Recent Posts

36326

ProcessTamer / Re: Option to set CPU usage trigger app-individually?

« Last post by mouser on August 04, 2005, 07:33 AM »

yes; i think i will add the ability to specify for each special rule, a custom field, in addition to the normal ability to specify the custom priority.

in that field you will be able to specify some advanced configuration which will allow PT to support for lots of advanced use things if desired, including what you want, and things like performing special actions when an app is tamed or found running, or dies, etc.

36327

ProcessTamer / Re: Option to set CPU usage trigger app-individually?

« Last post by mouser on August 04, 2005, 06:26 AM »

i've not yet found any program that behaves badly if its priority is lowered; if anyone knows any, let me know.

36328

BrowserTraySwitch / Re: Bug with Firefox 1.0.6 ???

« Last post by mouser on August 03, 2005, 09:16 PM »

nothing to be alarmed at but i'll look into it.. it may be as simple as BrowserTraySwitch using the short version of a filename and firefox comparing the registry entry with the long version of its name, etc.

there is no "standard" way for a browser to indicate that it is the default browser, so all browsers have slightly different ways of checking if they *think* they are the default browser.  it's a real mess.  thank you bill gates.

36329

Living Room / Columnists on vacation - any new volunteers?

« Last post by mouser on August 03, 2005, 01:49 PM »

You may have noticed that some of our regular columnists have been on vacation for a few weeks this summer..
although we expect them back soon, i'm thinking that we might open up the possibility of adding a few more blogger columnists..

anyone feel like they could write an interesting, opinionated weekly (or twice-monthly) blog column, having something to do with computers/technology (preferably software)?

you should know by now that this site doesn't take in enough money to even consider paying people to write a column, but you'd get the normal perks of web/ftp space, email, the occasional donation, maybe a free program every once and a while, etc.

if so, mail me:
[email protected]

36330

UrlSnooper / Re: URL Snooper on dial-up

« Last post by mouser on August 03, 2005, 09:31 AM »

hi will,

url snooper uses the WinPCap engine to sniff ethernet connections.

there are ways to make it work with dialup but they require a bit of work.
do a good search for "urlsnooper winpcap" (http://www.google.co...amp;q=winpcap+dialup)

you'll see instructions like those here:
http://www.winpcap.org/misc/faq.htm#Q-25
http://www.arechisoft.com/dialup.htm

if you manage to get it to work, PLEASE report back how you got it to work so others can benefit.

if you can't get it to work, try this other demo program:
http://www.microolap...rk/tcpdump/download/

if that one works on your dialup then please let me know because i'm considering adding support for that network engine in the next version of urlsnooper, if it can work on dialup.

good luck!

36331

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

« Last post by mouser on August 02, 2005, 08:02 PM »

scott is there a shareware app that does what you want?
maybe if we see that we will be able to better locate a freeware tool.

36332

Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: Teaser screenshot

« Last post by mouser on August 02, 2005, 06:22 PM »

the count column will tell you how many "clips" or notes are in that category.

i am going to try hard to add a pure-tree mode; maybe i should just say that i will do it, and do whatever it takes to do it.

most notes programs work either as a pure tree, or as shown above, with a group tree and then you click on the group to see its notes in a separate panel.

the pure tree mode is simpler to view and navigate and you don't have to move your eyes between two panels.

but for power use it display so much less information, and makes it impossible to do some very nice stuff like sorting, filtering, grouping by columns, etc.  ive hidden most of the columns on the grid so it might seem pointless as first, but really there is much more informaiton you might want to show, like creation time, last view time, application name, etc.  so having a grid view can really be useful sometimes.

different people prefer different views; and one might want to switch between them depending on what one wants to do.

i am going to try to implement both and make it easy to switch - that should give us the best of both worlds.

36333

Google Boomerang / Re: Great for schools ...

« Last post by mouser on August 02, 2005, 06:09 PM »

well what i can do is rename it:
"Advanced Language Translation Demonstration Tool for Educators"
and then charge $900 for it.

36334

Google Boomerang / Re: Great for schools ...

« Last post by mouser on August 02, 2005, 05:03 PM »

it's great to hear someone else used this app at least once

36335

Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: Teaser screenshot

« Last post by mouser on August 02, 2005, 05:02 PM »

i have been struggling with the issues you've raised over and over and over again in the last week.
i agree with you 100% about everything you've said.

i would like to find a way to let user switch between the view you see in the screenshots and a view which has only tree + memo, with as you say the clip titles as the leaves of the tree.  i *think* i should be able to pull this off.  that is actually what i am most used to using.

but firth i am going to get this view working first since it is the one capable of showing all information.

regarding the toolbars - they will be dockable so you will be able to combine them all on one dock at the very top of the window if you like, or move them wherever you want.

to summarize, i agree that gui layout is crucial, especially in an app for taking notes.
and i've been struggling with it for this app for a while; hopefully you can help me to perfect it once i have a protoype to play with.

this grid-based view is 100x more functional than a pure tree based view in terms of sorting/filtering/search/viewing all info.
but in terms of maximum convenience for quick note taking, a two panel tree+memo can't be beat.. so let's try to support both.

what i would like is some quick buttons to change between views to make it really easy to switch between them.
i have a feeling we are going to have a lot of fun perfecting this app.

36336

Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: Teaser screenshot

« Last post by mouser on August 02, 2005, 01:32 PM »

well let me explain a little about how the windows clipboard works.
it's actually designed to let you copy between apps that may or may not support advanced formatting.

so when you copy some text from a web page to the clipboard, it actually creates several different clip items.
one is plaintext, another is richtext, etc.

then when you paste it into an app, that app grabs the best format it can.

so you really dont have to know if the target app can handle richtext or plaintext, you create both, and let the receiver decide.

as far as writing a wsiwyg program - this is where software reuse comes in; there are nice wsiwyg editor components that i can just drop into the program and connect with a little bit of effort.  just like CHS already has with a very nice spelling component.
this is probably a good time to point out that it is donations from users like you, plus thankfully the generosity of some companies which give me big discounts and sometimes free copies, that lets me use these commercial components.  without the donations from you guys and gals i simply wouldnt be able to build these things.

36337

Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: Teaser screenshot

« Last post by mouser on August 02, 2005, 11:31 AM »

it's a little busy for my tastes as well.. i'm thinking i might try to offer like a couple easy-to-switch-between modes that would show progressivly less information.

we are on the same page about format conversion i think.  it will definitely be easy to tell the program you always want to work with plain text.  i would like to hear more about your idea wrt converting formats.  clipmate is probably the most powerful and flexible clipboard tool and its useful to look at how they do it.  i think basically clipmate by default captures all formats for a clip.  so a single clip might exist in several formats; you can access the format you want to at any given time.  so richtext is always available both as plaintext or richtext. etc.  maybe we can think of a nice way for dragging and dropping the format you want at any given time.

currently im working on group and clip management and moving stuff around between groups, etc.  it's a bit intricate because im using databases for the groups and clips.  the benefits are worth it though, in terms of scalability.

anyone have any use for a networked-synchronized version, so that multiple computers all share the same database?

36338

Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: Teaser screenshotsw

« Last post by mouser on August 02, 2005, 10:19 AM »

i think you are really right about making sure interface and features suit the task..

perhaps i was too quick to talk about it being primarily a note taking tool..

i'm still open to discussing how much it should focus on clipboard stuff vs. note stuff...

it started as a clipboard tool and i wouldnt like to make too many concessions that make it less useful for that task..
and you're comment about supporting advanced text-editing is a good point.

i'll give you my biases up front:
i use both clipboard tool and hierarchical notes tool, separate programs.
i ONLY ever store pure plain text, no images, no sounds, no rich text.
in fact i get annoyed when i copy text from web page and it gets pasted as rich text with colors and fonts and stuff.

so my personal bias would be to create a tool designed mainly for quick and easy plaintext clips and entries, which had a real focus on making it really easy and fast to add notes, rearrange notes, and search for notes.  with a fairly uncluttered interface that makes these main tasks easy.

that's my personal bias.  now i'm open to adding other stuff that people want in their clipboard/note taking tools, but id prefer quick+easy notes+clips versus super powerful but messy interface.

36339

Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: Teaser screenshotsw

« Last post by mouser on August 02, 2005, 09:10 AM »

- What are the clip criteria (sorry cant think of what databases call them... maybe fields?) stored in the database?  (eg. windowname, date/time, etc)  In other words, what can you filter on?

i didn't show it on the screen shot, but there are tons more columns you can show/hide, including creation date, modification date, last view date, deadline date, some checkboxes for marking favorites, a keyword field, various other custom user settings.

36340

Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: Teaser screenshotsw

« Last post by mouser on August 02, 2005, 09:08 AM »

- Is the filter going to apply only to the node you are in?  In other words, if you are in a node and want to search all clips are you going to have to click on the "ALL" node and then search? (maybe you could have two buttons for filtering, one for all and one for current node... I dont know)

there will be two ways of searching, one is the quick search box where you can instantly apply a filter to whatever group you are looking at; in this case you would click ALL to have it show ALL clips which meet the filter criteria.

there will also be a more complex search function which will launch and filter all based on keywords or any other criteria.

- Is there any way to delete clips?  Based on criteria?

of course; you can just ctrl+A to select all "visible(filtered)" clips and hit delete, or select them any other way you want.

- What about having a hotkey that, when pressed, copies something to the clipboard and brings up an input box so you can enter in desired info (eg. clip group, clip title, etc)?  Ctrl+c would STILL be a normal copy and CHS would capture it and use the default settings specified in the options dialogue.  However, if say ctrl-alt-c (user defineable) were pressed, the user would be able to specify that data.  This would be helpful if you were collecting articles from the internet or any other time you wouldnt mind the extra time if it makes finding the data easier!

absolutely - i think we discussed this before; there will be a hotkey which pops up a small preview window showing the currently highlighted text, and allowing you to enter a custom title, and select the GROUP to play it in (and default to last selected group), so this will be perfect for this task.

about making CHS talk nicely with other notes managers.  Any further info on that?

i fully intend on supporting import/export to Keynote, Treepad, generic cvs, xml, maybe onenote; whatever is most popular.
i expect that you will be able to import and export to the major notes tools.

i do intend for this tool to be a complete hierarchical note taking + clipboard tool, able to compete with the best of them.

36341

ContextMenu Commander / ContextMenu Commander

« Last post by mouser on August 02, 2005, 08:29 AM »

DonationCoder.com will soon announce a utility that I predict will become a favorite here..
a tool for easily creating custom right-click context menu items, in a way easier and more powerful than seen in any existing program.

it will also come with a bunch of context menu tools.

we welcome your suggestions for simple right-click context menu tools you'd like to see
(like move-to-specific folder, copy path to clipboard, etc.)

36342

Programmer Libs / C++ Builder Components coming soon..

« Last post by mouser on August 02, 2005, 08:27 AM »

coming soon some c++ builder components i've written..

36343

Unfinished Requests / Re: IDEA: I dream of a non-creepy keystroke logger

« Last post by mouser on August 02, 2005, 08:04 AM »

skrommel - shall i add these latest scripts to your coding snacks autohotkey pack?
would you like some ftp/web space?
do you want to claim your prize (see other thread)?

36344

Clipboard Help+Spell / Teaser screenshot

« Last post by mouser on August 02, 2005, 05:50 AM »

i've been working hard on the new CHS - ive written and deleted and rewritten some code quite a bit, trying to figure out the best way to manage the clip groups and stuff..   so many design issues...

but here is a preview of the interface as it is; eventually you will be able to customize the display.

36345

Find And Run Robot / Re: an idea about an alternative to multiple configuration files

« Last post by mouser on August 01, 2005, 06:16 AM »

i'm a big fan of remembering window state; so it will be like a toggle button and will stay visible over repeated runs until you close it.

36346

Living Room / Re: downloadsquad.com - software news and views

« Last post by mouser on August 01, 2005, 03:20 AM »

nice find; looks like more sites for the Links list.

36347

Living Room / Re: IRC DAY 7/29 and 7/30

« Last post by mouser on August 01, 2005, 01:46 AM »

irc weekend was a complete failure
we'll try again next month 

36348

Living Room / It's the first of the month.. you know what that means..

« Last post by mouser on August 01, 2005, 01:45 AM »

Time to do your full system backups!
Image those drives and keep the drive images outside of your house in case of fire or theft.

36349

Find And Run Robot / Re: an idea about an alternative to multiple configuration files

« Last post by mouser on July 31, 2005, 11:27 PM »

i thought mouser was suggesting that these checkboxes would be shown in the main window

yes, you accurately described what i was suggesting - and i take your point about the problems with it.

perhaps we should consider a button that reveals a panel of extended search items, including filter groups checklist, options for searching within files, etc.

36350

Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: A new name

« Last post by mouser on July 31, 2005, 07:22 PM »

"Clipboard Notebook Deluxe"