Recent Posts

26101

Find And Run Robot / Re: new launcher just released

« Last post by mouser on July 25, 2007, 12:10 AM »

we should probably figure out what term we want to use for the kind of non-contiguous/uncontiguous search modes that farr and others use.

Farr v2 now support non-contiguous search.
If you type: f fox OR f f OR fox fire then farr will find firefox, and it will try to be smart about scoring, in that the closer you come to typing the program name with words in the right order, the higher the score, which should help to differentiate near false positives.

What FARR will not do on its own is let you type a string of letters without spaces and match those at different places.  So you can't type: feto find firefox (you could of course very easily with a few clicks add an alias to find any specific program you like with any specific alias keyword).  I'm not sure what that kind of matching should be called (intra-word non-contiguous matching?).  It's possible we could add this one day but i'm reluctant to take the speed hit it would incur.

26102

FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: Wish: Translation plugin

« Last post by mouser on July 25, 2007, 12:04 AM »

Another alternative to a plugin is to use an online translation web page.

I started making an alias file that could be used to launch google translation page, but never got around to finishing it.  anyone feel like completing this alias file:

Code: Text [Select]

1. <?xml version="1.0" ?>
2. <!-- This file defines aliases for use by the Find and Run Robot program (https://www.donationcoder.com/Software/Mouser/findrun/index.html). -->
3. <FarrAliasFile>
4.     <FileFormatVersion>1</FileFormatVersion>
5.     <AliasSetDescription>Tranaslation Tools on the Web</AliasSetDescription>
6.     <AliasEntry>
7.         <AliasText>gtrans</AliasText>
8.         <Score>1000</Score>
9.         <Regex>^gtrans (.*)</Regex>
10.         <Results>
11.             <Result>English to Spanish: $$c |http://translate.google.com/translate_t?langpair=en|es&amp;hl=en&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;oe=UTF-8&amp;submit=Translate&amp;text=$$c</Result>
12.             <Result>English to German: $$c |http://translate.google.com/translate_t?langpair=en|de&amp;hl=en&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;oe=UTF-8&amp;submit=Translate&amp;text=$$c</Result>
13.         </Results>
14.     </AliasEntry>
15. </FarrAliasFile>

26103

Find And Run Robot / Re: new launcher just released

« Last post by mouser on July 24, 2007, 11:31 PM »

Have you considered ridding yourself of the titlebar for farr?

look in the above list and you'll see a picture without a titlebar -- it's a skin created in fact by a member here on this forum, rbeeger: https://www.donation...dex.php?topic=7949.0

26104

Find And Run Robot / Re: new launcher just released

« Last post by mouser on July 24, 2007, 06:54 PM »

At some point we should probably have a discussion about ways to improve the looks of FARR.  As someone who had to be dragged kicking and screaming to add skin support for FARR, i'm a hard sell.. I tend to prefer the standard windows interface.

Having said that, here are some screenshots of FARR demonstrating some of the visual options now available in version 2, including custom font settings and large icon mode:

26105

Find And Run Robot / Re: Latest FARR v2.00.135 ALPHA PREVIEW Release - July 17, 2007

« Last post by mouser on July 24, 2007, 06:22 PM »

the only difference these settings make is in waking up from the system tray after a long time of non-use.

26106

Find And Run Robot / Re: new launcher just released

« Last post by mouser on July 24, 2007, 05:54 PM »

Thanks Angel for some very reasonable comments -- critiques like this will always be welcome on this site.

I'm in the middle of working on something right now so i'll reply more in detail later.  Some of these issues have been implemented with version 2, some have not.

26107

Find And Run Robot / Re: Latest FARR v2.00.135 ALPHA PREVIEW Release - July 17, 2007

« Last post by mouser on July 24, 2007, 05:46 PM »

Thanks for the nice post jOc, let me respond to some of your comments:

please don't be bothered by my comments. As I said FARR is of great value to me, and I will donate some 50 bucks, because I know what it means to develop a great SW. I have never used any services as pay pal or sth similar, but I will learn.

Note that you do not have to donate $50 -- you can donate whatever you want.

One thing I miss (slickRun for example had (actually it still has, but I don't use it anymore) that) if you type something that FARR can not catch that it threw it to system (like you were typing to Run box).

Josh actually asked for this and i kind of implemented it in an odd way -- i need to add an alias to make it easier to use. Basically i added a way to tell farr what to do if there are no results found.  See the "The noresults alias" help topic in Advanced Use:

[Select]

You can now create a special alias called noresults.
If user hits enter when no results are shown, this alias will be triggered.
It can be useful if you want to do something like launch what they type directly (as if it was on path), or invoke another search program, etc.  Just use $$1 in the results.

I will make a default alias for this to make it easier to use.

The improvement I do like very much is browsing through folders. I have a folder for which I have set high score. In that folder I put links to folders I use often. What I like is, if I start to type the name of the link (that is in that folder, having favorits links) and pres tab the alias for the link is resolved into path and you can directly browse in that *favorits* folder.

just to make sure: you are saying this is something you already can do, not requesting something new?

26108

FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: KlipKeeper (A FARR2 Plugin by hamradio)

« Last post by mouser on July 24, 2007, 05:05 PM »

just a heads up: i'm experiencing a crashing issue with klipkeeper on exit of FARR, and another new clipboard copy error -- should have a fix tonight if all goes well.  Just letting you know in case you experience it.

26109

Official Announcements / Re: How to punish DonationCoder if you are angry at being nagged to donate

« Last post by mouser on July 24, 2007, 03:19 PM »

you've had people donating a penny?

sure we have, and it's not a problem.

A donated penny no doubt signifies someone who was not happy about having to donate, but was willing to make the effort, or was made by someone very unsure of what we are doing.  So it's either a protest statement or a toe in water checking the temperature.

Either way it's fine with us.. Some of those people might even decide to make a larger donation in the future when they see we are just trying to run a good place here. 

26110

Find And Run Robot / Re: [feature request] i have no idea if this is hard to do...

« Last post by mouser on July 24, 2007, 02:14 PM »

wait.. what? i'm confused.

26111

DcUpdater / Re: LATEST VERSION INFO THREAD - DcUpdater - 1.15.01 - July 11, 2007

« Last post by mouser on July 24, 2007, 02:13 PM »

Will we be able to add an entry to point to a 3rd party program's PAD file entry, hopefully put in an update frequency individually (maybe have a "default" frequency that is used if not specified otherwise) and have it check for programs with no .dcupdate file?

The basic idea is this:
The .dcupdate file is a local file, it tells dcupdater what file on the web to check for version info, how to install a new version, and miscelaneous information about the program.

In the ideal case of a dcupdate-supported program, the author of the program does the following:

• Creates a .dcupdate file in the program's directory, which is installed with the program and always specifies the current installed version of the program.
• Creates a version.xml file which is a tiny file placed on the server which only holds version # of the program.  This is the file normally checked by the dcupdater, and the fact that its so small is good because it minimies bandwidth when thousands of people are constantly checking it every day.

To support a program that is not "made for dcupdater", then dcupdater will have to do something like this:

• Let the user ask to create a new entry, which will result in a new .dcupdate file being created on their pc (or they can download a dcupdate file from a friend or forum).  If the user has the url of a pad file, nearly all information dcupdater needs to make a new dcupdate file can be found in the pad file.
• This dcupdate file will describe the program and where the PAD FILE of the program is located (or it might even have a regular expression designed to parse version number from a program web page).  The point is the dcupdate file will have instructions on how to figure out the current web version of the program.  Dcupdater will be able to parse a pad file to get the web version and download url and webpage, etc, so a pad file is ideal for this.  But I may add code that minimizes bandwidth by checking http headers, etc.
• The dcupdate file will also contain information on how to locate the locally installed version of the program.  Since the program isnt made for dcupdate, it won't have a dcupdate file in its directory which is kept up to date.  So dcupdater will have to get the version # from the exe file, OR by having dcupdater manually update it on install of new version.

26112

General Software Discussion / Re: 45 best Freeware Design programs

« Last post by mouser on July 24, 2007, 05:29 AM »

very nice.. 
looks like they are getting enough traffic to slow down the pages (lots of pics).

26113

UrlSnooper / Re: LATEST VERSION INFO THREAD - URL SNOOPER - v2.18.01, FEB 7th, 2006

« Last post by mouser on July 24, 2007, 03:11 AM »

hi mikron, i'm sorry you're having this trouble -- i've never heard of the program hanging up like this..

one thing you might try is installing an updated version of winpcap and going into advanced more from the file menu and disabling automatic network adapter detection and setting your adapter manually.

26114

Official Announcements / How to punish DonationCoder if you are angry at being nagged to donate

« Last post by mouser on July 24, 2007, 01:57 AM »

Let's say you are a user of some of our software and feel yourself reluctantly giving up and making a donation in order to get member benefits and lifetime license key, but still feel angry about it. 

Here is a guide how to get your revenge:

• Make a donation of 1 cent.  Actually any donation less than 25 cents will go entirely to paypal and we don't see a penny.  You still get full lifetime member benefits for this donation.
• Although this will cost me a little bit of my time sending you a thank you email, it doesnt actually lose us any money, that's where the next step comes in.
• Once you have activated your supporting member account, go to the silly member kit request page and request a member kit by snail mail.  If you live in the US, make up an address in a foreign country and it will cost us $1 to $2 including shipping  (don't bother trying to calculate most expensive country to ship to as i just slap on random air mail postage stamps and post office doesn't seem to care).
• So there you have it, a fool proof way to make DC suffer a $1 to $2 loss on your donation, while you are out only 1 penny.
• Caveat: We still enjoy it whenever anyone donates and get happy whenever we think someone wants a member kit, so this technique is not good for inducing mental anguish, only financial ruination.

Note: These instructions are described for fun -- i'm not being sarcastic in an attempt to complain about people who do this -- i don't pay the slightest attention to who donates how much and i have no idea when i send out a member kit how much a person has donated, and i couldn't care less.

26115

Official Announcements / Re: PROGRAMMING CONTEST: Write an open source mod for SMF forum

« Last post by mouser on July 24, 2007, 01:32 AM »

I guess we should consider this dead, especially after our recent interactiong with SMF people which doesn't leave me feeling so good about them.

26116

General Software Discussion / Re: XP or Vista user — take the poll!

« Last post by mouser on July 23, 2007, 06:22 PM »

I'm still mainly using xp, though i have vista installed on a backup pc.
I'll stick with xp for a while but i expect i'll be moving to vista in a year or so.

26117

Find And Run Robot / Re: A long shot: anyone up for creating a fake satire hype video for FARR v2?

« Last post by mouser on July 23, 2007, 05:13 PM »

less than a week left... will no one create this?

26118

Find And Run Robot / Re: Latest FARR v2.00.135 ALPHA PREVIEW Release - July 17, 2007

« Last post by mouser on July 23, 2007, 05:04 PM »

jOc: welcome to the site, and thanks for the kind words about FARR.  You've probably gathered by now that the software on our site is heavily driven by user comments here on the forum, so keep the suggestions coming -- we take them extremely seriously.

as jgpaiva points out, it's very important that you solve this by disabling the built in aliases (and then doing what you said you did, copying the ones you like to your personal alias file/folder).

why?
the reason these alias files are marked as read-only and make it so hard for you to modify them is because they are replaces when the program is updated.  this approach was actually a lot of work, but i implemented it specifically so that we could allow users to easily modify their own aliases, and share aliases, while still making it possible to update aliases (both included with farr and shared by others), without risking erasing the users aliases.  so that's why that checkbox is there, so you can always disable an alias file, and then even if it gets updated it won't affect you.

now to your other point:

I would prefer a clean installation, without plugins and without aliases (just keeping existing personal).

i've been debating this back and forth with myself for a couple of weeks leading up to farr 2 release.  i am leaning towards making it a lean download without any plugins, but making it really easy to install new plugins using the updater tool.  Inlcuding alias files is not as tough a decision since they are so small and lightweight..

26119

Find And Run Robot / Re: [feature request] i have no idea if this is hard to do...

« Last post by mouser on July 23, 2007, 03:40 PM »

thats a wonderful trick nitrix, thank you for sharing!

i cannot really share this alias since this trick uses a search folder entry, an action alias, ... so i made a step-by-step explanation

perhaps we can remedy that.. it seems to me i should set up some default folders like MyMusic, MyPictures, etc, using keyword modifiers to make it easier for sharing this kind of thing -- then you'd just have to share an alias file which would work for anyone.

26120

DcUpdater / Re: LATEST VERSION INFO THREAD - DcUpdater - 1.15.01 - July 11, 2007

« Last post by mouser on July 23, 2007, 03:35 PM »

superboy, when you install the newer versions of FARR, the dcupdater will have entries for it.  Also when you launch the updater from FARR itself.

other DC apps are not built with support for the updater yet, that will come starting in august.

26121

Living Room / Re: DonationCoder Mentioned on O'Reilly XML.com

« Last post by mouser on July 23, 2007, 03:26 PM »

coool 

26122

General Software Discussion / Maxthon 2 Released

« Last post by mouser on July 23, 2007, 03:15 PM »

Maxthon is an IE-engine based browser that has developed a very strong following.. Version 2 has been in development for a long time and apparently has just been released to the public at large.

http://www.maxthon.com/

from http://tech.cybernetnews.com/

26123

UrlSnooper / Re: Packets are bigger than reserved buffer

« Last post by mouser on July 23, 2007, 03:01 PM »

I'll have an update that fixes this in august.

26124

Find And Run Robot / Re: [FARR tip]

« Last post by mouser on July 23, 2007, 05:20 AM »

you can now do this without the need for nitrix clever trick, and solve the need to hit enter as well, by simply creating a hotkey with set searchtext of: %cliptext%

26125

FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: KlipKeeper (A FARR2 Plugin by hamradio)

« Last post by mouser on July 23, 2007, 02:26 AM »

just a reminder, like all searches in FARR, add +sall to your search to see all matching klips instead of just the top entires.