Recent Posts

35301

General Software Discussion / Re: AppRocket: Quicksilver for Windows

« Last post by mouser on October 02, 2005, 02:54 AM »

I've updated it to v 1.07.15:
https://www.donation.../FindAndRunRobot.exe

For 5mb worth of extra skins (about 61 skins):
https://www.donation.../downloads/Skins.zip
(same skin files used in PopUp Wisdom), unpack into Find&Run Skins directory,

CHANGE LOG:
Version 1.07.15 - Oct 02, 2005
 · Full skin selection plus ability to disable skinning 
 · Setting transparency to 0 now changes window mode to non-transparent (better for capturing screenshots of it) 
 · Reorganized some preference dialog pages.   

35302

General Software Discussion / Re: AppRocket: Quicksilver for Windows

« Last post by mouser on October 02, 2005, 12:48 AM »

Find&Run Robot 1.07.14 BETA

https://www.donation.../FindAndRunRobot.exe

Note you cannot disable skinning in this version yet, so don't install if you hate skins (though you can always reinstall older version over this one if you don't like it).  If we decide to keep skinning, you will be able to 1) disable it 2) choose from TONS of skins.


CHANGE LIST
Version 1.07.14 - Oct 02, 2005
 · when remove-duplicates option is enabled, shortcuts which differ only in arguments are now treated as non-duplicates.
 · added auto-sizing window option (see config panel2 and disable "Blank search shows files from launch history" if you want smallest bar window on launch). 
 · preliminary test of skinning.


NOTE: to make the autosize work, see picture below for options to set:

pics:

35303

General Software Discussion / Re: I want to browse thru my documents (pdfs, pics, word, rtf, and so on...) ...

« Last post by mouser on October 01, 2005, 09:56 PM »

yeah, i would 2nd that recommendation to check out powerdesk; not exactly what you asked for (no files in tree), BUT with 3 panels you get mostly the same effect plus a great file manager.

http://www.v-com.com...erDesk_Pro_Home.html

35304

General Software Discussion / Re: I want to browse thru my documents (pdfs, pics, word, rtf, and so on...) ...

« Last post by mouser on October 01, 2005, 09:20 PM »

no i think he wants a FILE EXPLORER to broswe the file system, which shows FILES and FOLDERS in the left hand tree, and then in the right hand panel a view of the files contents.

35305

General Software Discussion / Re: I want to browse thru my documents (pdfs, pics, word, rtf, and so on...) ...

« Last post by mouser on October 01, 2005, 07:58 PM »

i don't know any but i'm quite curious to hear about what other people suggest - sounds like a useful tool to have.

35306

General Software Discussion / Re: AppRocket: Quicksilver for Windows

« Last post by mouser on October 01, 2005, 07:56 PM »

thanks elpresi, i had not heard of KbStart before, i'll add it to the list of related programs in the Find&Run Robot help file.

35307

General Software Discussion / tinyproject - open source mini program like MS Project

« Last post by mouser on October 01, 2005, 07:21 PM »

http://tinyproject.org/

looks really neat (free open source);  found from freeware world team (https://www.donation...com/Links/index.html)

35308

Living Room / Re: Making websites, for complete beginners

« Last post by mouser on October 01, 2005, 07:04 PM »

another nice page for comparing content management systems: http://www.cmsmatrix.org/

there are some people who visit this forum that use various content management systems (mambo and drupal users here i know), maybe they can share with us their views.

i thought long and hard about using a content management system for DonationCoder.com and played with several.

utlimately i decided against it because i liked the idea of having a complete mirror of the site on my local machine and because i thought that having complete control over the pages was important to me and group editing was not (at least at the moment).  but it was a hard decision.

35309

General Software Discussion / Re: AppRocket: Quicksilver for Windows

« Last post by mouser on October 01, 2005, 03:20 PM »

i consider skinning for F&R of the lowest priorities and i won't add it if i can't add it in a way that it has absolutely no impact on speed when disabled, and very minimal impact on exe size (maybe 100k-200k or so).

35310

Living Room / Re: Making websites, for complete beginners

« Last post by mouser on October 01, 2005, 03:01 PM »

easygen looks quite interesting..

35311

Living Room / Re: Making websites, for complete beginners

« Last post by mouser on October 01, 2005, 03:00 PM »

i should have thought to mention this before.

what you are talking about is referred to as Content Management Systems.

they aren't just blog systems they are more general site-building software (many open source), designed to provide a different way to build more dynamic sites rather than simply editing html manually and uploading it.

my favorite site for info on these (lets you try them all out online):
http://www.opensourcecms.com/

these things take a bit of effort to set up but once set up you and anyone else you want, can edit content online.

most of these software are made for group editing, but some are used simply by one person.

cliff is using a wiki system for one of his freeware sites, maybe he can tell us a little about that, that's another kind of content management system you might consider..

35312

General Software Discussion / Re: AppRocket: Quicksilver for Windows

« Last post by mouser on October 01, 2005, 02:55 PM »

i got my hands dirty with skinning on the last program added to the site (PopUp Wisdom), and so i could probably add OPTIONAL skinning to F&R with very little effort. and starting out as a minimal height bar and expanding is probably pretty easy to do as well..

35313

General Software Discussion / Re: AppRocket: Quicksilver for Windows

« Last post by mouser on October 01, 2005, 02:07 PM »

it's definitely interesting to hear about impressions like this because it gives me ideas (like maybe having option to have F&R window just a tiny thin bar until you start typing.. but then of course you give up one of the useful features which is to have it start showing a list of recently launched apps).

keep in mind one thing about F&R speed -

1) F&R searches the directories you specify (start menu directory in particular) when you start typing, and it keeps a list of the last 50 or 100 files/programs you have launched in the past for superfast finding.  so the FIRST time you find and launch a program it has to find it by searching directories, and after that it will find it right away.  So basically for files you find more than once F&R should be super super fast, but the first time you search for it it might take a little longer.

2) i think you are, but make sure you are setting F&R tray to start using the "main application (runs faster)" mode; the other tray mode is being made obsolete (its slower to startup but uses less memory - and as features are getting added it's no longer practical to support this mode).

35314

Skrommel's Software / Re: Single Skrommel with all apps

« Last post by mouser on October 01, 2005, 08:29 AM »

ah i see what you mean..
but maybe all you need is a tutorial from comone on how to load multiple scripts into auto hot key.. i think this will almost do what you want..
but maybe there is something like what you are asking to make it easier to enable/disable scripts in auto hot key.

hopefully skrommel will reply with some guidelines.

35315

Skrommel's Software / Re: Single Skrommel with all apps

« Last post by mouser on October 01, 2005, 08:03 AM »

you probably wouldnt want all of his ahk scripts running at same time because many do some processor intensive things in the background,
BUT
you should be able to download a bunch of the .ahk scripts (not the precompiled exes) and compile them into one single exe, or better yet
just run the autohotkey scripts you want inside ahk (instead of running the individual exes).

35316

Screenshot Captor / v2.00.12 brotherS bugfix edition - beta available now (10/01/05)

« Last post by mouser on October 01, 2005, 07:43 AM »

Beta Download
https://www.donation...ScreenshotCaptor.exe

CHANGELOG
v2.00.12 - 10/01/05 (brotherS bugfix edition)
Displays warning when trying to perform operations that require selection (e.g. Crop) and no selection has been made.
Addded options for forcing background transparency merging (always or onsave); this lets you decide whether to use the image file format transparency feature (for png and gif images), which can look ugly sometimes, or whether to simulate it in the image using the current background color.
Changed highlighting tool text and icon to make it more clear that it was for drawing highlighting rectangles+circles.
Moved highlight shape button to top of hightlight shape panel.
On minimization the application always asks to save if the file is dirty.
If you do a SaveAs into main Currently viewing directory, the Saved file is loaded as current file.
Start and End arrow checkbox meaning were reversed.
No longer restores from minimization on exit.
After renaming files with F2 in shell window, they are now selected.
No longer grabs PrtScr and other hotkeys if they are set to do nothing in Options dialog [thanks CarolHaynes].
Added color depth change and DPI change dialog.
Ctrl+Z and Ctrl+Y for undo/redo now works even if you are in shell browser panel.

35317

Screenshot Captor / Re: v2.00.09 bug - strange problem, I can't fix it

« Last post by mouser on October 01, 2005, 06:31 AM »

i'm almost done fixing all the outstanding problems reported on the forum up to version 2.00.12
i can't seem to reproduce any MoveTo bugs - if anyone can figure out how to recreate this moveto issue please let me know.

As far as alt selecting main menu, i probably can't make that happen because alt+keys do select main menu items but also items from object toolbar and it won't work if we select main menu,

35318

General Software Discussion / Re: Looking for finance app

« Last post by mouser on September 30, 2005, 11:02 PM »

although they may be a bit bloated, id give quicken and ms money a good hard look;
these are serious programs with lots of room for you to grow into using the full features over time.

35319

Best Archive Tool / Re: More Archive Reviews?

« Last post by mouser on September 30, 2005, 10:28 PM »

good to see you zaine - we know you are busy moving but don't forget about us, we miss you!

35320

Living Room / An Idea - DonationWare award type thing

« Last post by mouser on September 30, 2005, 08:22 PM »

I was thinking maybe we might discuss and form a set of things that if a donationware author achieved we would give a kind of award as a symbol that they are doing something good, and maybe try to form a kind of allegience between such sites.

Here is an idea of what i was thinking about:
1) All of their software should be donationware (+freeware); meaning that they should be usable without limits and without regular nag screens, for an unlimited amount of time, for non-commercial use.
2) It would be ok if they had a dual license and charged for commercial use, and if they required anything like postcard, or email opt-out, etc., as long as all of the software could be used fully by people without money.
3) There must be no adware or spyware in the programs.
4) They must have a forum where users can post problems and get help (this might be controversial requirement).

So you see the idea is to set a kind of high bar for ethical donationware and then form a kind of web ring or logo that such donationware coders could display in order to indicate to people that their site meets these standards.

Any site/author meeting these guidelines should be supported by us, by offering help, hosting or overflow hosting if its needed, etc.

Anyway, just an idea to encourage good donationware coding and reward those authors.

35321

Living Room / Re: Thinking about a DonationCoder.com fundraising thing.. opinions wanted

« Last post by mouser on September 30, 2005, 08:09 PM »

thanks momonan, nice to hear your opinions -
one problem with one thing you said though,
not only would we most likely not be able to block ads from other software developers -
there is a high likelyhood that they would in fact be from software developer companies, because that's what google ads will try to do, find ads relevant to the content on the pages..

35322

General Software Discussion / Re: Worst. Interface. Ever.

« Last post by mouser on September 30, 2005, 06:57 PM »

agree, dantz retrospect has a very confusing interface.

35323

Living Room / Re: Making websites, for complete beginners

« Last post by mouser on September 30, 2005, 05:50 PM »

someone asked a while ago for some freeware web design tool reviews -
i think it's long overdue that we try to at least have a good thread about designing websites, tools and books.
there has to be some good websites dedicated to beginer website design.
let's try to find some and add alink to the links page as well.

i think big apps like dreamweaver are way overkill.

here is what i have learned about web design:

1) it is EXTREMELY EASY to do the basics - design pages with simple text and graphics, upload pages and files, etc.
people don't realize how easy it is to do the basics, it's no more difficult with some free easy tools to edit a web page just like you are using a word processor.

2) it is EXTREMELY TIME CONSUMING AND FRUSTRATING to make a really nice looking site that uses things like CSS and has custom layout stuff which looks good in different browsers and has lots of content.
people don't realize how time consuming and how much tweaking is required to get some of these more subtle effects to work properly.


Depending on how professional you want the site to look, a good approach might be to try to locate an existing "template", either freee or cheap (there are lots of sites on the web selling millions of website templates).  It will also depend on how many pages you want to link together how many different looks it will have.

btw FontPage seems to get good marks by many reviewers; if you've used it before, FrontPage might really deserve revisiting.

some other piece of advice:
1) i try to avoid all flash menus and weird menus and effects - some people don't like them or won't want to enable those features.
2) keep in mind that people surf the web with diffferent resolutions on their screen; make sure you don't design pages that look good at one resolution but horrible at another.


i'd still love to hear recommendations for free software to work on web design.
a good toolbox would include:
1) web page editor
2) ftp program or even better a smart web page uploader (might be included in #1)
3) web log analyzer

35324

Living Room / Re: Thinking about a DonationCoder.com fundraising thing.. opinions wanted

« Last post by mouser on September 30, 2005, 11:17 AM »

your points are well taken, and i need to learn more about google ads and how they work.

the idea of having the ads only shown to non-members is somewhat attractive to me because it would mean that members are not affected at all, so we have the combination of some income from ads with no annoyance for members with the bonus of it being another incentive to become a member.

on the downside is the fact that i am somewhat bothered by the concepts behind having ads on a site like ours dedicated to objective evaluation of software..  i suppose its something we could try out for a little bit at some point, again especially if members never had to see the ads at all.

35325

General Software Discussion / Re: AppRocket: Quicksilver for Windows

« Last post by mouser on September 30, 2005, 11:04 AM »

definitely go for it!
it would be nice to hear where F&R is better and where it is worse.
(maybe it's time i updated the F&R help file to indicate how to do the new things like using paste command and regular expression stuff..)