Messages

526

General Software Discussion / A Nice Vector Art Program

« on: February 09, 2006, 08:51 PM »

After looking at a nice C++ graphics library called Anti-grain geometry (much better than GDI+ apparantly and cross-platform), I noticed this program made with it:

http://www.creativedocs.net/

It seems a very nice vector art program. I should also mention Inkscape which is also cool and free:

http://www.inkscape.org/

527

General Software Discussion / Re: Opera 9 Technical Preview 2 due out tomorrow...Looks interesting

« on: February 09, 2006, 08:46 PM »

For Operatists, here are quite an extensive set of links on the new TP2:

General: http://virtuelvis.co...2006/02/opera-9-tp-2

Search engine customisation interface: http://my.opera.com/...blog/show.dml/133235
Thumbnail displays: http://my.opera.com/...blog/show.dml/132533
The great content block interface: http://my.opera.com/...blog/show.dml/132479

Tim covers a lot of features not obvious from the changelogs: http://weblog.timaltman.com/opera/

Spatial navigation has gotten even better; OPML import/export now supported for feeds; CSS3 opacity etc.

CSS rendering has got even more solid, it is now the only desktop browser to pass George Chavchanidzes arduous stress and torture tests (makes Acid2 look like childs play!). SVG, XSLT and WebForms2 are also much improved.

Site preferences really rock. Remember, even if the UI doesn't have a feature you want, it should be possible to enter it manually. It does currently have bugs with whitelisting cookies.

528

General Software Discussion / Process Explorer Upgraded to V10

« on: February 08, 2006, 09:20 AM »

The wonderful Process Explorer has been upgraded to V10, and there is a load of new features for this best-in-class free process monitor. Most importantly for me, one can now get a breakdown of the working set of all DLLs loaded by an application. Also, processes that host services have lists of those services available in the tooltip. One can also graph memory usage over time for each process.

Here is the Whats new list:

http://www.sysintern...ProcessExplorer.html

The process column is locked on the left side so that it doesn't scroll horizontally out of view
You can configure custom column selections and save them as easy-to-access column sets
Image verification option now verifies images in the background
More refresh intervals
Runas menu entry in the File menu
Run as Limited User menu entry in the File menu to run a process without administrative privileges and group membership
Process menu includes Restart item to kill and then restart a selected process
Can suspend individual threads on Threads page of Process Properties dialog
The Find Window target moves Process Explorer's main window to the back to get it out of the way
Close Window command uses same End Task functionality as Task Manager
Show New Processes option scrolls display to make new processes visible
Heuristics to detect more image packers
User name of account in which Process Explorer is running is shown in the title bar
Services can be stopped, resumed, and paused from the Services tab of the Process Properties dialog
The DLLs that host SvcHost processes are listed in the Services tab of the Process Properties dialog
Services running within a process display on the process' tooltip
As a parallel to the CPU Usage History column there's now a Private Bytes Usage History column
The Process view includes columns that show the working set breakdown of the process in shared, shareable and private pages
New delta private-bytes column to show changes in private virtual memory usage
Can copy lines from the Process, DLL and Handle views to the clipboard
Option to show pagefile-backed (unnamed) sections in DLL view
DLL and handle searching consolidated
The DLL view includes columns that show the working set contributions in shared, shareable, and private pages
The DLL a Rundll32 process hosts is shown in its process tooltip
Packed DLL highlighting in DLL view
Image signing verification available for DLLs
Better DLL properties dialog
Object address shown in Object Properties dialog
File object share flags column for Handle view

529

General Software Discussion / Re: Opera 9 Technical Preview 2 due out tomorrow...Looks interesting

« on: February 07, 2006, 05:29 AM »

i hold out faith someone will hack up a google map or Chat Client

-tinyvillager (February 07, 2006, 05:02 AM)

That would be trivial to do. Regarding chat, what's wrong with IRC?

In my opinion this Menu should expand into the widget you want to show ,instead of just show widgets 

-tinyvillager (February 07, 2006, 05:02 AM)

Good idea, you should post that on the my opera forums...

530

General Software Discussion / Re: Opera 9 Technical Preview 2 due out tomorrow...Looks interesting

« on: February 07, 2006, 05:24 AM »

This release is amazing!

Widgets are simply web pages that can exist outside of the  browsers UI, they use all the technology already present in the HTML renderer, added with the PNG alpha transparancy without formal UI window chrome. This is not really another "feature" in the sense that it was always built-in, but it has opened the possibility for some really neat features. http://my.opera.com/...mmunity/dev/widgets/

Bittorrent is treated as another protocol like HTTP and FTP, as it should be. Obviously this will not replace a fully-featured client, but for general use it is great.

The killer feature without a doubt is Site preferences. This has been discussed in the Opera community for a long time. Omniweb, with release 5 was the first browser to come out with a live implementation, followed by others. Opera's neat spin on this is based on its excellent support for user CSS and javascript. Basically you can apply custom CSS and javascript on a per-site basis, customising your web site experience infinitely. There is also a UI for blocking unwanted content (ad-blocker), and the pop-up blocker has been beefed up.

For power users, Opera's user CSS handling has been improved by allowing a directory for storage of all your CSS files. Remixing doesn't get easier than this!

A nice feature taken from Firefox is the "add search", basically this scrapes search fields on web pages, and a new UI gives you full control over your search engines.

Tab thumbnails are now available, and you can enable them also for ctrl+tab switching using opera:config.

A small, but neat feature is the source viewer (now syntax-highlighting), allows editing of pages, including blank pages so you can code in HTML and let it preview!

Of course, the big changes are under the surface. Merlin, Opera's next-generation rendering engine is really amazing. It supports a huge range of standards with a very high level of compliance. And amazingly as always, the same rendering engine can be run in mobile phones, which proves the efficiency of its coding.

531

Find And Run Robot / Re: FARR version 2 - discuss the best way to handle 'actions'

« on: February 07, 2006, 04:39 AM »

Sheesh, I go away for a few days and you guys write a books worth of ideas! Stop being so damn productive!

So we are hovering around a stack system / double edit box. Quicksilver is similar, except it doesn't show an edit box, but it does visually stack as object <> action <> option.

Looking forward to a document (mouser, are you going to use the wiki?)

532

Find And Run Robot / Re: FARR version 2 - discuss the best way to handle 'actions'

« on: February 03, 2006, 04:12 AM »

I haven't had much time to read through the latest incarnation (I am at work), but I am a bit worried about forcing actions first, or necesitating pressing space before searching for items. I think there should be flexibility. I prefer using *action as a shortcut to do something and letting default typing search as it does now. Sorry if I've misunderstood...

And nesting aliases is neat, a textual equivalent of Quicksilver's visual guide.

533

Find And Run Robot / Re: FARR version 2 - discuss the best way to handle 'actions'

« on: February 02, 2006, 05:10 PM »

If I am not mistaken this is almost what QuickSilver does. Once you select a document and hit Tab, it shows the list of actions below the document name. If that action requires a second document you can hit tab and the process continues until the whole command is reado to be executed (when ENTER is pressed).

-Amadawn (February 02, 2006, 04:44 PM)

Yes it does IIRC too.

I also liked the mockup by nontroppo, but I still prefer to "clear" the non selected elements on the list and just show the actions or options that you can perform.

-Amadawn (February 02, 2006, 04:44 PM)

Yes, I agree that this is visually much cleaner, presenting the user with less visual "noise"

534

Find And Run Robot / Re: FARR version 2 - discuss the best way to handle 'actions'

« on: February 02, 2006, 05:06 PM »

Mouser, I see two seperate issues here:

1) A flexible typed command structure to allow one to flexibly type what one wants. This doesn't depend on the UI much. Your Reply #7 clearly extends this (as you say from the current alias groups) into something much more flexible and powerful.

2) How to allow the UI to guide the user. In this case, we need to allow a user to type their first term in as we currently do. Then we need to activate an action mechanism, and select either physically or through dynamic search. Quicksilver does allow dynamic search of actions and it is useful. In this case, making the edit box then receptive to dynamic search of actions is equivalent. I liked you "With Ethereal.link do:" suggestion to guide the user (using the same text entry field). But I think an additional panel of actions (as in my mockup, and as Quicksilver does) is less confusing than replacing the item list with actions list in the results window.

In theory, users can use either method. I believe (2)  is better for novices and general users, and (1) is better for power users (we know how most people are a bit scared of aliases already!). I think both are  compatible.

535

Find And Run Robot / Re: A unified FARR / Launcher Interface Proposal

« on: February 02, 2006, 12:43 PM »

Mouser that's great! I have been thinking about how to do all this and your screenie is very similar to what I envisaged. The idea of node types is very intuitive with further specific options for the node below. :beer:

536

Find And Run Robot / Re: FARR version 2 - discuss the best way to handle 'actions'

« on: February 02, 2006, 12:10 PM »

Good to see this discussion. i had raised this some time ago, trying to see how we could get the context menu amenable to keyboarders in an intuitive way.

The context is really what quicksilver excels at. I don't know much about your contextmenu utility, but maybe this can help? Can you give us a bit more info?

For the GUI it seems easier. For FARR, we start writing and FARR does its magic. At the moment we have focus in the text box. I see two things we may want to do next:

1) Select from the list: <up> and <down> arrow changes our list selection (which defaults to the first item normally). It would be neat that the focus is not taken off the text field (as it is currently). <TAB> does the same thing.

2) Do an action with our selection: just as with our list we had a "default" item, with actions there should be a default action. To activate actions, I'd recommend using the <right arrow> (activates the action pane even if we have focus in the text field), or <TAB> if somehow our focus is already in the list.

In these cases, <enter> executes the selected list item with the selected action. If the focus is in the text field, then it uses the defaults.

Thus we can keep typing, select the list with up/down and toggle whether we select items or actions with tab or left/right.

Here is a mockup for how actions can be presented. The panel slides out when a key that triggers an action selection occurs. This is normally hidden:
[attachimg=#1][/attachimg]

537

Find And Run Robot / Re: A unified FARR / Launcher Interface Proposal

« on: February 02, 2006, 11:57 AM »

This may have been mentioned already (I may not have understood something somewhere!) but could you make the folder structure of the toolbar autopopulate? 

-kfitting (February 02, 2006, 09:37 AM)

I had made a recommendation to the UI designers of Opera to do something similar, and called it sticky searches (opera has a dynamic find in mosts parts of its UI): http://nontroppo.org...7/VirtualFolders.png

This has lots of parallels to FARR, in that Opera uses dynamic searches, and thus a saved "search" is a dynamic view into the dataset, storing it makes a really cool updating link. In terms of implementation, basically I believe in our groups, individual items can have properties, and one of them is that it activates FARRS search on a pattern and presents a result.

in fact, the launchbar configuration gui, which i have spent a couple weeks on and which i am EXTREMELY proud of, is fully working and seems to me might be well suited for the new farr configuration system which i have been dithering about.

-mouser (February 02, 2006, 09:59 AM)

Do you have a screenshot?

it does mean you should prepare for a totally different configuration experience for farr2.  hopefully you'll agree it's a better one.

-mouser (February 02, 2006, 09:59 AM)

no problem for me

i mean in a sense if you look at the toolbar in farr now, its a launch bar already.  i mean that is already what we are talking about, it's just a tiny little one.  so this idea is really more of following that through and making the launchbar more robust, and also giving user the ability to dock it on the screen for permanent viewing if desired..

we still have to figure out this issue with quicksilver style choosing of actions on files that im still unsure of how to handle best.

-mouser (February 02, 2006, 09:59 AM)

See my mockup in the other thread :devil:

 

538

Find And Run Robot / Re: A unified FARR / Launcher Interface Proposal

« on: February 02, 2006, 09:24 AM »

(i just hate not having the possibility of inconizing tasks in the taskbar, the titles take too much space )

-jgpaiva (February 02, 2006, 06:20 AM)

Try bblean as an alternative to explorer as it has this function.

Actually, i don't think that's bad..We don't want farr to be slower, right?

-jgpaiva (February 02, 2006, 06:20 AM)

Supporting alpha-transparency does not have to make FARR slower at all. The drop in speed will come with the use of skins themselves which FARR already supports (and didn't slow it dowm...)

i really like the idea that the groups be displays as tool menus in that farr menubar - it seems to me that sometimes you want to locate by name, and sometimes you like to browse visually, so it's a nice idea.  not sure exactly how to handle the case of groups where there are regular expressions involved..

-mouser (February 02, 2006, 06:31 AM)

Indeed it needs some thought. My original idea, similar to yours, was to have regex searches simply "fill in" the text entry field so you can complete the required information. That is hybrid key/mouse but I think it would be useful. Thus you'd have an "EMAIL Someone" entry in the menu; clicking it would fill in the command in the box up to the point where you would enter the mail address. The neat thing is that allows people who are a bit scared of aliases have a visual interface to them which I think is much less threatening.

One thing I'm not sure how to do cleanly is nested groups, which would give us the option of sub-menus. Ideally we would have a drag-n-drop interface that would allow groups to be dropped in the menu built from other groups.

539

Find And Run Robot / Re: A unified FARR / Launcher Interface Proposal

« on: February 02, 2006, 04:49 AM »

If you want a launcher (something that is as good or better than RocketDock, for instance), you need to be able to access it without using the keyboard. Otherwise, what would be the point? You'd first need to access the keyboard and then use the mouse to select the button that you want...

-Amadawn (February 01, 2006, 08:57 PM)

Yes exactly. My only point is that it is not so hard to keep both keyboard-centric (of which I am one) and mouse-centric users happy.

I think that things like the already discussed frequency sorting, QuickSilver-like program controls, task management, control panel indexing and search optimization should be addressed first, in my opinion.

-Amadawn (February 01, 2006, 08:57 PM)

I also agree with you! In the thread on launchbars, I made my position clear in that for my personal needs they are superfluous. But I respect that other people find them useful. FARR has been patiently waiting for a number of discussed features that will really enhance it, IMO more than an launch sub-menu. However, if mouser is going to invest time and energy in something, I simply rather he didn't duplicate his hard (& precious) work, and working on FARR in whatever endeavour keeps it alive. There is clear overlap in the stated aims of both programs (as Allen eloquently expresses), and having such a flexible and adaptive interface can only be a good thing.

Then i though: if this bar would have support for taskbar support (like yzdock has, similar to mac osx's dock, i think), farr would allow me to remove the taskbar and use only farr, in a much more intuitive way than the taskbar works!

-jgpaiva (February 02, 2006, 03:47 AM)

Well, one of my wishlist items for V2 is task control, but that is from a keyboard centric perspective (adaptive search through running apps). There is lots of existing code (Litestep, BBLean etc) out there for this sort of thing that mouser could use, though for me it then skirts too close to becoming an explorer replacement for my liking.

ps: nontroppo, that skin is beautifull! 

-jgpaiva (February 02, 2006, 03:47 AM)

Sadly, the current skin engine does not support alpha-transparency and so I cannot make such a skin for FARR yet. It is something mouser maybe able to do something about, and hopefully the skin module mouser uses may one day be updated to support it. The icons are from the obscenely talented David Lanham, and are called puft (also check out his desktops and other artwork).

540

Find And Run Robot / Re: A unified FARR / Launcher Interface Proposal

« on: February 01, 2006, 08:17 PM »

Well, by default it would not dock at all, but simply require key activation as now. The option to dock would need, as you say, some thought. However I don't see why you cannot use a key to trigger it; alt+space or whatever could still be used to activate it in its docked state as if the mouse had hovered it etc.

If it lost focus and some text was entered, it could auto-hide, with the clever point that it does not erase the text when nothing was launched, thus reshowing it starts where you left off only if you failed to launch the previous time.

I think the correct balance between mouse and keyboard is quite possible.

541

Find And Run Robot / Re: A unified FARR / Launcher Interface Proposal

« on: February 01, 2006, 07:56 PM »

it does seem to me that there might be some real benefit to integrating the functionality of these tools.
of course the launch bar stuff would have to be 100% optional for find+run, many people won't want to use the launch bar functionality.

-mouser (February 01, 2006, 07:41 PM)

Well, by default no groups would be set up, and thus no links available. By default FARR would be as it was. It would still be triggered by a key, not screen-docked until a prefs setting was toggled.

Very, very interesting idea.  One quick question: would the user be able to add this launchbar to his taskbar? 

-kfitting (February 01, 2006, 07:46 PM)

I imagine that would require mouser pretty radically changing the current UI code, but maybe i'm wrong.

542

General Software Discussion / Re: What's your favorite launch bar? Your favorite features? Missing Features?

« on: February 01, 2006, 07:01 PM »

I've made a mockup of how it would be possible to use FARR as a launchbar type app while still allowing it to work well as an adaptive launch maestro. Mouser, this seems far more beneficial to you; one code base to manage and less overhead.

https://www.donation...dex.php?topic=2272.0

543

Find And Run Robot / A unified FARR / Launcher Interface Proposal

« on: February 01, 2006, 06:55 PM »

Dear All,

Mouser has suggested making a DC Launchbar app in another thread. I actually believe a seperate application is more trouble than it's worth; FARR can do that job really easily. The two apps overlap somewhat, and unification has many benefits.

My proposal is to integrate virtual groups, based on shortcuts dragged-n-dropped into a menu editor that would be part of FARR. FARR will be dockable and allow buttons to be bound to those groups and displayed on its interface. That gets you a launchbar. FARR will also be able to adaptively search as usual, including in such groups, thus leveraging its fast and efficient search in a unified manner.

The mockup show FARR as launchbar and as adaptive searcher. I've taken a slight liberty to have FARR skinned in a way currently not possible, but it does not affect the main point that integrating these two seems not only intuitive and logical, but will unify development efficiently:[attachimg=FARR+.png][/attachimg]

544

Find And Run Robot / Re: Another similar app (disclaimer: I haven't tried it)

« on: February 01, 2006, 01:44 PM »

in fact i think nontroppo has been arguing for a frequency based scoring for a while, and has been very patient.
i think i better start seriously working on FARR 2 again in the next week while all these ideas are still fresh.

-mouser (February 01, 2006, 05:11 AM)

 

545

General Software Discussion / Re: What's your favorite launch bar? Your favorite features? Missing Features?

« on: February 01, 2006, 01:42 PM »

OK, I'll be up front. I had originally demoed TrueLaunchBar and loved it (it is great software). I made all my menu's in a detailed organised hierarchy (spending quite some time). Then, I happened to stumble on the marvelous FARR, made by Mouser. I ended up not using the launch bar anymore. FARR takes the tedium and manual hard graft out of maintaining hierarches. It also learns and adapts to your computer use. It is minimalist, simple but effective[1].

Nevertheless, to keep ontopic, here are the features TrueLaunchBar has that were really great:

1) Virtual Folders: I could hook the TLB menus into my previous Start Menu hierarchy. The brilliant thing was when I added shortcuts to TLB, my custom Start Menu sections were updated automatically. Brilliant.

2) Collapsing Seperators: I could drag-n-drop links around and seperate them with titled dividing lines to give visual order. The neat thing is that seperators can be "folded"/"collapsed", so groups of programs I use infrequently didn't obscure more used programs, but a simple click would show them.

3) Recently accessed: a menu comprised of all the links I had recently used. Very useful and a bit of the creamy goodness of FARRs adaptivity in the normally static world of launch bars.

4) I never used this but it sounds very smart — auto-sensing toolbars! Basically, the menu structure can be linked to the active application. So if you are running a text editor, you could have a menu of coding utilities close to hand!!!

5) Aesthetics: Quite simply, it is very flexible in terms of fonts / colours / icons / number of columns / view types. You can get a really visually pleasant interface out out of it!


----
[1] It reminds me of when I dropped The Bat as a mail client; brilliant and rich functionality, but based on the flawed model of foldered email management. An much more basic mail client that used a database engine, without bells-n-whistles, won over it because the underlying concept was "better".

546

Find And Run Robot / Re: All these F+R ideas are wonderful

« on: February 01, 2006, 01:36 PM »

i have a big launch bar on my desk and use FARR.
for me i use a launch bar as a kind of "visual memory"
it's like a menu for me, it helps me remember the programs i have available that i use alot.

-mouser (January 31, 2006, 09:42 PM)

I had demoed TrueLaunchBar and loved it before finding FARR. I'll comment in the other thread about what I liked about it.

But one neat thing was the aesthetics, one could easily lay out and order different blocks (that could collapse) to make a very visually clear and logical mapping of all my apps. Very neat were virtual folders, hooking into the start menu to simplyfy management. However, once FARR was installed, the launch bar almost instantly got ignored. So much so that when time came to register or abandon it, there was no competition. I thought I loved the hierarchical and  minutely organised menu's, but I didn't miss them very much at all.

The whole premise of FARR is to free you from the tedium of laborious maintainance of the classification which all launch bars rest on, but I have an idea for the best of both worlds (read below)! 

Very interesting the comment from JoTo!!!  FARR is actually really beneficial for visually impaired users, I didn't think of it but it is another reason FARR rocks!!!

in cognitive science there are concepts of "recall" vs. "recognition"; if you can recall what you want to launch you can use farr, but if you need a visual image to remind you what apps are available, then a launchbar can help you

-mouser (January 31, 2006, 09:42 PM)

OK mouser, I have a proposition for you:

Instead of a seperate basic launch bar app, FARR can arrange virtual groups (a bit like aliases). These groups can be searched in using FARR, BUT they can also be bound to a button that can be placed on the FARR interface. One can thus dock FARR on-screen, set up some virtual groups and bind them to buttons. That gets you a launchbar interface while still leveraging and integrating the brilliance of FARR!   

547

General Software Discussion / Re: Internet Explorer 7 BETA 2 - Publically Available

« on: February 01, 2006, 01:16 PM »

The CSS support is better. A number of crippling bugs that plagued web devs are banished. However, the thing is very much bolted on and there is a lot of CSS 2 that is improperly or not implemented. It is still way behind Gecko (Mozilla), Presto/Merlin (Opera) and KHTML/webcore (konq / Safari). Lots of great techniques will still have to be hacked round, and web dev time wasted...

DOM (i.e. standard javascript)  support is rubbish.

Regarding the UI / features, blatant imitation is par for the course, Microsoft are pretty good at it. However, claiming Firefox as precedent is quite funny — it was originally designed to imitate IE

548

Find And Run Robot / Re: All these F+R ideas are wonderful

« on: January 31, 2006, 08:09 PM »

Wow, I leave the forum for a few days and the place has exploded!!!!

It is great that FARR is getting a renewed interest. I really belive it can be one of the most useful of all utilities; lets face it, application launching and managing is utterly critical for workflow (much more than the fairly esoteric screen capturing!).

I'm curious why an application launch bar will be developed. FARR does the job excellently, why not roll some of that functonality into it. You could allow a "horizontal" mode to FARR's display to generate a "launch bar" etc. Aliases could expand off that vertically. I tried truelaunchbar, but FARR was utterly superior.

I though FARR was the antidote to all of that: contextual adaptive searching to stop the tyranny of cascading hierarchical menus; and now we are going back to it! :p 

549

Find And Run Robot / Re: Another similar app (disclaimer: I haven't tried it)

« on: January 24, 2006, 08:25 AM »

By the way, I think that someone (nontroppo?) asked about how to change the Colibri settings. I could not find how either so I sent an email to the programmer.

-Amadawn (January 23, 2006, 04:40 PM)

Thanks for the info...

550

Find And Run Robot / Re: What happened to the "Improve icon" on the ToDo list?

« on: January 24, 2006, 08:22 AM »

Ruunba is really cool, I like!