Recent Posts

20151

DcUpdater / Re: DcUpdater v2 Preliminary Flirtations

« Last post by mouser on March 22, 2009, 06:03 PM »

Here's another grouping, this time by website where the update is located:

20152

DcUpdater / Re: DcUpdater v2 Preliminary Flirtations

« Last post by mouser on March 22, 2009, 05:42 PM »

the grouping of "Status -> Application" shows you that its a hierarchical grouping, first by Status, then by Application.

so the first grouping is separating everything into 4 categories depenging on update status.
then each of those 4 categories is organized by application name.

20153

Unfinished Requests / Re: EXISTS - IDEA: Regular Expression Helper

« Last post by mouser on March 22, 2009, 05:29 PM »

File Locator Pro is an excellent program.. very nice inside-zip searching as well.
We ran a discount on it in the past -- we should try to get one again.

20154

DcUpdater / Re: DcUpdater v2 Preliminary Flirtations

« Last post by mouser on March 22, 2009, 05:20 PM »

Screenshot with some grouping enabled.

The idea here is that plugins are all grouped together..
If you are watching multiple version of a program (beta vs. stable), these will also be grouped together
All other "singleton" programs are grouped under the Uncategorized section.

Note that grouping is purely optional and wouldn't be shown if you are just checking for an update to a single application.

20155

Living Room / When in Trouble: Approach Strangers

« Last post by mouser on March 22, 2009, 05:14 PM »

Bruce Schneier, famous crypto/security expert, talks about something my mother has been saying for years.. When in trouble -- approach a stranger -- don't wait for one to come to you..

When I was growing up, children were commonly taught: "don't talk to strangers." Strangers might be bad, we were told, so it's prudent to steer clear of them.

And yet most people are honest, kind, and generous, especially when someone asks them for help. If a small child is in trouble, the smartest thing he can do is find a nice-looking stranger and talk to him.

These two pieces of advice may seem to contradict each other, but they don't. The difference is that in the second instance, the child is choosing which stranger to talk to. Given that the overwhelming majority of people will help, the child is likely to get help if he chooses a random stranger. But if a stranger comes up to a child and talks to him or her, it's not a random choice. It's more likely, although still unlikely, that the stranger is up to no good.

http://www.schneier....the_kindness_of.html

from http://andrewsullivan.com/

20156

Developer's Corner / Re: What JavaScript libraries should I look at? Prototype?

« Last post by mouser on March 22, 2009, 04:11 PM »

jquery.

20157

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: dotTech.org

« Last post by mouser on March 22, 2009, 03:47 PM »

Hey looks great Ashraf 

http://dottech.org/


I think you should put the "Read the full story »" links inside the review posts.. otherwise it's not clear there is a lot more to read for each item.

ps. for those who don't know, Ashraf often writes reviews for utilities on GiveawayoftheDay.com.

20158

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« Last post by mouser on March 22, 2009, 01:37 PM »

40hz: Amazing!!

20159

DcUpdater / Re: DcUpdater v2 Preliminary Flirtations

« Last post by mouser on March 21, 2009, 11:12 PM »

Perhaps one solution would be to implement the hierarchy of items in the display (as is already planned), and then for an application that has both a stable and beta release, these 2 releases would be shown as child items under a parent.  By default only 1 child would ever be attemped to update; either the most recent one, or the most recent stable on.  But user could manually choose one to update as well.

20160

Developer's Corner / Re: donation edicate

« Last post by mouser on March 21, 2009, 10:59 PM »

send them a nice email.. tell them what you've told us -- how much it meant to you and why.
you may find that in doing do, you've made the act of donating even more enjoyable and meaningful for them 

20161

DcUpdater / Re: DcUpdater v2 Preliminary Flirtations

« Last post by mouser on March 21, 2009, 09:04 PM »

Is this the kind of information you're asking about?

yes.  i'm trying to decide some of the issues you raised -- e.g. should it be a global setting to look for betas or a per-application setting, do i need to show people both stable version info from web AND beta info? or just one of those based on what they have asked to see, etc.

i'm not really worried about the backend issues of how to check and where to store preferences, as i am with figuring out the user interface aspects to this.

20162

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Macro Express - MiniReview

« Last post by mouser on March 21, 2009, 08:23 PM »

Excellent mini review Chris! 

Chris was also nice enough to contact Insight Software about the possibility of offering a discount to DC members, and they were nice enough to grant us one, as well as give us a few copies to give away 

The discount will run through April -- details will be posted shortly.

20163

DcUpdater / Re: DcUpdater v2 Preliminary Flirtations

« Last post by mouser on March 21, 2009, 07:48 PM »

does anyone have any ideas for a gui/workflow that would allow people to decide how to be handle the idea of having multiple releases of a program corresponding to stable/beta versions?  how to present the info to user? how to let user say which they want to be notified about, etc.

20164

DcUpdater / Re: DcUpdater v2 Preliminary Flirtations

« Last post by mouser on March 21, 2009, 05:33 PM »

Just one sample display of some contents in the html details panel.
I'm using a template to display info, so we can easily customize the format of the info.
Note that you can click on any of those files (both remote and local) to view them.

Later we can add info for Latest Changes, author info, description, etc.

20165

FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: New FARR Plugin: FCalc

« Last post by mouser on March 21, 2009, 12:07 PM »

I'll look into it.
note that czb's pack has a more sophisticated calculator for farr: https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=17153.0

20166

JGPaiva's GridMove and Ahk Tools / Split monitor in four

« Last post by mouser on March 21, 2009, 12:01 AM »

I have a problem and need help I have a 42 in monitor

that is a serious problem, but luckily i can help solve it.
pack up your monitor and send it to me and i will send you a 9" black and white tv.




just teasing -- someone who knows gridmove better than i will stop by and help, i'm just your comic relief until then.

20167

Living Room / Re: "50 Most Beautiful Icon Sets Created in 2008"

« Last post by mouser on March 20, 2009, 10:09 PM »

nice find 

20168

Activation/License/Language Help / Re: click on the "Profile" button Where?

« Last post by mouser on March 20, 2009, 10:04 PM »

Is this what you are looking for:

20169

FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: Updated: GooglePlus - View Google search results in FARR as you type

« Last post by mouser on March 20, 2009, 06:51 PM »

woot!!

20170

General Software Discussion / Re: On developer's block, and calling it quits. Being a programmer is hard

« Last post by mouser on March 20, 2009, 06:13 PM »

I am still in the process of experiencing the existentialist heartbreak of realizing that it's not enough in this world to just do good work and be productive.

The aspects of life and making a living can be painful for many programmers, myself included, who somehow grew up believing that if we just focused on being good programmers (or good academics) and weren't interested in being rich, that everything else would just fall into place on it's own.

The shock of having to worry about irrational chaotic business issues, when these are things you really want nothing to do with, can be very frustrating.  And in this economy, with the current trends towards giant-corporations and advertising-based revenues for everything, it can feel like you are all alone out there.

As a programmer there are lots of things we have to work on that aren't fun -- fixing bugs, writing documentation, etc.  These things are worth it in the end if your program proves useful to people and you have the time to spend on them.. But working on such things and feeling like you are just digging yourself a bigger hole can feel paralyzing -- and even then it often feels like you can't stop digging once you start.  In that sense -- maybe the best thing to do sometimes is to put down a project and try to get some perspective.  So perhaps vitaly is taking the a step in a positive direction.

20171

Site/Forum Features / Re: Meta Survey Survey for Fundraiser Survey

« Last post by mouser on March 20, 2009, 05:59 PM »

Keep 'em coming
(note that this survery won't be just for donators -- i suppose a natural question to ask might be, if you have chosen not to donate -- why not?)

20172

DcUpdater / Re: DcUpdater v2 Preliminary Flirtations

« Last post by mouser on March 20, 2009, 05:58 PM »

The web browser panel on the right will be really useful, particularly if it is able to display information about changes in the update relative to the build that is currently installed (ie version  history)

Right.  With this panel we have the ability to show all kinds of information.

20173

DcUpdater / Re: DcUpdater v2 Preliminary Flirtations

« Last post by mouser on March 20, 2009, 05:49 PM »

I have a lot more features to add before testing.. nested groups, and a lot more behind the scenes stuff.

20174

DcUpdater / Re: DcUpdater v2 Preliminary Flirtations

« Last post by mouser on March 20, 2009, 05:48 PM »

I should confess that i have slightly mixed feelings about losing the ultra compact small icon grid display in the old version.  But i think on balance it was a tradeoff worth making.  If there is real uproar i could always bring back a short 1-line per row view which hides some columns or is usable only by people with huge monitors.

20175

DcUpdater / Re: DcUpdater v2 Preliminary Flirtations

« Last post by mouser on March 20, 2009, 05:45 PM »

Let me explain a bit some of the motivation for the changes in the UI:

• The right-hand panel is now a WebBrowser control that will allow for the display of detailed info about the selected item, including full description, screenshots, web links, other generic info.
• To make room for the browser info panel i had to figure out a way to compress the wide lines of the original dcupdater, so i made each entry now have 2 lines; as a side effect this let me use larger icons.

As a comparison, here is the original v1 dcupdater: