Recent Posts

3126

Post New Requests Here / Re: PlayDead

« Last post by Ath on April 14, 2011, 10:55 AM »

Could an electronic KVM switch be of any use?
The computer keeps running, unless someone presses the power button (which is unavoidable ), the screen stays empty, even when the mouse/keyboard are activated (moved/pressed), until you switch to the correct 'port' (A/B would be enough, AFAICS), and with a little luck that can be protected by a key-operated switch (did no research on that).

Turning off all leds could be impossible without tinkering with the BIOS, unless you have connections with mainboard manufacturers
The sound of the harddrives & fans, probably depending on the load of the system, would still reveal it's not off, though...
And then someone pulls the power-plug from the back of the powersupply

3127

Finished Programs / Re: DONE: On Screen Button That Sends Keyboard Commands

« Last post by Ath on April 13, 2011, 09:15 AM »

Any chance this is related to a video driver, perhaps?, as this is rather basic AutoIt3 script, nothing fancy on the UI side. Lets first wait and see if the althide option makes a difference.

Hitting 'Submenu 4' launches another instance and I have to resort to killing off both of them.

-cranioscopical (April 13, 2011, 09:03 AM)

Usually (sub-)instances of WinButtons can be closed by pressing <Esc>... (unless that's disabled by setting exitonesc=0) or <Alt-F4> (that can't be disabled)

3128

General Software Discussion / Re: Looking for a linkification tool

« Last post by Ath on April 13, 2011, 08:15 AM »

Are you the greatest or what?

-eleman (April 13, 2011, 08:12 AM)

Yep, he is

3129

Living Room / Re: Who else is sick of difficult word verifications on the web?

« Last post by Ath on April 13, 2011, 08:14 AM »

(But why?  Why IE of all browsers?)

-gpetrant (April 13, 2011, 07:52 AM)

Because that's the only browser the developer of that site checked it with

3130

General Software Discussion / Re: Looking for a linkification tool

« Last post by Ath on April 13, 2011, 08:13 AM »

Here you go:

-skwire (April 13, 2011, 08:09 AM)

Oh, it's him again

Or maybe Excel2HTML could help here (but it could need a small functional change)?

3131

Living Room / Re: When you make your 100'th Post

« Last post by Ath on April 13, 2011, 05:50 AM »

I've reached a sort-of milestone today:

3132

Developer's Corner / Re: Partial (corrupted) downloads from a server (Not a valid win32 application etc)

« Last post by Ath on April 13, 2011, 05:42 AM »

And it isn't related to the datacenter, or it's connection to the backbone, where the servers are hosted?

3133

Finished Programs / Re: DONE: On Screen Button That Sends Keyboard Commands

« Last post by Ath on April 13, 2011, 03:10 AM »

@cranioscopical, please test the attached pre-release of WinButtons 2.6.2, that has the new althide setting (add althide=1 to the [Settings] section of WinButtons.ini) and -ah/-ah- command-line parameters to use an alternative Window Hide method (WinSetState instead of SetWindowPos), to see if the background coloring issues go away.

TIA

Edit: Now that WinButtons 2.6.2.1 is officially released, with althide option available as a feature, this interim release has been removed.

3134

General Software Discussion / Re: You didn't get this from me, but Win8 Build 1 is out!

« Last post by Ath on April 13, 2011, 02:12 AM »

Guess the most impressive part is the compilers they have to build, that don't choke on all the complex code constructs and still spit out proper ARM code, so they can run it on ARM-powered tablets.

3135

Living Room / Re: Downloadsquad shutting down - Another one bites the dust

« Last post by Ath on April 13, 2011, 02:07 AM »

(Wrong thread, re-posted correctly )

3136

Living Room / Re: Thoughts on switching to IPv6

« Last post by Ath on April 13, 2011, 01:56 AM »

And other ISP's offer no direct IPv6 access but instead hide that from the consumer by putting up a NAT between their networks and the real world, supplying a local IPv4 only...

3137

Finished Programs / Re: DONE: On Screen Button That Sends Keyboard Commands

« Last post by Ath on April 13, 2011, 01:46 AM »

Hm, tried to have that also happening over here, but I couldn't. There are some issues with hiding and re-showing the chain of windows, though, that I have to work on, but that's not cosmetically, but functionally.
What Windows version and Theme and Shell (Explorer or an alternative?) are you running? as I've only tested with Glass on standard Win7 x64 with Explorer.

[tech mode]
I'm using a call of SetWindowPos with (AutoIt3) flags BitOR($SWP_HIDEWINDOW, $SWP_NOACTIVATE, $SWP_NOMOVE, $SWP_NOZORDER, $SWP_NOSIZE) to hide, and $SWP_SHOWWINDOW in the appropriate place to restore the window. That shouldn't touch the background color though.
The standard function WinSetState() was pretty slow, so I searched and found an alternative. I can supply a test-release if you like, using the 'trusted' WinSetState calls?
[/tech mode]

Oh, and the "Push 1ce" and "shme 2" buttons are shown when you press the red "nger ca" button...

The implicit feature request of shadowing the caption as a tooltip is already scheduled for the next release

3138

Living Room / Re: For a good cause, please take a moment to donate some goodwill only.

« Last post by Ath on April 12, 2011, 05:59 PM »

I voted for my 2 favorites, Quinn and Genice.

-mouser (April 12, 2011, 01:59 PM)

I can see why you chose that card

3139

Finished Programs / Re: DONE: On Screen Button That Sends Keyboard Commands

« Last post by Ath on April 12, 2011, 05:56 PM »

Again a few minor updates (I should include DcUpdater/DcuHelper as a feature soon, I guess) and now WinButtons 2.6.1.2 is available.

What's new:

• Environment variable support added for messages and questions (-msg and -ask/-asc)
• :var<VarName>?<x>: parameter count may now be > 9, should that be needed
• Download re-pointed to DcMembers server (server seems fine, and I have ftp access from home, ofcourse )

3140

Living Room / Re: For a good cause, please take a moment to donate some goodwill only.

« Last post by Ath on April 12, 2011, 05:28 PM »

It's kind of a pity we can't see the current vote count but that would give away too much I guess

3141

Living Room / Re: Thoughts on switching to IPv6

« Last post by Ath on April 12, 2011, 05:26 PM »

If your current router is 'good enough', I'd just wait until you really have to upgrade to IPv6, before you buy a new one. By that time there will be quite a choice of good products available, and they will all include IPv6 support

3142

Developer's Corner / Re: Partial (corrupted) downloads from a server (Not a valid win32 application etc)

« Last post by Ath on April 12, 2011, 05:16 PM »

I tried it again and it downloaded completely in all 3 browsers, as well as wget.

-jaden (April 12, 2011, 05:00 PM)

I could get it to load completely in FF3 just now for the first time too

[wishful thinking mode]
Usually that happens after mouser and Gothi[c] do some config changes to the/a server, they wait for a little time to see if 'that helped', and if it did they happily report it fixed here
Let's just wait for that then (I hope so, keeping my fingers crossed)
[/wishful thinking mode]

3143

General Software Discussion / Re: Chrome / Firefox tabs in title bar

« Last post by Ath on April 12, 2011, 05:17 AM »

To display pages in the max. no. of pixels available

3144

Finished Programs / Re: DONE: On Screen Button That Sends Keyboard Commands

« Last post by Ath on April 12, 2011, 02:21 AM »

Had to do some bugfixes so now we have WinButtons 2.6.1

What's new:

• Supports expansion of environment variables (%varname% syntax) on Captions and Commands
• Bugfixes for if no Variables section was defined

Because I have no ftp access from my current location I couldn't update the dcmembers download, so I attached it to the original release-post. Will fix asap.

3145

Find And Run Robot / Re: Running FARR as Administrator launches applications as Administrator - Conflicts

« Last post by Ath on April 12, 2011, 01:57 AM »

...But similar to other users in this thread, I couldn't get the TinyEv plugin to work without...

-sfb (April 11, 2011, 11:48 PM)

Reading that thread I can only conclude that TinyEv needs another way to interface to Everything, then it does currently. It may be sort-of XP compatible, but it's being caught by the new security measures of Vista and 7, so something has to be done to resolve that.
It's not FARR's fault, and probably also not Everything's fault either, just the current 'interface' between them (TinyEv) is done in an incorrect way.

3146

Developer's Corner / Re: Partial (corrupted) downloads from a server (Not a valid win32 application etc)

« Last post by Ath on April 11, 2011, 04:36 PM »

Are you losing any network packets between the server and the nearest measurable connection, like a switch that went goofy or something like that (aka: [partial] hardware failure)?

3147

Finished Programs / Re: DONE: On Screen Button That Sends Keyboard Commands

« Last post by Ath on April 11, 2011, 05:55 AM »

There are several samples included in the zipfile

You could create a WinButtons.ini with just this in it:

[Select]

[Buttons]
button1=Notepad
command1=notepad c:\users\[insert-user-name]\Desktop\notes.txt

(Assuming Windows Vista or 7, replace the obvious with an actual username...)
You might want to add "-hide" (without the quotes) between = and notepad to hide the button while Notepad is open, as WinButtons has always on top set by default.
If you want it to go in the left top of the (main) monitor, add these lines:

[Select]

[Settings]
left=0
top=0

HTH

3148

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: TELL me how many objects I am deleting!

« Last post by Ath on April 11, 2011, 02:45 AM »

This is where I was supposed to look at Windows' pop-up box and read "Do you really want to...", to see what and how much I am about to delete, but evidently I didn't read it. So, maybe if I hear it...

-Curt (April 11, 2011, 02:13 AM)

That's exactly where the weak point is. Lots of people, both with and without experience, don't take enough time to read the messages applications pop up to ask both important and not-so-important questions. And because too often the question isn't that important, the messages that are important fade away in the blur, and people just go for the 'right' answer to get it over with now, asap. I do that all the time, when did you last read the EULA of a new piece of software you installed? Same issues there, IMHO.
So, even when adding sound to the important message, that is going to fade away into the blur, after some time.

I once tried to get a proper, thoughtful, response by generating a random letter that had to be entered before the (usually irreversible) action is proceeded, but even then users manage to do things the wrong way, even when they really meant to do something else. There is no 1 good way, but there is no better way either.
Maybe if all we did (on our computers, ofcourse ) was reversible, then this dilemma would be solved.

3149

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: TELL me how many objects I am deleting!

« Last post by Ath on April 11, 2011, 01:42 AM »

but I need on a daily base to remove a few files, quite often one by one

-Curt (April 11, 2011, 01:32 AM)

Ok, that wasn't clear from the original idea, but maybe I compared to my own day to day file-handling, deleting bunches of files from 1 directory, or just 1 or 2 between really crucial stuff that should not be deleted, ever.
I'm using shift-delete lots of times, even though I really shouldn't, but I've been saved by the backup several times

3150

Find And Run Robot / Re: Running FARR as Administrator launches applications as Administrator - Conflicts

« Last post by Ath on April 11, 2011, 01:29 AM »

IMHO, you shouldn't be running anything as administrator, except *maybe* some OS tools that require that, or an occasional (older) installer.
If something doesn't play nicely with Windows Vista or 7's new security scheme, either get the updated version of that software, or run it in compatibility mode.

If you dislike UAC or it hinders you too much, then you can turn it off, but that's not advisable in most of the cases either.