Recent Posts

17901

Unfinished Requests / Re: IDEA: Fly-out menus which stay put

« Last post by mouser on November 14, 2009, 03:54 PM »

I'm afraid this probably isn't possible to do on a system wide basis, but i agree with you and it actually is a kind of nice idea -- maybe the operating system designers can listen to you next time

17902

Find And Run Robot / Re: suggestions for making plug-in use easier for new users

« Last post by mouser on November 14, 2009, 03:52 PM »

Hi John, welcome to the site and thank you for such a thoughtful first post!  

Let me just ramble off a couple of quick thoughts:

• 1) you are right that it would be a great help if plugin authors included a complete help file -- i think what happens is that plugin authors tend to be forum regulars, and all of us here often forget that people who download our tools haven't necessarily been following our forum threads religiously at the time they download.  so an author who has been posting about a plugin they've written for weeks sometimes forgets they can't just assume everyone who is using the plugin read through the entire thread.
• 2) part of the problem is that i really should have built in a more formal way of adding a plugin to a farr install, rather than asking user to unpack it -- some mechanism that would have both walked the user through the automated process but also given them some standardized info about how to use the plugin they were installing.
• 3) ok more specifically to some of your points -- the Google Maps thing isn't actually a plugin, it's an alias pack, evidenced by the fact that there is no dll.  These should actually go into your Aliases/Installed directory.  The post about google maps alias pack has information on how to use it: https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=14098.0
• 4) the tinyev alias is a bit odd since it requires you to have the Everything program installed and running, and so can be tricky to get working.  again the solution in all of these cases is to find the thread about the tool on the forum in the FARR Plugins section: https://www.donation...ndex.php?board=246.0
• 5) the .js addons actually DO use a dll, which you actually touched on in your description of FSubScript -- these are scripts that get loaded by a parent dll that you also have to install.  what i can tell you is you aren't crazy in finding these a bit hard to get set up.  it's a flaw in FARR that it doesn't make this easier.
• 6) i think one real way we can improve this is to have farr come with FSubScript pre-installed so that the user doesnt have to worry about these required helper things.  and if i can improve the updater to offer to help install things so they don't have to be done manually.
• 7) i made hours and hours of FARR screencasts which you might appreciated, they are here: https://www.donationcoder.com/3ds/ there is even one on installing a plugin and an alias pack.

i hope you'll stick with it for a while at least to see if FARR is right for you -- i'm happy to hear more from your experience and answer questions, etc.  

17903

General Software Discussion / Re: What the hell is OpenCandy?

« Last post by mouser on November 14, 2009, 04:15 AM »

scan was just making a joke, thats a link to an online candy shop that for some reason has something called "opencandy":

17904

General Software Discussion / Re: How to add URLs in RUNit?

« Last post by mouser on November 14, 2009, 04:09 AM »

Sri, since you already use FARR, which is portable, why not use it for this?

you could make just 1 new alias, call it "myweb"
and then just paste a long list of website urls in the results box.

not only can you then list them all and click to launch, but you can:
1) give them optional nice labels if you want
2) easily launch multiple from the list with alt+click, or launch all
3) launch them by number
4) more importantly, filter them by typing some keywords
5) make a custom hotkey to open up farr and start with the "myweb" search already in the searchbox

17905

Official Announcements / Re: DONE: DonationCoder.com Server Maintenance on Nov 13,2009

« Last post by mouser on November 14, 2009, 02:30 AM »

Server maintenance done and back online.

A huge thanks to John (Gothic) for taking such good care of our server!! Don't forget to send him a few dc credits to say thanks!

17906

Official Announcements / DONE: DonationCoder.com Server Maintenance on Nov 13,2009

« Last post by mouser on November 13, 2009, 07:39 PM »

Just a heads-up, the server is going to be down for a brief period the night of Nov 13, 2009 for normal maintenance/update.

IF (and only IF) something goes wrong and the site is down for more than a few hours, we will initiate emergency plan codename "Cody-Savior-Bravo", which will activate our backup form at the url: http://forum.dcmembers.com

Make note of that url should this occur.  And don't panic!

17907

Developer's Corner / Noupe.com - nice website with css/php/webdesign articles/tips/blog

« Last post by mouser on November 13, 2009, 06:10 PM »

Just stumpled across this site noupe.com which has some excellent concise articles and roundups about web design tools and libraries (jquery, css, ajax, etc.); i was looking for jquery plugins and they have a few really nice suggestions.

http://www.noupe.com

17908

DesktopCoral / Re: LATEST VERSION INFO THREAD - DesktopCoral- 1.08.01 - Nov 1, 2009

« Last post by mouser on November 13, 2009, 04:56 PM »

thanks Gintaras, always nice to hear when a program is useful to someone 

17909

LaunchBar Commander / Re: LATEST LaunchBar Commander VERSION INFO THREAD - v1.108.01 - June 28, 2009

« Last post by mouser on November 13, 2009, 04:55 PM »

 

LBC is definitely not one of the fanciest *looking* launchers.. it strives to be more of a power tool than eye candy.  So it's definitely not for everyone.

For a look at one some people have configured it to look like, see here: https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=18759.0

17910

Post New Requests Here / Re: Coding Snack Idea: Spending Fund Tree

« Last post by mouser on November 13, 2009, 04:35 PM »

just close the browser window and step away from the keyboard  give someone else a chance with this 

17911

FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: Please - How Can I Update FARR Plugins?

« Last post by mouser on November 12, 2009, 11:34 PM »

the reasons most of those plugins are failing is because they no longer exist as standalone plugins -- i need to remove them from the list. they have been combined to one "pack".

17912

Post New Requests Here / Re: Coding Snack Idea: Spending Fund Tree

« Last post by mouser on November 12, 2009, 08:19 PM »

this might be something suitable for NANY 2010.

17913

Post New Requests Here / IDEA: Spending Fund Tree

« Last post by mouser on November 12, 2009, 08:18 PM »

Here's my idea for a simple program to help you control how much you spend on some things by establishing a policy for how much you can spend.

It should be a list view with 3 columns for each row.

The first column will be the item description.
The second column will be the amount of money currently in the "fund".
The third column is the daily accumulation amount.

So i might add the following entry:
"Board Game Fund", $10, $0.25

What this says is that i'm starting off the game fund with $10, and it should add 25 cents to the fund every day.

When you start the program, it needs to UPDATE the fund values based on how many days have elapsed from the last upate.

So if i come back to the program in 10 days, i should see:
"Board Game Fund", $12.50, $0.25

At any time i need to be able to edit an item to change the values; the most common thing will be to set a fund value lower after some money is spent from the fund.

Get the idea?  I'm thinking it could be useful for people who want to help curb their spending on certain luxuries.


Thoughts:

• Might be nice to not show the last column, and only show it when editing an item.
• Internally, the best way to store data for an item might be like this:  LastSetValue, LastSetDate, DailyAccumulationValue -- and then dynamically calcuate current fun value as LastSetValue+(CurrentDate-LastSetDate)*DailyAccumukationValue; in other words, only store the date and value of last fund value set, rather than UPDATING a current fund value each time.  This would make the program more robust against changes in system clock, etc.

17914

General Software Discussion / MOVED: Looking for a 'polite' reminder/diary system

« Last post by mouser on November 12, 2009, 11:33 AM »

This topic has been moved to N.A.N.Y. 2010.

https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=20516.0

17915

Living Room / Re: How would you improve a standard PC keyboard?

« Last post by mouser on November 12, 2009, 05:12 AM »

Another feature I'd like to have back, is the correct layout of the Insert/Home/PgUp/Delete/End/PgDn keys.

AMEN!!

17916

Developer's Corner / Re: Google Go

« Last post by mouser on November 12, 2009, 05:03 AM »

I just watched the talk, my initial impressions:
1. They are very focused on compilation speed and some design decisions are driven by that; may be interesting to some -- for me that's wrong direction -- i'm much more willing to give up compilation time for cleaner language design.
2. The talk made a big point about reducing the amount of typing required when coding, to get more done faster and funner.  Again for me personally i feel this is going in the wrong direction.  I would rather have more verbose explicit clear code.
3. The syntax.. doesn't do anything for me.  I like the focus on removing ambiguities though -- which seem largely a result of bad planning and evolutionary development of languages like c/c++.  Like most languages i can't help but feel some eccentricities are there just to satisfy the designers egos.  I'd like more consistency and less flair.
4. The concurrency and channel stuff -- that was the only stuff i actually enjoyed and which seemed nice and interesting to me.
5. Loose typing and interfaces -- good concepts -- talk sort of implied this was an invention of Go, which it is most definitely not -- lots of cutting edge programming language designers have been working on such things for quite some time, and it's a hot area of research.
6. In summary -- bleh, don't like it, and don't like the focus of the designers.  But I like some of the simpler the concurrency stuff.  Bring on the next contender language.

I also have the distinct impression that this is not ready for prime time -- but i suppose you can't really blame google for all the publiclity they get from something like this.  Most new languages toil for years before anyone notices.

17917

TFDocs / Re: tfdocs.com - share your creations

« Last post by mouser on November 12, 2009, 02:35 AM »

Ok I finally made a tree form document that I think could be actually useful to people!

• http://www.tfdocs.co...rogramming-agreement

It's a tfdoc that let's you create a legal contract between a company and a programmer who is an independent contractor.


I still have lots of things i'd like to add to it -- and don't forget you can view the xml source of the doc on that page, and use that as the starting point for your own similar creation.  I hope in the near future to keep improving this tfdoc so that it can serve as a useful contract template for people.

I think the nice thing that it demonstrates is that tfdocs allows you to start really simply, and just add the terms and clauses you think are important.

Another thing that i did not do yet, but would like to, and tfdocs was designed to support, is add some legal commentary to the different options, that users can read while deciding which terms to include -- that way users can learn a little about what the purpose of the different clauses are, and if they reall need them.

I'm just happy that I've created at least one tfdoc that shows how the site could actually be used to create and share something of value.

Let me know what you think!

17918

Finished Programs / Re: DSToolBox for the command line inclined user

« Last post by mouser on November 12, 2009, 01:02 AM »

cool! thanks for sharing these
web page is very nicely done too.

17919

Developer's Corner / Re: Google Go

« Last post by mouser on November 12, 2009, 12:54 AM »

very interesting find rgdot.  now the normal way big corporations deal with such problems is just to throw money and job offers at the people they infringe on and then just keep on truckin'.  let's see if google is any different..

17920

Developer's Corner / Re: Google Go

« Last post by mouser on November 12, 2009, 12:15 AM »

Maybe someone wants to make a "Go" app for NANY 2010?

I haven't taken a look at the language yet, but i think it's a bad sign that it has such a pretentious and, worst of all, search-engine-unfriendly name.  That name virtual guarantees you would have an extremely difficult time searching for help on the language (unless of course the company that controls the dominant search engine can bias search results.. oops.. conflict of interest anyone?)  Seriously though, that is an extremely stupid and spoiled-brat-like decision to make regarding naming a language.

17921

Screenshot Captor / Re: Bug? Saved screenshot can't be opened later woithout entering license key

« Last post by mouser on November 11, 2009, 05:34 PM »

That was actually helpful.  I've tested the problem and it seems i must have introduced a bug in folder navigation from within the SC thumbnail panel(!)  I'm surprised no one complained about it sooner!!

Will try to get it fixed in next day or so.

Thank you for taking the time to explain the problem and not give up.

17922

Screenshot Captor / Re: Bug? Saved screenshot can't be opened later woithout entering license key

« Last post by mouser on November 11, 2009, 12:07 PM »

that sounds strange -- there must be some other explanation or bug because there is no reason that entering a license key would have any effect on that.  the only thing that entering a license key does is top the program from showing the reminder to visit the website.

17923

PopUp Wisdom / Re: PopUp Wisdom Program - Custom Quote List

« Last post by mouser on November 10, 2009, 12:42 PM »

you have a few choices:

• 1. switch to an admin account while editing that file (or edit it in your documents directory and switch to admin to copy it over that file)
• 2. copy the entire popup wisdom directory to your document directory and run it from there
• 3. wait for me to add better support to the program to using quote files in different directories.

17924

PopUp Wisdom / Re: PopUp Wisdom Program - Custom Quote List

« Last post by mouser on November 10, 2009, 11:49 AM »

Are you perhap using Vista or Windows 7 with a non-administrative account?
If so it may simply be that notepad can't save the file there because you don't have sufficient permissions?

17925

TFDocs / Re: tfdocs.com - first suggestions and criticisms

« Last post by mouser on November 10, 2009, 10:14 AM »

send me an email with more information and i'll try to help ([email protected]), or a pm.