Recent Posts

36526

Living Room / Re: Printing out pages from www.donationcoder.com eg reviews

« Last post by mouser on July 16, 2005, 05:27 PM »

don't forget you can now donate a buck or two directly to the reviewer.. anyone who likes nudone's review and wants to see more like it, send him a little donation

36527

Living Room / Re: Printing out pages from www.donationcoder.com eg reviews

« Last post by mouser on July 16, 2005, 05:08 PM »

hehehe

ok i'm going to look into making pdf or else printer-friendly downloads of reviews.  it really wouldnt be too hard since we use css - it would just be a matter of not having that sidebar, and removing the left and right margins for a wider page.

but i could also manually make pdfs of the reviews for download if people liked that idea better.

36528

Image Manager Shootout / Re: ACDSee vs ThumbsPlus for large collections

« Last post by mouser on July 16, 2005, 05:06 PM »

acdsee is great at viewing thumnails accross multiple arbitrary directories - it basically has checkboxes and lets you toggle on and off various directories to view simultaneously.

i don;t know if thumbsplus is so flexible, but you can easily say, show me every image in this folder AND ALL SUBFOLDERS.
one of the reasons i say its good at huge image collections is its ability to let you ask it to catalog/database thumbnails for huge directory trees on demand, which can be really useful when you have 10 thousand images and you want them scanned while you go have a meal.  i couldnt find a way to do this in acdsee (though it may be there), which means there is an initial delay the first time you visit any folders.  thumbsplus is designed to queue up such operations and show you nice progress, etc.

but there is only one real answer:
install trial versions of them and play with them and see

36529

Finished Programs / Re: DONE 7/16/05 - IDEA: Report the Number of Characters in Highlighted Text

« Last post by mouser on July 16, 2005, 05:02 PM »

v1.00.02 uploaded without messagebox output option and clipboard text restore option.

36530

Finished Programs / Re: DONE 7/16/05 - IDEA: Report the Number of Characters in Highlighted Text

« Last post by mouser on July 16, 2005, 04:42 PM »

not assinine at all..
it's trivial for me to make messagebox option though it has the drawback of stealing focus and requiring you to press ok or hit enter.  but it's easy to add so i'll add that, and then later see if i can't find a nice free alert-box component like you see in ms outlook and other programs.

btw i was going to make this a tiny visual c++ tool but i figured that we might want to extend it with some new clipboard type operations so i went with c++ builder which is a lot easier for me to add stuff too, at the cost of a bigger exe.

another issue - i was thinking maybe that the auto ctrl+C option should have another checkbox option saying "restore clipboard after count."
so that it would auto copy the selected text, count it, then REPLACE the clipboard with what was in it before triggering the hotkey.

36531

Finished Programs / Re: DONE 7/16/05 - IDEA: Report the Number of Characters in Highlighted Text

« Last post by mouser on July 16, 2005, 03:35 PM »

lots more functions could be added to this to manipulate clipboard text later.
suggestions are welcome.

36532

Finished Programs / Re: IDEA: Report the Number of Characters in Highlighted Text

« Last post by mouser on July 16, 2005, 03:29 PM »

ok done.

version 1.00.01 is now available for download on coding snacks download page.

let me know any issues, etc.

like most coding snacks, it doesn't have an installer, you just run it.
double click tray icon to configure the hotkey (default is ctrl+alt+T).

note adding a right-click context menu to count was not feasible, so you have to use hotkey instead.

36533

Finished Programs / Re: IDEA: Report the Number of Characters in Highlighted Text

« Last post by mouser on July 16, 2005, 12:53 PM »

ok im working on this now, should have finished coding snack today.

36534

Unfinished Requests / Re: IDEA: mouse location launcher

« Last post by mouser on July 16, 2005, 10:49 AM »

maybe my idea is better suited for custom desktop tools like objectdock or whatever and i should stick to the orig idea, but i wonder if the original idea doesnt already exist as freeware.

http://www.stardock....products/objectdock/

36535

Unfinished Requests / Re: IDEA: mouse location launcher

« Last post by mouser on July 16, 2005, 10:42 AM »

not unusually, the hard part about this idea is not the main code, but figuring out a way for the user to tell the program what areas of the screen should trigger stuff.

if we just use corners and sides of screen its pretty easy.. if we use arbitrary regions of desktop we need some way of user to be able to "paint" regions of the screen and associate them with actions.

maybe there is an existing tool already, like a skinning tool, that will let you edit a bitmap and color different regions with different colors.  preferably a 256 color editor that lets you clearly colorize an image by painting regions of colors from this small pallette, so that each "button" or "region" is its own color..

i know such tools are sometimes used as skin editors.. and/or maybe there is another existing skin editing tool that works differently but can be used similarly to edit regions.  or i guess i could use an html region marking tool.. but i think for this task, having an 8bit (256color) color mask might be most efficient.

anyone know any existing tools or willing to help find some? (must be free since the end user will be using it to region-ize their desktop).

36536

Unfinished Requests / Re: IDEA: mouse location launcher

« Last post by mouser on July 16, 2005, 10:30 AM »

that's a good point, i hadnt even thought about working with other windows, just the desktop.

i'm not sure how one would want this to work with specific applications - i'm guessing you would really just want it to ignore you when you are inside an application mainly.

36537

Unfinished Requests / Re: IDEA: mouse location launcher

« Last post by mouser on July 16, 2005, 09:40 AM »

i think i can write this as a snack this weekend if there isn't already a free tool to do this.

what if instead of X corner or X seconds it worked like this:
it allowed you to draw arbitrary regions on your screen as the regions.
im thinking it would be most useful for things like people using a wall paper as a clickable control thing.

ie imagine you have a wallpaper image of air plane cockpit.  then you could use this program to draw regions of the various controls and assign actions to them.

seems like it might be a nice way to really customize your desktop.

i think i have most of the components needed to make this if it sounds like something useful.

ps.
cracksloth what is your background that you have such a logical and precise way of laying out diagrams and mock screenshots and stuff?

36538

Unfinished Requests / Re: IDEA: Babies on keyboard

« Last post by mouser on July 16, 2005, 01:44 AM »

i've done a lot of planning for such a program in the past - i had some grand ideas for fun stuff to do; it's definitely something ill write, and passable version could be written in a day or weekend, but the version i have in mind would take longer.. still, i could whip up a version in a weekend if someone else gather the clipart and sounds..

36539

Finished Programs / Re: IDEA: timed alt+tab through active windows

« Last post by mouser on July 16, 2005, 01:42 AM »

ok ill hold off on coding it then until we have a better feeling for whether it exists or not.

36540

Unfinished Requests / Re: IDEA: Printing your file window

« Last post by mouser on July 16, 2005, 01:41 AM »

good finds; printfolder also has a big brother shareware version printfolder pro which looks quite powerful if its something you used alot.

btw if you want to print out mp3 listings of your files, you probably need a special program that can extract titles and authors, etc. and print those, not just a normal directory printer, but again there are some existing freeware to do that.

36541

Find And Run Robot / Re: Error EACCESSVIOLATION upon startup attempt for FindANDRun ???

« Last post by mouser on July 16, 2005, 01:39 AM »

yes please: [email protected]

its a text file, so please do open it and view it in any text editor just to make sure that for whatever reason it doesnt have any info or files that you wouldnt want to send before you do send it.  it shouldnt but never hurts to check.

seeing it might help me reproduce the problem and figure out what's wrong for the future, thanks!

36542

Find And Run Robot / Re: Error EACCESSVIOLATION upon startup attempt for FindANDRun ???

« Last post by mouser on July 15, 2005, 10:18 PM »

that is really strange.. i've never heard of it.
i can think of 2 things to try:

1) move or rename the findandrunrobot.ini file to see if maybe there is something in your ini file making it crash.  if so, dont delete that file, but save it so you can help me figure out what about it it doesnt like.
2) if that files, try launching F&R through the start menu with the different techniques and see if some work and others dont.

has anything else changes on your pc?

36543

Finished Programs / Re: IDEA: timed alt+tab through active windows

« Last post by mouser on July 15, 2005, 09:51 PM »

this is perfect request for coding snack.
i suggest a general solution, a little try util that can send a user-specified keyboard command at user-specified interval, which can be toggled on and off by double clicking on try icon.

36544

Find And Run Robot / Re: Feature Request v2 - text replacement

« Last post by mouser on July 15, 2005, 09:06 PM »

heheheh how quickly you went from "don't add it, keep it simple" to "add it but alot more"



actually this is a good example of a good idea for a program but one that does not at all need to go into F&R.
i think it's a good idea for a coding snack standalone program, and i have some fun ideas about it.
i have a cool variation on your idea and way to do it simply i think that would be convenient and different.

i may try to implement it as coding snack.
I will split the thread and move it there after you've had a chance to see this reply.

36545

Unfinished Requests / Re: IDEA: Babies on keyboard

« Last post by mouser on July 15, 2005, 08:35 PM »

yup, this is something ive been meaning to write for a while..
just have to figure out if it can be written well in a day or if i have to schedule it for my next app.

36546

Unfinished Requests / Re: IDEA: Printing your file window

« Last post by mouser on July 15, 2005, 08:35 PM »

i think you're just asking for a nice folder printer -
anyone know of a good free one?

36547

Unfinished Requests / Re: Custom message loader

« Last post by mouser on July 15, 2005, 08:08 PM »

this is a fun idea - my double click quote old coding snack does this but it doesnt show in baloon tray - i will add this.

36548

Find And Run Robot / Re: Feature Request v2 - text replacement

« Last post by mouser on July 15, 2005, 04:48 PM »

ok that clarification helps-

i'd like to agree to NOT implementing such a keyboard hook watching function.  yes such things are fun, and not all that difficult, but i like the idea that F&R activates ONLY when askes, and only does what you type in explicitly to tell it to do.

i was thinking more of an explicit text insertion on demand.
so if you were typing and wanted to insert date, you could hit break key, type dt, and then hit enter.  and it would paste in date to your current app.  or else present in normal F&R window a menu of potential replacements you have configured for the term "dt"

i'm not proposing automatic text replacement and global keyboard hook watching.

adding this feature would be EXTREMELY easy, and just part and parcel of a more general alias/command functionality.

36549

General Software Discussion / Re: Open/Save Dialog Utilities - response to Nudone's Blog from May

« Last post by mouser on July 15, 2005, 04:03 PM »

i nominate scott for this review.. starting next week?

36550

Find And Run Robot / Re: Feature Request v2 - text replacement

« Last post by mouser on July 15, 2005, 03:16 PM »

hi ampa, i like your avatar btw

yes i agree, we don't want to make it try to do everything.
but i am willing to entertain things that keep in the spirit of super-fast keyboard operations..
so the idea of being able to hi break key and type "myinfo" and then enter and having it expand to paste in my name, address, and phone into my current text editor or whatever editor i am using is something that i think would fit with this.

when command functions are added it will be very easy to extend the program to run 3rd party independent scripts and commands, so that we can leave the program doing just the core stuff, but make it easy for user to trigger other programs to do other things.

so in other words, i agree in principle, but i think we can expand F&R's purpose a little more broadly than just a launcher, and focus on keyboard-maniac's tool for efficient quick operations like launching apps / scripts / triggering little mini helpers like text pasting, etc.  plus launching things like web/dictionary searches, etc.  especially things that call for displaying a menu of choices - i think thats going to be a nice strength of F&R, being able to display a numbered lists of menu choices associated with a typed command.

but i do like that there are F&R users who want to keep it focused - i think this is a good thing and don't want it to become a program that tries to do everything a little and nothing completely.