Recent Posts

37001

Cheat Sheeter / Re: Finally, a robust keyboard shortcut app!

« Last post by mouser on June 02, 2005, 08:40 AM »

reading ini files is probably not practical since every program uses its own format for storing such things.
tabs i'm open to - could you elaborate a little how you might want to use them?

i'm very open to user interface suggestions, so keep 'em coming - i'll try to have a test version up by next week that people can give feedback on and make concrete suggestions.

docking and full screen will definitely be options.

37002

Cheat Sheeter / Re: Finally, a robust keyboard shortcut app!

« Last post by mouser on June 02, 2005, 07:09 AM »

yeah, winkey may not be the way to go.. we'd want to make it user configurable i guess.

having people willing to make cheat sheets would be essential to making this a useful utility, so we will want to make it as easy as possible for people to create new ones.

if anyone knows similar apps already in existence please let me know asap, both so that we can avoid recreating a freeware if it already exists, and also to learn from any existing tools.

if not, i guess i'll start on this right away.  seems like it could be really fun to see if a little community of cheat sheet sharers developed.
proposed name of util: Cheat Sheeter

37003

Cheat Sheeter / Re: Finally, a robust keyboard shortcut app!

« Last post by mouser on June 02, 2005, 06:31 AM »

nudone, i think we are thinking on the exact same wavelength.

1) should be super easy to make new cheat sheets that look good.
2) should be super easy to share cheat sheets, with a nice repository where you can find them (maybe on-click download of new cheat sheets).
3) attention paid to making it look nice on screen, ie big nicelooking text (option for graphics and fancy stuff if desired).
4) should pop up and dissapear quickly so as to interfere minimally (i was thinking something like its visible full screen while you hold winkey down alone (or maybe press once for show, again for hide), but we could talk about other options, like being able to pin it open, dock it to side of screen, resize window, etc.).

multiple pages of cheat sheets makes sense to me, as does the ability to select cheat sheets on demand (ie even if it auto brings up the cheat sheet for current app, might be nice to be able to select to view different sheet pages on demand).

im thinking that the smartest approach to this is to use html for the formatting, with a nice little mini html editor.
this would probably yield the best combination of flexibility in formatting cheat sheets, with text font size changing abilities, tables, and graphics, and would have added benefits of being able to view the pages on the web.  if we are able to use css style sheets it might offer a nice way to have different display themes.

should be easy to view your cheat sheet set and disable/enable different sheets (for example there might be 10 dif. ultraedit cheat sheets and you might want to disable the ones you dont like).

should be easy to customize a cheat sheet you downloaded to modify hotkeys that you have customized.

maybe we can set it up so that you can define different regions of the display window; ie main window would show cheat sheet for current app, but you might want a left sidebar or a top or bottom panel showing your custom system-wide hotkeys.

37004

Cheat Sheeter / Re: Finally, a robust keyboard shortcut app!

« Last post by mouser on June 02, 2005, 04:49 AM »

an alternative way to view my suggestion:
what if we took the hotkey tools out of my proposed program.

what about just a program called:
"Pop-up Cheat Sheet"

you'd give it a hotkey (yes, the irony is delicious).

and when you activated it, it would check the current active program/window, and display a (big-text fullscreen?) overlay showing shortcuts and hotkeys relevant for that program (and system in general?).

if this sounds like a fun idea, AND IT DOESNT ALREADY EXIST, might be a fun dc program.
we could even make it so it would be easy for people to post and share cheatsheets.

so that someone who is an ultraedit user could for example make an ultraedit cheat sheet and post it, and users could just download it and add it to their collection.

what do you think?

37005

Cheat Sheeter / New Program Idea: Cheat Sheeter

« Last post by mouser on June 02, 2005, 04:33 AM »

i wonder if there are any hotkey tools that display a fullscreen semi-transparent overlay of hotkey assignments when you press windows key.
might be kind of cool..
ie you're an app, you press winkey and up comes full screen overlay with big text showing each available hotkey and describing what it does.

might be kind of fun to make such a freeware hotkey tool.

37006

General Software Discussion / Re: another antivirus comparison site

« Last post by mouser on June 01, 2005, 09:39 PM »

true, i wouldn't take these ratings things too seriously.

another issue that rarely gets mentioned but seems to be very important is,
how often are the virus definitions updated.. and how long before a new virus is out before they add the definition..

37007

General Software Discussion / Re: Finally, a robust keyboard shortcut app!

« Last post by mouser on June 01, 2005, 09:37 PM »

hahaahah exactly.
this is why i never care about hotkey configurations.. i simply cannot rememeber them.

in truth i have a couple global hotkeys i use, but i'm definitely in the same boat as you..  thats why i wrote f&r robot, so i could type names of programs instead of hotkey combinations

37008

Living Room / Re: a better favorites manager?

« Last post by mouser on June 01, 2005, 06:22 PM »

self-advert:
find and run robot can be used to search your favorites.
i'm open to improving this ability based on feature requests.

37009

Living Room / Re: user controllable mailing list

« Last post by mouser on June 01, 2005, 01:35 PM »

you can already opt out of mailings on the forum, so really nothing new is needed.

37010

Living Room / user controllable mailing list

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

so i spent some time playing with phplist, an open source mailing list / newsletter management tool for websites.
we're thinking of using that here at dc instead of what i've currently been doing which is using the donators email list, or occassionally the mailing list automatically generated by the forum.

in one sense the forum list of emails might be the best way, since it should be a fairly complete list of both donators and people interested in the site that aren't ready to donate.  there are people registered on the forum who don't really want to receive the weekly newsletter and would prefer not to receive such mailings, but then you can indicate that in your forum profile.

so maybe just using forum email system is the right way to send out mailings..
any views?

if anyone wants to see the phplist interface, i set it up here:
https://www.donation...com/Features/phplist

(note im not asking people to sign up en masse, as we haven't even decided whether to use this yet or not).

37011

Living Room / Re: a better favorites manager?

« Last post by mouser on June 01, 2005, 12:22 PM »

by the way, anyone here use stumbleupon:
http://www.stumbleupon.com/

for more info see:
http://www.stumbleupon.com/about.html

it's a really interesting thing, and i see visitors to donationcoder.com from stubleupon reviews in the traffic logs all the time.
seems like a nice idea and free plugins exist for ie and firefox.

i wonder about the idea of making a bookmark manager that somehow automatically sync'd comments about favorites with stumbled upon online databases..

37012

Living Room / Re: a better favorites manager?

« Last post by mouser on June 01, 2005, 12:18 PM »

while we're on the subject, this isnt a bookmark manager (can't annotate stuff), but it is a nice checker of links to find those that are no longer valid,  freeware from maker of website watcher, "am-deadlink":
http://www.aignes.com/deadlink.htm

37013

General Software Discussion / another antivirus comparison site

« Last post by mouser on June 01, 2005, 11:51 AM »

these people look like they know what they are talking about:
http://www.av-comparatives.org/

(nod32 seems to come out on top)

37014

Living Room / Re: a better favorites manager?

« Last post by mouser on June 01, 2005, 10:48 AM »

bookmark buddy is $30, yikes(!).

i'd love a (free) bookmark manager helper that didn't require me to import and export bookmarks from and to browser, but just did it automatically..

37015

Unfinished Requests / Re: IDEA: auto move dialog boxes nearer to mouse cursor

« Last post by mouser on June 01, 2005, 10:46 AM »

i hope this discussion continues..
i'm trying to nudge some of the other coders here to join me in a project that would be watching windows and doing manipulations, where this kind of thing would be something we could add to it..

37016

Unfinished Requests / Re: IDEA: log downloads' filename, address and date

« Last post by mouser on June 01, 2005, 10:44 AM »

this is great idea -

i'm fairly certain that it would be easy to write a mozilla firefox extension to do this, if it doesn't already exist (does anyone know if it does?)

i think a good solution would be to use a download manager like getright, mass downloader, etc.  there are some freeware ones too.  such a tool should be able to keep a permanent list of all downloads and their urls and date of download.

anyone with experience using download managers have any more insight?

37017

Living Room / From Slashdot: corporations taking unfair advantage of open source

« Last post by mouser on June 01, 2005, 06:02 AM »

from http://linux.slashdo...?tid=187&tid=106
An anonymous reader writes "A top European Commission official has accused major IT players such as IBM, HP and Sun of using the open source community as mere subcontractors rather than encouraging them to develop independent commercial products. Jesús Villasante, head of software technologies at the commission, said: 'The open source community today [is a] subcontractor of American multinationals. Open source communities need to take themselves seriously and realise they have contribution to themselves and society. From the moment they realise they are part of the evolution of society and try to influence it, we will be moving in the right direction.'"

37018

General Software Discussion / Re: Finally, a robust keyboard shortcut app!

« Last post by mouser on June 01, 2005, 03:30 AM »

a hotkey tool review would definitely be in order soon.

37019

Living Room / Re: Cool short videos for the weekend

« Last post by mouser on May 31, 2005, 04:46 PM »

cat and bird are best friends: http://media.mediafe...t/moses_the_crow.wmv
(from www.uselessjunk.com)

37020

Unfinished Requests / Re: IDEA: Hotkey controls for screen brightness.

« Last post by mouser on May 31, 2005, 03:18 PM »

our pleasure; if any other freeware authors find themselves in similar situation we'd be happy to help out.

by the way, gamma panel looks awesome, i think laptop users in particular might really want to check it out.

37021

Living Room / Re: Bitwise Magazine - please call by soon....

« Last post by mouser on May 31, 2005, 02:20 PM »

i like it a lot huw, nice eclectic mix of interviews, reviews, and programming lessons.  very fun site. 

looking forward to visiting the site regularly.

37022

Living Room / Re: photo-editing software

« Last post by mouser on May 31, 2005, 01:57 PM »

there are also a lot of 3rd party web sites that offer various tools and services to sellers, some free, some not.
for example:
http://www.alouwebde...on-tool-software.htm


if there was a need for a small amount of low-bandwidth hosting of images by members, this might be something we could set up as a way to say thank you to members.

37023

Living Room / Re: photo-editing software

« Last post by mouser on May 31, 2005, 01:49 PM »

nice free tool to help you post ebay listings, made by ebay themselves:
http://pages.ebay.com/turbo%5Flister/

with tutorials on how to use here:
http://pages.ebay.co...tools/resources.html

37024

Living Room / Re: photo-editing software

« Last post by mouser on May 31, 2005, 01:45 PM »

here is how "enlargeable" images on webpage are "usually" done.

typically you have 2 pictures.
you have your original picture, and then you make a tiny version of it (a thumbnail).
then on your web page (or in your ebay listing) you would do something like:

[Select]

<a href="mypicture.jpg"> <img src="mypicture_thumbnail.jpg"/> </a>

it can be done with a single picture as well, but it's typically done using 2 pictures, one large one and one thumbnail.  so that html code above shows the thumbnail picture "mypicture_thumbnail", and if they click on it they will be shown the main big picture "mypicture_thumbnail.jpg".

i don't know to what extent the ebay listing system helps you with such things.
i know there are shareware programs to help you post listings.
maybe there are freeware tools also.

37025

Unfinished Requests / Re: IDEA: Hotkey controls for screen brightness.

« Last post by mouser on May 31, 2005, 12:58 PM »

sure, just let me know

(ps. it only takes a few minutes to set up an ftp login if you want a temporary home until you get things worked out, so don't hesitate to ask).