us run 1280x1024 or higher resolutions and this is just unacceptable for certain tasks.  I would like to be able to "grab" a control inside one of these dialogs and resize it.  I believe this is possible, I have seen other programs "fiddle" with controls such as enabling "disabled" buttons, and making "non-resizable" windows resizable. 

the way I see it working is, you run the program, it sits in the tray.  Then you click to activate it, and as you hover the mouse over standard windows GUI controls (buttons, dialogs, editboxes etc) they will be outlined in red.  Probably most of you have seen this type of thing with screen-capture programs when you choose "object" mode. Then if you select that control by clicking on it, you can grab its edge and resize it.

does anyone know if something like this is even possible??  I feel like it should be, but not sure.  Hoping somebody will have the answer!!
cheers,
Luke

2

Post New Requests Here / IDEA: re-usable floating (transparent) window notifications

« on: May 12, 2009, 04:34 PM »

Here's my idea:  I am looking for a win32 utility that basically just pops up a floating message window, similar to the one that Outlook uses for new incoming mail.  This titlebar-less window would contain text passed to it from the command line, and accept certain command line params such as

font size
x,y -position
w,h -width & height
window color
border color, border thickness
transparency level, 0-255
duration (e.g., 10 seconds, after which it would fade away)
sound to play
OnClick action -- commandline to execute if user clicks the box

so the format of the command could be something like:
notify.exe "<message>" <s- font size> <x,y pos> <w,h dimension> <r,g,b-win color> <r,g,b-border color> <n- thickness> <t- transparency> <d- duration> <path_to_snd> <onclick_action>

example:
notify.exe "this is a test" 14 50,15 200,80 255,255,255 160,160,160 4 255 10 "c:\sounds\beep.wav" "regedit.exe"

the above command will display a message box saying "this is a test" in 14pt Arial at x=50,y=15.  It's 200px wide & 80px tall, with a white background and grey border 4px thick, with no transparency (255) for 10 seconds.  It will try to play c:\sounds\beep.wav and if the user clicks the box before it fades away, it will try to execute "regedit.exe".

What do you guys think?  could this be useful to anyone except me?? 

3

What's the Best? / Anti-Virus Package

« on: February 27, 2006, 02:13 AM »

The goal of this thread is to serve as a basic guide for choosing the best AntiVirus (AV) package for your needs.  Everyone should have at least a basic AV these days.  Even the most careful surfer will occasionally encounter a virus- it may appear as an ActiveX control on a rogue website/popup, from a spam email that slips through your filter, or from a poorly-checked CD that was passed from a friend.  The focus here will be on the home user, however many of these products perform equally well in a corporate environment.  I have personally deployed NOD32 on several corporate networks with great success.

When looking for the best AV to fit your needs, there are a handful of key elements to consider. These are not listed in any particular order, so while some people might place more importance on Resource Usage (like myself!) others will consider the Price to be the most important factor.  So it's up to the individual to decide which is most important:

• Detection Rate (how well does my AV catch known and unknown threats?)
• Resource Usage (does it slow down my system noticably?)
• Ease of use (is the interface cluttered? is it intuitive to navigate?)
• Stability/Compatibility (does this program cause crashes or conflict with my other programs?)
• Frequency of Updates (how quickly does the vendor respond to new threats?)
• Price (freeware/shareware/commercial)

I will start this off by grouping the AV's into 2 sections, Freeware and Shareware/Commercial.  Within each section, I have sorted the programs from "Best" to "Worst" based on their current rating from BetaNews' FileForum section (Hence the BN Rating). However it should be noted that ALL of these programs are fairly good AVs and there are a few that were left off the list entirely because they were just too weak to make the cut.  So calling any of these "The Worst" is perhaps unfair.  Also, please note that of the following programs, I have only personally tested avast!, NOD32, Norton, and AVG.  So I would appreciate some comments on the other apps if you have used them and love/hate them.

Freeware
avast! Home v4.6
BN rating: [4.6/5.0]
Pros: very low resource usage, very stable.  one of the only free AVs with x64 support.
Cons: slightly cluttered GUI.

AntiVir Personal Edition 7.0 (mouser's favorite freeware AV!)
BN rating: [4.3/5.0]
Pros: high detection rates. low resource usage.
Cons: shows nag screen during update. download of updates is sometimes problematic.
Cons: no POP3 scanner (however, infected attachments will be detected as soon as they are opened or saved to your disk).
Cons: it has been suggested that the nag screen can be disabled using Group Policy however the details of this are still unknown.

AVG Free 7.1
BN rating: [4.0/5.0]
Pros: low resource usage.  easy to navigate interface.
Cons: only average detection rate.  somewhat prone to getting corrupted and requiring re-installation.

I am still undecided as to which freeware AV I prefer. Of the 2 that I've tested personally, I prefer AVG's simple user interface over Avast's. I found Avast's GUI somewhat scattered (why do we need 2 separate tray icons?) and the meaning of the various options were not as obvious to me (exactly what does the "P2P shield" do?).  I admit that I did not delve too deeply into the manual however.  But, in Avast's favor, it has a loyal following and resource usage is also quite low, perhaps even lower than AVG's.  I did not experience any perceivable slowdown when using either AVG or Avast.  I have not tested any of the other freeware AVs mentioned.  I will leave them open for others to comment on.

Shareware/Commercial
NOD32 v2.5 (my personal favorite at the moment!)
BN rating: [4.5/5.0]
Pros: low resource usage (when not using advanced heuristics). clean GUI. also detects (some) spyware. very frequent updates.
Cons: complicated exclusion feature.
Base Price: US $39 / Renewal Price: $27.30

BitDefender 9 Standard
BN rating: [4.5/5.0]
Pros: updates often.  simple interface.  high detection rates.  cheap!
Cons: unknown
Base Price: US $29.95 / Renewal Price: $14.98

Kaspersky AntiVirus (KAV) 2006 (beta)
BN rating: [4.2/5.0]
Pros: excellent detection rates.  lower resource usage than v5.0 (although still not as low as some of the competition).
Cons: seems to have some conflicts with the popular ZoneAlarm firewall.
Base Price: US $39.95 / Renewal Price: $27.97

Panda Titanium 2006
BN rating: [3.3/5.0]
Pros: very high detection rates. nice interface. talking guy with spanish accent on the web page :-)
Cons: expensive. reportedly a "resource hog" using 35-40MB of RAM.
Base Price: US $49.95 / Renewal Price: unknown

McAfee VirusScan 10.0/2006
BN rating: [3.2/5.0]
Pros: fast. resource usage is low, on par with NOD32.
Cons: requires installation of the "McAfee Resource Center" which is used to promote other McAfee products.
Base Price: US $39.99 / Renewal Price: $39.99

Norton AntiVirus 2006 (beta)
BN rating: [3.0/5.0]
Pros: probably the most well-known AV.  esay-to-use GUI.  very good detection rates.
Cons: resource hog.  expensive.
Base Price: US $39.99 / Renewal Price: $29.99

AntiVir PersonalEdition Premium 7.0
BN rating: [unknown]
Pros: high detection rates. low resource usage.
Cons: unknown
Base Price: 20.00 € / Renewal Price: unknown

Having personally tested only NOD32 and Norton in this category, I can say that between the two, NOD32 wins hands-down.  I have been a NOD32 user for several years now and have not had a single infection despite what most would consider "heavy" downloading!  I am somewhat obsessed with system optimization and efficiency so therefore my priorities were skewed towards low resource usage and speed, both areas in which NOD32 excels.  I like the fact that individual modules within the program can be turned off depending on your needs.  NOD32's "IMON" module detects viruses mid-stream as they are being downloaded (yes-before they have even touched your hard drive) which is a nice feature (can be disabled if you want).  I have always found Norton Antivirus to be a resource hog and I have seen it conflict with/slow down many a system in my time.  This is especially true of older, less powerful systems (<512MB RAM, <2ghz CPUs) In Symantec's defense, NAV does have decent detection rates and an easy-to-use GUI.

As this thread fills up (hopefully) with comments from other users, I will keep this post updated and add/remove AV programs as needed.  Eventually I hope to narrow the list to only 1 or 2 "best" programs in each category (Free/Commercial).  And hopefully I would like to DROP the poorly ranked Commercial suites from the list (Panda/McAfee/Norton), unless I get a lot of users posting that they disagree with those ratings. So come on and post your opinions!

Here are some additional related posts on DC's forum concerning AntiVirus apps:

• another antivirus comparison site
• Best Anti-virus

Perhaps also worth noting are some online/web-based scanners (all free):

• Trend Micro Housecall - http://housecall.trendmicro.com
• VirusTotal - http://www.virustota.../flash/index_en.html
• Jotti VirusScan - http://virusscan.jotti.org (seems to be offline at the moment)

4

What's the Best? / Master Category List for the "What's the Best" section... please help finalize!

« on: February 26, 2006, 07:36 PM »

OK, I think this is going to be a great and very useful section, if managed properly.  However, this area could very quickly become cluttered and difficult to navigate, unless it is organized.  What I would like to do is have this area arranged into several "top-level" category folders, and then within those folders, we can have threads for each specific class of program.  Mouser of course would have to arrange this, as it doesn't appear that I can create this structure myself, but I think the first thing that needs to be done is to get a complete and well-rounded list of groups and categories.  I tweaked the list from my original post a bit and have come up with the following "tree".  This tree can also serve as a launch-pad of sorts to take you directly to the related thread discussing that category (I have already linked the 2 categories that jgpaiva started)

Please- if you have a moment, could you post any additions or recommend any moves/splits/other changes?  It would be most appreciated! Once this list is more or less finalized, I along with jgpaiva will begin creating the starter threads for each category and then you guys can start posting your "best of" recommendations!    Thanks!

System
 |
 +-- Best System Cleanup/Junk File Removing Utility
 +-- Best Compression Utility
 +-- Best CD/DVD recoding tool
 +-- Best File Manager/Explorer Replacement
 +-- Best Startup Mangement Utility (e.g. msconfig, Autoruns)
 +-- Best File/Directory Comparison Utility
 +-- Best Bulk File Renaming utility

Desktop Tools
 |
 +-- Best Dialog Box Extender
 +-- Best Clipboard extender
 +-- Best Wallpaper Manager/changer
 +-- Best Virtual Desktop/Window Manager
 +-- Best "window snapping" utility
 +-- Best "Magnifying glass" utility
 +-- Best Tray Clock Replacement program
 +-- Best Tray Icon Management Utility

Security/Anti-Malware
 |
 +-- Best Anti-Virus
 +-- Best Anti-Spyware
 +-- Best Software Firewall
 +-- Best Pop-up/Ad Blocker

Internet/Networking
 |
 +-- Best IM/jabber/chat client
 +-- Best Browser Plugin/Firefox Extension
 +-- Best RSS reader
 +-- Best FTP client
 +-- Best IRC client
 +-- Best Email Client
 +-- Best BitTorrent client
 +-- Best TCP/IP Toolbox Utility (ping/trace/portscan/dns lookup/etc)
 +-- Best Ethernet Packet Capture/Analysis Utility
 +-- Best Website Change-Monitoring App

Programming/Database
 |
 +-- Best General Text Editor/Notepad replacement
 +-- Best HTML/CSS editor
 +-- Best PHP editor
 +-- Best SQL DB management tool

Audio/Video
 |
 +-- Best Audio (MP3/WMA/AAC) player
 +-- Best Video Player
 +-- Best Audio Editor/Recording tool
 +-- Best MP3/Ogg/etc encoding software
 +-- Best MP3 management tool
 +-- Best DVD transcoding/rebuilding tool

Hard Drive
 |
 +-- Best Disk Partitoning Tool
 +-- Best Backup Software
 +-- Best Disk Imaging/Cloning Utility
 +-- Best Disk Space Analysis Utility
 +-- Best Data Recovery Utility
 +-- Best Defrag Utility

Graphics
 |
 +-- Best Image Editor
 +-- Best Font Viewer/Utility
 +-- Best Icon Editor
 +-- Best Photo Management Software
 +-- Best Screenshot Utility
 
Timers/Alarms/Reminders/Calendars/PIMs
 |
 +-- Best Phonebook/Addressbook program
 +-- Best Calendar program
 +-- Best "Sticky Notes" app
 +-- Best Clock/Stopwatch/Timer/Alarm utility
 +-- Best Task Scheduler/Cron-type Utility

Office
 |
 +-- Best word processor (there is a review at http://www.donationcoder....eviews/Archive/WordProcs/)
 +-- Best spreadsheet

5

General Software Discussion / Categorized "Best Of" Software Lists, suggestion for a new section

« on: February 11, 2006, 02:50 AM »

Hey mouser,
not sure if this already exists on here.  If it does, forgive me and please direct me to it.  If not heres the idea:

how about a section that has software categories, with maybe the top 3 programs (users can vote) in each category.  Short descriptions of each app with maybe a screenshot or 2 and a link to the developer's site if there is one.  The criteria for selecting the "best" apps IMHO should focus on elegance, speed, stability, and features without bloat.  And perhaps price.

Suggestions for the categories, with some examples:
please suggest any categories that I might have missed or if I should further divide or combine the ones I have here...

Best Text Editor
TextPad
EmEditor
PSPad

Best Image Editor
Photoshop
Paint.NET
PhotoFiltre Studio

Best Audio (MP3/WMA/AAC) player
WinAMP
Quintessential Player
fooBar2000

Best Video Player
VLC
Media Player Classic
Nero ShowTime

Best Disk Partitoning Tool
Acronis Disk Director

Best Clock/Stopwatch/Timer/Alarm utility
AlfaClock
WorldClock

Best Font Viewer/Utility
FontViewer
FontExpert 2005

Best HTML/CSS editor
WeBuilder 2005

Best PHP editor
PHPedit

Best Audio Editor/Recording tool
Audacity
Adobe Audition

Best MP3 management tool
MediaMonkey
mp3tag

Best SQL DB management tool
SQLyog
MySQL Manager

Best Compression Util
WinRAR
WinZIP
7-zip

Best CD/DVD recoding tool
ImgBurn
Nero
Alcohol 120%

Best DVD transcoding/rebuilding tool
DVD Shrink
CloneDVD
ShrinkTo5

Best Icon Editor
Axialis IconWorkshop
IconCool

Best IM/jabber/chat client
Skype
BitWise
Miranda

Best RSS reader
FeedDemon
GreatNews

Best FTP client
CuteFTP Pro
SmartFTP
FileZilla

Best Anti-Virus
NOD32
Kaspersky
McAfee

Best Anti-Spyware
Spybot S&D
ewido
Microsoft AntiSpyware

Best Image Management Software
Picasa
ACDsee

Best Screenshot Util
Screenshot Captor
SnagIt
HyperSnap DX

Best Network Utility (ping/trace/portscan/dns lookup/etc)
PingPlotter
WS_Ping ProPack
SuperScan 4

Best Ethernet Packet Capture/Analysis Util
ethereal
CommView
SmartSniff

Best File Manager
xplorer2
XYPlorer 4.0
A43

Best Backup Software
Retrospect

Best Task Scheduler/Cron-type util
nnCron

Best Disk Imaging/Cloning util
Norton Ghost
Acronis True Image

Best Defrag Util
Diskeeper
Raxco Perfectdisk

Best File/Directory Comparison Util
WinMerge
Beyond Compare

Best Website Change Monitoring App
Website-Watcher
Check 'n' Get
Eldos TimeleyWeb

Best Disk Space Analysis Util
FolderSizes
Space
PCMag Diskpie

Best Data Recovery Util
Ontrack EasyRecovery
Handy Recovery 2.0
R-Studio

6

General Software Discussion / Qslice... app to show cpu usage by process in a visual format, including threads

« on: February 11, 2006, 02:01 AM »

An interesting app is Qslice.  This is a program that visually graphs each process' cpu usage.  One of the cool things about it is you can double click on any process, and another window opens up showing the individual threads inside that process with the cpu usage of those threads shown in a similar visual format.  ProcessExplorer (SysInternals) can do this but not in a visual way-- only textually).  Sadly, Qslice has never been fully developed and has a lot of shortcomings.  Columns cant be resized, colors, fonts etc cant be changed.  And there is no scrollbar so if you have over a couple dozen processes running, chances are you wont be able to get to them.  Also, the cpu usage is shown in a vertically stacked format, with each process getting its own 0-100% bar, which is actually somewhat inefficient. 

A similar program called BVSlice was also made, but had some problems and still was locked to the vertical interface which becomes tedious with many processes running.  And the website seems to be gone, developer has abandoned this project long ago. 

A long time ago I remember working on an SGI workstation running IRIX 6.x and it had this really cool app (forget what it was called) that displayed cpu usage in a horizontal bar similar to this:

The bar was resizable both horizontally and vertically, and would automatically scale to whatever size you stretched it to.  So in the above sample image, the outer rectangle represents 100% of the cpu, and each different colored bar is an individual process.  The bars are stacked up against each other to make up the total cpu usage at the current moment in time.  So in that sample above, cpu usage is about 40% total, with explorer.exe using about 11%, javaw.exe about 8%, firefox maybe 16% and csrss.exe 5%.

It would be really great if something like this existed for windows... does anyone know of one?  If not, perhaps one of the developers on here would consider making this as a Coding Snack or a Donationware.


Some more ideas:
1) ability to customize the color set used
2) change whether process names are shown below the bar or not
3) change fonts/sizes of process names
4) omit any app <n% (similar to how mouser has done it in ProcessTamer)
5) customizable refresh interval (500ms, 1s, 5s etc)

comments?

7

General Software Discussion / Good pixel/bitmap editor?

« on: February 11, 2006, 01:33 AM »

hi guys, I have searched high and low recently for a decent, lightweight bitmap editor.  Something like mspaint but with slightly more features.  Here's what I am looking for:

1) ability to open/save GIF, JPG, PNG, BMP, and ICO
2) ability to use custom color palettes
3) decent zoom support (able to zoom into image for fine detail editing) -- preferably using mouse wheel or kbd shortcut
4) axis-constraints (i.e. hold shift to lock to X or Y axis while moving or drawing)
5) basic image editing features: resize, crop, stretch, adjust hue/saturation, replace color, etc
6) 24-bit/32-bit color support
7) pleasant interface
8 ) reasonably lightweight and fast

that's about it. 
before everyone says "you just described Photoshop" please I already own Photoshop and it fails in several areas:

1) takes forever to launch-- sometimes I just need a simple tool for a simple job
2) tools are not really optimized for per-pixel bitmap editing, too much emphasis on anti-aliasing, smoothing, etc.  I often find that it takes too much effort to adjust all the tools between pixel pushing and photo editing.
3) does not read or write .ICO files
4) slow and bloated
5) expensive

I have not found anything that even comes close (well, mspaint is the closest I guess!) 
anyone got any tips?

8

Finished Programs / DONE: Across-the-room Stability Monitor

« on: February 03, 2006, 02:05 AM »

this idea might be pretty easy to code hopefully.... let me explain:

I do a lot of CPU overclocking and stability testing, burn-in etc and am always building and testing new systems.  This often involves long time-consuming sessions of running various torture tests such as Prime95, SuperPI 32M, OCCT, Memtest etc.  It is boring to stare at the screen for 4 hours straight so often I will go to the next room and watch TV or listen to music etc.  I like to glance over my shoulder to make sure the system is still up & running and has not BSOD'd, rebooted, crashed or frozen.  Sometimes its hard to tell if the system has frozen from across the room.

So, I am looking for a program that does the following:

1) opens a window that shows a "heartbeat" which can be something like alternating flashing colors, changing patterns, some sort of color cycling animation, etc.

2) this window ideally should be resizable so that it can be made larger depending on the resolution of the monitor being used.

3) pattern or colors should shift once per second, or maybe once every 2-3 seconds.

4) cpu + ram usage of the program itself should be as minimal as possible so as not to interfere with or steal resources from the other stability testing programs.


This would make life a lot easier for testing these systems.... 
Any takers?

9

Finished Programs / DONE: Timed desktop screenshots -- not for spyware!

« on: January 23, 2006, 12:21 AM »

There are a few spyware/surveillance-type apps out there that are designed to run "stealth" and also perform functions like keylogging, web-blocking, etc.  Generally these are geared for parents who want to spy on their kids or corporate office scenarios.  Most of them are quite expensive ($60-90) and bloated.

What I am looking for is NOT a program for spying.  (Well unless you consider it spying on myself!  )  I do some database development as well as some lightweight PHP/javascript work for various customers and have found it quite difficult to accurately log my time for billing purposes.  Part of this is my fault in that I am very bad at remembering to take proper notes after a development session.  Usually I just do the work and then pray that I will remember what I did several weeks later (I know-- terrible!!  )

Anyway here's the request:  a very tiny and efficient program that just takes a snapshot of my desktop and saves it to a specified folder (with the filename set to the date/time of the snapshot) at set intervals.  The interval and folder should be selectable.  Ideally the format for the images should be PNG since it is very high quality and would give the most accurate rendition of the desktop.  But I guess GIF or JPG would be OK too.

The thread should run at Low or Idle priority so as not to interfere with the work being done in the foreground.  I don't know how possible it is but the main thing I would be concerned about is a noticable pause while the app is doing its thing.  Whatever could be done to minimize this effect would be obviously the best.

This way, when I am ready to review my invoicing, I can go back and review the screenshots to help me remember what I was working on 2, 3, 4 weeks ago etc.

I think this would be soooo useful and I would appreciate any comments or feedback on it!

10

Finished Programs / DONE: command line program to strip ID tags from WMA files

« on: January 01, 2006, 09:46 AM »

well heres an odd-sounding request for a snack.  I need a console (commandline) program that basically removes all the ID tags from a set of WMA files.  No frills needed, multiple file handling would be nice or the ability to specify DOS wildcards, e.g:

C:\>stripwma file1.wma file2.wma file3.wma

or

C:\>stripwma c:\myfolder\200512??.wma

which would strip all WMAs beginning with "200512" followed by any 2 chars. (standard DOS wildcard)

WHY on earth do you need this you might ask? 
Well I have written some scripts that download a radio program that I enjoy listening to each day off the net.  I have scripted it to save the files (they are WMA files) to a folder so I can listen to the shows at a later time.  The files are named with the current date so I know when each show was from.  For example "200051230.wma" and "20051015.wma". The problem is that whoever is encoding the shows, always specifies the EXACT same "title" which is just the name of the show itself.  Let's call it "Jim and Bob's Great Show" for example.  So when I open these in Windows Media Player, my playlist is filled up with a bunch of "Jim and Bob's Great Show" and I have no idea which show is from which date.  Even opening them in WinAMP the filenames are quickly replaced with the Title tags from the files so again I have no idea what's what.

So it would be great to be able to strip out the useless tags as part of my script.  I searched and searched but while I found some things that worked on MP3 files, nothing seems to be able to do this for WMAs.   I imagine that Microsoft must have this documented somewhere on MSDN and for a programmer I would hope this should be a simple "snack". 

Any takers?  that would be really helpful!!

11

Post New Requests Here / IDEA: BusyBuster -- program to redial busy phone #s using your modem

« on: December 22, 2005, 02:48 PM »

Hi I've searched for something like this and come up more or less empty... I am looking for a small app that can just redial busy phone numbers using an attached modem.  My phone doesn't have this feature built in so it would be very helpful.  There are a few complete bloatwares out there, usually $49-59 shareware circa 1997 type apps that have an incredible feature list but are way too complicated for my simple task.  I tried a few of them and they either crashed or I just couldnt figure out how to make them do this...

All I want is a very simple (hah..easy for me to say) app that looks something like this:


I think a picture pretty much speaks 1000 words here.. you get the idea.  When you push the "start dialing" button, it should change to "stop dialing" and if the program detects the "RING" string coming back from the modem, then it will do whatever is checked off in the "when line is no longer busy" section.  Options should be stored in an .ini file so they are preserved between launches.

Is this very difficult to code?  I would imagine that perhaps easier than selecting manual COM port and having to write basic I/O routines from scratch it might be easier to use Microsofts TAPI interface in which case the COM port selector would be replaced by the "modem name" of whatever devices were installed... such as "motorola 56k v.90 ext" or whatever.

Is this too "big" for a snack? 

12

Best Dialog Extender / good idea...

« on: November 21, 2005, 11:29 PM »

hey this review is a great idea...

but you forgot one of my favorite ones... (which I actually bought & use all the time!) 
yes its shareware but well worth the small price...

one nice feature is that you can specify custom icons in the folder menu to help quickly distinguish between folders, also has a Places Bar Editor, a built in GUI editor for XP/2000/2003 "subst" command where you can map a folder to a drive letter -- (very handy!), and also allows you to rename the folders in your list so if you have a long folder like "C:\Some\Long\Pathname\To\My\Personal\Downloads", you can simply name it "Downloads" in the menu.

There are other cool features too, like transparent dialogs and support for Office XP/2003 dialogs, and the ability to exclude apps that conflict, etc..  a very complete and yet simple and stable program!

QuickFolders (from ByteGems -- http://www.bytegems....m/quickfolders.shtml )

 

13

Finished Programs / DONE: IdleMute - Tray utility to mute speaker when you are away from the PC!

« on: November 21, 2005, 10:57 PM »

okay, I know there is a program called NoiseNak ( http://www.nakware.com/noisenak ) that does this but I have found it to be a little to bloated for my taste and I was looking for something a little "lighter"  (less memory, less cpu usage, simpler feature set)

Here is the basic idea:
-the computer is in the den/study/wherever
-you forget to shut it off or turn down the volume
-you climb into bed on a cold night and are about to fall asleep
-all of a sudden your computer is beeping and making sounds (new email alarms, winamp, media player, web pages etc)
-now you have to wake up and get disturbed (or your kids, wife, etc)

And here is the Solution (if someone can code it!):
-program loads at startup, sits in system tray
-program is small (low memory/cpu) and unobtrusive
-after XX minutes of inactivity (XX should be configurable by user) the master mixer volume is muted
-when user returns and moves the mouse/keybd, sound will return to its previous state
   (notice I said previous state and not necessarily un-muted-- for example if the speaker
   was already muted BEFORE the user went idle, then it should remain muted even after they return)
-the mixer state will be preserved between reboots -- by this I mean that if the computer reboots for some reason in the middle of the night, the user will not be disturbed by loud beeps and noises, so if speaker was muted, then it will still be muted even after next startup.  Example of this is sometimes Defrag program needs to reboot computer to do its work, and this may happen at 5am on Saturday morning etc, this way user does not have to be disturbed...

-the tray icon will have several functions also:
   1) double-left click -- toggle program enable/disable (meaning if you disable it, then automatic muting will no longer happen)
         ( if program is disabled, tray icon should indicate this by dimming or changing color, etc)
   2) right click will present a simple menu, like this:
                Configure
                About
                Exit
   3) "Configure" box should have the following settings:
            auto-mute speaker after __XX__ minutes of inactivity
            only un-mute after mouse moves __NN__ pixels  (useful for preventing accidental unmuting by cat bumping the mouse when crawling on desk!  )
            [  ] (checkbox) do not mute speaker if any of the following programs are running:
                 wmplayer.exe
                 vlc.exe
                 mplayerc.exe
                 winamp.exe
                 itunes.exe
            ...etc....  (user can type their own .exe processes in a box?)

That's about it.............  I actually hired someone to write a program like this for me a few years ago but I lost the program and the source code  and I was not able to contact the developer........  I have really missed this program ever since!!

what do you think?

14

Finished Programs / DONE - IDEA: commandline/console program to calculate sunrise/sunset times

« on: November 03, 2005, 10:41 PM »

There are some handy utils for un*x systems that can do the task of calculating sunrise/sunset/civil twilight/etc times given a latitude and longitude input.  Unfortunately I was not able to locate any win32 console apps that can do this reliably.   I found one written by an author who is no longer reachable and his contains a daylight-savings bug (DST calculation doesn't seem to work).  Daylight savings is a very important and tricky factor.

The reason I would like to have such a program is to use it in batch files to schedule home automation tasks such as turning out outside lights, controlling thermostat settings etc, based on sunrise/sunset/twilight times which change each day.

As a starting point you might consider the following URLs for assistance with the algorithms:

http://www.codeproje...om/datetime/srss.asp

http://www.freevbcod.../ShowCode.asp?ID=341

http://xoomer.virgil.../formulas/index.html

there are others but that is a start...

will anyone be so kind as to create this program??   all it needs to do is output the time in 24hour hh:mm format, no fancy GUI is needed (at least for me!).  It would be good if it can accept some commandline arguments such as specifying a date manually (default would be todays date) and also the ability to output only the time you need for example just the SUNRISE time.

example:

>suntime.exe 40.734N 73.986W -time sunrise
05:39

>suntime.exe 40.734N 73.986W -time sunset
17:33

>suntime.exe 40.734N 73.986W -time twilight
16:55

etc etc...