Recent Posts

501

General Software Discussion / Re: Idea: A content management system that lives up to the name

« Last post by tranglos on December 16, 2009, 08:50 AM »

I don't have that much to report I got my php "minisite" system up to where it can serve pages built on the fly from templates and dictionaries. (This is not the same as Mouser's idea.) It works, but cannot handle a number of edge cases, such as a project that has a page unique to it (not present in sibling projects) - in this case my system would think every project contains that page, and serve up useless blank pages for all projects that don't actually use this particular template. I also decided it needs categories as another level of organization - not yet implemented.

Real life caught up with me more just about when I was creating templates to put up the live site, and I haven't touched it since then.

I dropped Joomla entirely, btw. It's too heavy and at the same time too inflexible for my needs. The editors are awful, all of them much worse than WordPress's built in wysiwyg/html editor (the latter is actually very smart in a good way and convenient).Serious functionality is missing, such as there is no support for comments under articles, until you either find a suitable free module (which may become unsupported later) or pay up. My least favorite aspect of Joomla though was how much effort it takes to add a single new article, compared to WordPress, and how little functionality is achieved after all the work is done (again compared to WordPress).

So my site is static, until I roll out my homegrown php solution, but it's WordPress all the way for the blog.

502

Living Room / Re: Win7 Bug - New windows/notifications do not get focus

« Last post by tranglos on December 15, 2009, 08:25 PM »

The last would imply Active Tracking may be enabled along with the option to raise windows made active by this tracking.

-4wd (December 15, 2009, 06:47 PM)

Could be accidental triple-clicking as well: the double-click opens an application, then the instantaneous third click gives focus to the desktop or whatever window it happens to hit. Now that another window has been given focus via that additional click, the just-started app won't receive it. If the system is set up to launch stuff on a single click, then doing a double-click instead could trigger the same effect.

This seminal article on (not) stealing focus has a comment below it that describes such a scenario:
http://blogs.msdn.co...9/02/20/9435239.aspx

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Living Room / Re: Win7 Bug - New windows/notifications do not get focus

« Last post by tranglos on December 15, 2009, 05:49 AM »

How many times have you been on a roll in MS Word or similar typing your heart out & then looked up at the screen and something stole Word's window focus and half of what you typed was lost?)

-Innuendo (December 14, 2009, 06:43 PM)

Not often enough for it to be an issue, and I'm writing all the time. If you touch-type, you see when a box pops up. Maybe people should be installing fewer "helpful" applications that end with -gator or -buddy?

Not only is there no work-around, but this is billed as a new feature of Windows 7.

-Innuendo (December 14, 2009, 06:43 PM)

This feature was already present in XP, where you have an option to disable it (i.e. let windows steal focus). Has it been further "improved" in 7? Has it changed?

It's potentially dangerous too, because you may miss notifications that are important (or interesting to you), as they will be obscured by other windows. And it's a source of unending grief for users and coders who *want* a focus-stealing popup in some legitimate scenarios (e.g. when you press a hotkey to bring an application to foreground).

It's always been possible to code for non-intrusive popups (see Calendarscope for a perfect implementation). Users who've had problems with this should have taken the issue with application authors, instead of prodding MS to further hobble the OS.

Now you can work with your apps without fear of anything stealing its focus freeing you to deal with intrusive dialog boxes in your own time on your terms.

-Innuendo (December 14, 2009, 06:43 PM)

It seems to me that Josh is describing something a little different though - you click to start/open a window/application, and it opens but does not receive focus. That would be unbelievably brain-dead, e.g. start Word, then you still have to click it before you can start typing. Not the same as pop-up dialogs from already running apps. Thankfully I haven't observed it on my wife's installation of 7. Josh, could you please confirm?

504

Living Room / Re: How's *that* for a false positive? And is it? (Avira AV)

« Last post by tranglos on December 08, 2009, 12:05 PM »

Today Avira decided uTorrent.exe was a trojan. Similar reports to be found on uTorrent forum. For my part, I have declared Avira malware and removed it. I really hope Mouser's Superior AV project takes off!

FWIW, Kaspersky is one AV that you can decide not to run at startup, or quit it when it is running, and it won't leave any services behind when you do. This means it can be used in manual-only mode, but with a slight hitch: the right-click menu command to scan a file is inactive if Kaspersky is not running. This means that in order to check a file you must start KAV, then right-click a file and scan, then quit KAV.

On the bad side, Kaspersky is awfully unfriendly to other AV and malware detecting applications. Here's a long list of applications Kaspersky claims are "incompatible" with it: http://support.kaspe...m/faq/?qid=208280128

The KAV installer detects all these products and uninstalls them (!) for you. Thankfully there is a prompt, but you cannot continue installing KAV as long as it detects any of the listed products. There is a procedure to skip the check, but it's not for the timid:
http://support.kaspe...nstall?qid=208280398

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Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: MiniReview of Linkman URL Organizer and Search Tool

« Last post by tranglos on December 08, 2009, 11:28 AM »

This is more to combat the extensions like that Microsoft .NET Assistant extension that just appeared in everyone's list of installed extensions one day with no clue as to how it got there.

-Innuendo (December 08, 2009, 10:37 AM)

...and these are increasingly annoying. On my system: Foxit Reader plugin (never asked for that), getPlusPlus for Adobe (ditto), Google Gadget Plugin (I don't use Google Desktop, the personalized Google homepage or any gadgets), Java Deployment Toolkit, Java Platform SE, MS Office 2003, Microsoft DRM (hello?!), Picasa, RealJukebox Plugin, RealOne Player Version Plugin, Windows Presentation Foundation. All apperar invisibly and can be disabled, but cannot be uninstalled from FireFox.

Linkman is not one of those, however

506

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Free TuneUp Utilities 2009!

« Last post by tranglos on December 07, 2009, 05:49 AM »

To anyone who has upgraded to considers upgrading to Windows 7, TuneUp 2009 refuses to install on 7. Only version 2010 will install.

507

Living Room / Re: How's *that* for a false positive? And is it? (Avira AV)

« Last post by tranglos on December 01, 2009, 02:13 AM »

At least UAC gives you a clear indication that an application is trying to access locations that most applications shouldn't - with the amount of false positives AV products throw, all bets are off.

-f0dder (December 01, 2009, 01:46 AM)

f0dder, it seems there is no way we are ever going to agree on this.

Every UAC notification is a false positive by design, because UAC doesn't know that the application is trying to do anything untoward, so it warns about practically all of them. AV software at least tries to detect actual harm.

I'll take a false positive from AV software once a week or so(*) - though I do agree they are insidious and cause grief to upstanding developers. But so does UAC.

That said, the only actual benefit I got from running AV since I recall has been limited to stopping trojans on other people's pendrives, or my own after I'd taken them to a printing shop. (I have yet to see a printing shop with an uninfected computer.) I disable autorun as a rule, but at least once I've realized it was enabled for USB drives while I wasn't aware of that. Whether this is sufficient pay-off for the performance penalty associated with real-time protection and 60+ MB memory use, I honestly don't know. There should be a better way - like me being still more diligent about disabling autorun for all removable drives.

(*) Though it's more like once a month for me.

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Living Room / Re: How's *that* for a false positive? And is it? (Avira AV)

« Last post by tranglos on November 30, 2009, 05:08 PM »

The file is no longer there - as you can see from the filename, it was a temporary file. Either it got successfully renamed to who-knows-what, or Avira prevented storing the file, or it was a "system temp" file and got automatically unlinked as soon as the downloader closed it.

i have written over and over again, and am getting sick of repeating myself, that antivirus companies MUST STOP this ridiculous behavior where they report wild guesses as confident detections.  it is absolutely inexcusable.

-mouser (November 30, 2009, 05:00 PM)

No, it's all just harmless fun!

509

Living Room / How's *that* for a false positive? And is it? (Avira AV)

« Last post by tranglos on November 30, 2009, 04:51 PM »

My XP doesn't have that much life left in it before I upgrade to 7, so, out of boredom and sheer malice, I re-enabled Windows Update after a long hiatus, to see what gifts it would bring. And lo, I am bored no longer!



I got three such screens in sequence. I am of course assuming it is a false positive, but I still clicked Deny, because (unlike UAC ) anti-virus software is often useful and I won't ignore its advice blindly. AV heuristics is off, by the way, so Avira must have seen something it knows to be wicked.

What to do, what to do? Trust that no-one hacked into Windows Update servers and placed a trojan there, or trust Avira knows a trojan when it sees one? It's almost like Russian Roulette, isn't it?

510

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 7 — first impressions

« Last post by tranglos on November 30, 2009, 12:50 PM »

If Windows tried to differentiate between user-launched and not, malware would simply send keystrokes/mouse-movements...

-f0dder (November 30, 2009, 11:32 AM)

Sure, but then what's the point of prompting in the first place? If I'm about to start a virus, UAC doesn't know about it and neither do I. Only my AV software will. and if I'm starting a benign app, UAC serves no purpose.

Since it's pretty much impossible to launch regedit or a snapin accidentally, the prompt seems redundant.

-tranglos

Double-clicking (or malware doing ShellExecute on) a .reg file...

-f0dder (November 30, 2009, 11:32 AM)

There has always been a prompt for double-clicking a .reg file, and that's good. On the other hand, starting regedit without any command-line parameters is not in itself harmful. I would sooner understand a prompt before regedit tries to write to the registry. I can't accept a prompt just for starting regedit.

Maybe this is a character issue, f0dder None of the UAC annoyances are present on XP, of course, but there is a distant hint of the same. XP creates a folder called "System Volume Information" on every drive. If my understanding is correct, this folder is used to keep the System Restore snapshots. These folders are inaccessible to admin users - you can't see what's inside, you can't read the contents nothing. Since the folders are locked out, I don't know if defraggers or apps that show disk usage by folder can even do their work properly. Maybe, maybe not. I turn System Restore off first thing after installing XP, because I don't like black boxes on my system that take up who knows what amount of space and can't be managed by the admin. Do I trust System Restore will work when needed? Not at all.

UAC, and the other new Vista/7 "security" features are in the same league. They lock me out of things on my own system I may want to look at and know about, and I don't like that.

Keep in mind that the main benefit of UAC is protecting you from stuff that happens behind your back, combined with the fact that Windows can't (and shouldn't!) try to differentiate between user-initiated actions and programmatic actions.

-f0dder (November 30, 2009, 11:32 AM)

So far it's only trying to protect me from starting applications I want to start. It serves no purpose on a properly maintained system. Thankfully I can turn it off

511

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 7 — first impressions

« Last post by tranglos on November 30, 2009, 08:24 AM »

Then you need to upgrade roughly half of the shareware apps you use. Properly written apps should not bring forth a UAC prompt unless they are a system utility (spyware scanner, defragger, etc.). I have UAC set on high and rarely see UAC prompts.

-Innuendo (November 29, 2009, 07:58 PM)

Why should there be a prompt to run a spyware scanner? How is it useful? Potentially, how many people will get spooked by the warning and decide not to run the scanner after all?

But that's nothing. You can't even rename a desktop icon without an "As administrator" confirmation, even though the logged-in user *is* an administrator.

I don't experience that on my machine, but maybe it's because I have the desktop pointing to my D: drive.

-Innuendo (November 29, 2009, 07:58 PM)

That may well be. I still don't get why deleting items does not require admin rights, but renaming does.

In "Default programs", all the file associations grabbed by Windows Media Player are grayed out and can't be changed (to the VLC player, say). The workaround seems to be to manually change association for each individual file extension, which is somewhat arduous. I hope this is a bug.

If you use the file association method inside VLC you'll accomplish your task a lot easier.

-Innuendo (November 29, 2009, 07:58 PM)

I did that of course, and Media Player was still launching. I've had to select individual file extensions and remap them one by one. Like I said, this could be unintended.

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General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 7 — first impressions

« Last post by tranglos on November 30, 2009, 08:18 AM »

Actually, in Win7, it can distinguish between user-initiated actions. You have to remember, however, that certain actions WILL throw a prompt making sure its something you want to do (Launching regedit or certain MMC Snapins).

-Josh (November 30, 2009, 08:06 AM)

Since it's pretty much impossible to launch regedit or a snapin accidentally, the prompt seems redundant.

And the reason it can ask for confirmations is if that application is compromised (which is why no white-lists are made for UAC) and it tries to do something admin level, it will alert you.

-Josh (November 30, 2009, 08:06 AM)

Then it should alert when a process tries to do somtehing fishy, not simply when the process starts. It's impossible to know beforehand whether an app has been compromised or not. Again, this is what AV/antispyware software is there to detect.

UAC is DESIGNED to give you warnings to potential hazardous applications or programs.

-Josh (November 30, 2009, 08:06 AM)

Like Tune-Up Utilities 2010 I installed it, I launch it, I don't need to click through another prompt - it just makes no sense. What is anyone supposed to do - say Oh noes, I bought this really dangerous software, maybe I should listen to Windows and not use it after all? It's crazy.

At the same time, there are no prompts when TuneUp installer registers its services, which is where a malware app could do some real harm.

I just can't see a scenario where I should be prompted before I knowingly execute a known application. It serves no purpose if the app is fine, and it serves no purpose if the app is a trojan, because I cannot know that. At the very least there should be an option like "Do not prompt for this application again".

513

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 7 — first impressions

« Last post by tranglos on November 30, 2009, 08:09 AM »

I think the customizable systray is a good thing, I just think A: stuff shouldn't be hidden by default

-JavaJones (November 29, 2009, 08:41 PM)

Precisely. Just like hiding known file extensions - the default setting is wrong.

and B: like the new "Jump menus"

-JavaJones (November 29, 2009, 08:41 PM)

I don't think I've discovered the jump menus yet, though now I recall having read about them. What are they?

Does backspace go *up* or "back"?

-JavaJones (November 29, 2009, 08:41 PM)

I think it goes back in Explorer. It goes up in TC and DOpus.

514

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 7 — first impressions

« Last post by tranglos on November 30, 2009, 08:06 AM »

Poland is now in the EU so why not simply buy it from another EU country? Under the single market I can't see that Microsoft is legally able to restrict sales within regions of Europe.

-Carol Haynes (November 30, 2009, 06:41 AM)

Legally they can't restrict sales, but everyone does it anyway - from MS to Amazon to Embarcadero (you can only buy Delphi from a local reseller, at really aggravating prices and no added value).

For example: http://www.amazon.co...Family/dp/B002MT21N6

-Carol Haynes (November 30, 2009, 06:41 AM)

Amazon won't ship this outside of the UK - at least this has been my experience with software, I haven't tried this specific item. I'd normally be happy with an English version of Windows, but having the PL version is a must for my work, since I often need to check the UI to keep my translations consistent. There are glossaries, but they often lag behind what's actually shown on screen.

I'm not complaining about not being able to jump on 7 right away though. My wife's computer is confusing both her and myself. In a Save As dialog box, how do you navigate quickly to the physical folder structure? It takes too many clicks to go via Desktop -> Computer -> drive -> find your folder. I'll have to spend some time with it to find a quicker way or find how to tweak the locations displayed by default.

(And, unrelated to Windows 7, we just tried to scan a page into a Word 2007 doc and couldn't find out how. There's no intuitive path such as Insert -> (Image -> ) From Scanner. The actual procedure is here, check it out. This is the first time ever I've had to google to find out how to do something in Word! And now that I know how to do it, I curse whoever came up with the idea that scanner image acquisition has anything to do with clip art. I must be getting old! )

515

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 7 — first impressions

« Last post by tranglos on November 30, 2009, 07:52 AM »

Please note: UAC is not DESIGNED to stop malware, much to the dismay of kaspersky and their latest report that states the fact that UAC does not stop malware.

-Josh (November 29, 2009, 05:25 PM)

I seriously don't think I understand what it *is* designed to do, other than to annoy and confuse. The problem seems to be that Windows can't tell the difference between a user-initiated action and an action that's possibly unauthorized.

If I just double-clicked a shortcut, what's the point of asking for confirmation? I'll confirm it, why wouldn't I? If the shortcut leads to a virus, this is a task for AV software to detect it.

516

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 7 — first impressions

« Last post by tranglos on November 30, 2009, 06:32 AM »

Would it not have been better to spring for the US$149.99 Family Pack and get W7HP for 3 machines?

-4wd (November 29, 2009, 06:05 PM)

It would indeed be better, if only Microsoft were selling 3-packs in Poland. They aren't. They used to sell XP in 3-packs, which was how I originally bought it, but Vista and now 7 are only sold in ones. I guess "greedy b*ggers" is right

517

General Software Discussion / Windows 7 — first impressions

« Last post by tranglos on November 29, 2009, 04:51 PM »

Last week I built a new machine for my wife and installed Windows 7 Home Premium on it. My experience so far is limited to installing the system, drivers and some favorite shareware, and tweaking the knobs a bit. I've never used Vista, so this has been my first exposure to Aero, UAC and the redesigned Start Menu / taskbar controls.

Installation went flawlessly. The first hitch was when Windows would not find drivers for the TP-Link wi-fi adapter, and would not accept the *.inf file downloaded from the vendor site. (On the other hand, all I had to do for wired access was plug in the cable.) Turns out the on-disk version of Windows 7 must be a bit flaky in the driver department, since after Windows Update ran its course twice, the system decided it liked the vendor's wi-fi drivers after all. All other drivers (printer, scanner etc) were downloaded and installed automatically as soon as I connected the devices. Nice.

What's truly impressive is how snappy the system is. My wife's machine is mid-range, with a Core 2 Duo just like mine and a less amped up, though newer, motherboard - but everything starts and runs much, much faster than on my 2 years' old XP machine (which was pretty highly specced at the time). Granted, the new system hasn't yet amassed all the crud my XP machine has, but I'm still surprised, impressed and envious. Firefox starts up just like that, snap your fingers, no waiting. Word 2007 likewise. Is it the 8 MB of CPU cache instead of my 4? Is a new WD Caviar Black so much faster than my WD Raptor (I doubt that)? Are new DDR2 Patriot memory chips snappier than same from 2 years ago? Or has Windows really become more efficient on its own?

Now, for the newbie shock and some gripes.

Whoever still says UAC is a good idea... I just cannot see what you see. Roughly half the shareware apps I use raise the UAC warning on launch - a huge annoyance. But that's nothing. You can't even rename a desktop icon without an "As administrator" confirmation, even though the logged-in user *is* an administrator. Jeez! I *will* absolutely turn UAC off. It has no value. It pops up so often, after a short while you instinctively click Yes. That's worse than having no protection at all and having to actually think of what you're doing.

The Start menu - I understand MS tried to avoid the sub-sub-subfolder navigation ugliness, but after installing a number of apps, the menu becomes a steaming pile of cr*p anyway. But arranging the menu manually, say by trimming the number of folders, grouping related apps together, becomes a UAC nightmare. Why can't an admin user rename or move a Start menu item without those stupid prompts? *Deleting* a whole non-empty Start menu subfolder doesn't cause a warning, though. Figure that!

And for all the UAC paranoia, the Explorer option to hide extensions of known files still defaults to enabled! What's possibly the single most harmful setting in Windows, which gave rise to trojans masquerading as documents or images, is still there, unchanged. How can that be excused?

And while I'm at it, what happened to the system tray? Everything is hidden by default there. It may look nicer that way, but is less useful, because tray icons often indicate program state, and it's also harmful, because it makes it easier for vendors to cram your system with autostart applications that run in the tray, and now most users won't even see them, ever. All the stupid, ugly, useless, non-standard applications that install with hardware drivers, all the "start Java faster", "Adobe cr*p updater" little pieces of trash you want to disable as soon as you can, will now run unobstructed on most computers.

(The built in command-line in the Start menu is nice to have, though hardly impressive to this FARR aficionado. And I immediately turned taskbar captions back on; icons are often not distinctive enough.)

In general, it's getting harder to find things. Ive managed to open the Device Manager a couple of times, but I still can't remember where it is. And am I the only one enraged by the Control Panel design? By default, it shows the most common tasks, but a lot of important stuff isn't there, like user accounts. It took me a while to figure I had to change the view from categories to big or small icons, to display all the goodies. Now, a "view" is supposed to be a different presentation of the same data, right? It is not logical and it is not intuitive to show only a few items in the default view, and name the other views in a way that does not suggest you will see more when you choose them. Why not a "More" button, or an "Advanced" option? UI Hall of Shame, meet the Control Panel. I mean it!

In "Default programs", all the file associations grabbed by Windows Media Player are grayed out and can't be changed (to the VLC player, say). The workaround seems to be to manually change association for each individual file extension, which is somewhat arduous. I hope this is a bug.

I like the clickable breadcrumbs in Explorer windows (it took MS how many years to "invent" those?), but where is the "Up" button? No "Up" button, so now the most common navigational operation requires at least two careful clicks, instead of just one - unless there's some other way I haven't noticed.

Oh, I like the gadgets. This is the first sidebar I've seen that sticks to the desktop and does not force maximized windows to be resized to a smaller area. Programs just cover the gadgets, and that's good. That's a sidebar I can use.

All that said, my subjective perception of how fast and snappy 7 is has just about convinced me to switch my own machine too... eventually. Right now, it's too expensive to buy another copy on a whim.

518

General Software Discussion / Re: Forte Agent reaches 6.0, now with "hide quoted text"

« Last post by tranglos on November 24, 2009, 05:43 PM »

Not to derail the "Let's Bash The Bat!" train, but I'm curious as to if anyone is still using Agent? More specifically, anyone here on DC use it? Or ever use it?

There was a time when Agent dominated the Usenet landscape, but these days it's regarded more as a fringe player.

-Innuendo (November 24, 2009, 09:04 AM)

I guess that's because Usenet has become fringe, unfortunately. I used to use Agent for email, until I switched to TheBat a few years ago, but Agent is still my favorite reader for newsgroups. The general public newsgroups are mostly spam and testosterone now, but there are still plenty of support groups for various products, like Delphi components. Borland (not Embarcadero) newsgroups remain the best source for Delphi help, etc. Some of these groups are closed-membership and if so, they do not get indexed by Google. So while I don't use Agent that much anymore, I have about 12 Usenet servers defined that I regularly download new posts from, *and* have kept a huge amount of knowledge in the archives.

519

Living Room / Re: Bad technology day!

« Last post by tranglos on November 24, 2009, 04:46 PM »

My bad technology day has turned to a week. The video card finally did die as I expected. Replaced it today (okay, at least now I can run Aero ;-) and while I was doing that, I thought it'd be a good idea to untangle and dust off all the cables at the back of the desk, since I had already unplugged a lot of things before opening the puter.

Boy did I pick a wrong day for untangling cables!

After everything was plugged back in, my D-Link network drive won't start. Must be an electrical failure, perhaps in the adapter, since not even the power LED comes on. So now I'm without an external backup, and if anything else should go wron

520

General Software Discussion / Re: Forte Agent reaches 6.0, now with "hide quoted text"

« Last post by tranglos on November 24, 2009, 07:59 AM »

I asked them to add a checkbox option so that the autoformat feature in microed will allow one carriage return to be interpreted as a new line.  They refused.  Adamantly.  I don't quite understand why.

-superboyac (November 23, 2009, 06:07 PM)

It's only a small exaggeration to say **everyone** asked them to change that behavior of the editor. it's hopeless.

-tranglos (November 23, 2009, 06:26 PM)

Really?  I didn't realize that.  When I asked and made a fuss about it, it seemed like I was the only one who had issues with it and everyone else was happy with it.  Why are they so stubborn about it?

-superboyac (November 23, 2009, 07:07 PM)

Whenever TheBat! comes up, on whatever forum, this issue is raised and most people hate it. I've only ever seen it defended by a few hardliners on TheBat mailing list. this "feature" is awfully annoying, and the developers' attitude adds insult to injury. I'd have given up on TB long ago, if it weren't so convenient (and, for me, reliable) in all other aspects.

The developers' sole rationale for how the plaintext editor behaves is that in the editor, you see exactly what will be sent. If a line is not wrapped, it will be sent unwrapped, etc. Well, it's true as far as it goes, but *so what*?

They may have had a point once, a long time ago, when word wrapping was still something of a luxury on certain platforms (and there were MTAs on Unix and VMS VAX systems that would unceremoniously truncate lines longer than a certain constant value), but that was in mid-nineties. The rationale makes no sense - it's like printing a newspaper that you cannot fold, to ensure what you see is exactly what came out of the printing press. Argh. You are certainly not alone in your frustration.

521

General Software Discussion / Re: Forte Agent reaches 6.0, now with "hide quoted text"

« Last post by tranglos on November 23, 2009, 06:26 PM »

I asked them to add a checkbox option so that the autoformat feature in microed will allow one carriage return to be interpreted as a new line.  They refused.  Adamantly.  I don't quite understand why.

-superboyac (November 23, 2009, 06:07 PM)

It's only a small exaggeration to say **everyone** asked them to change that behavior of the editor. it's hopeless.

522

General Software Discussion / Re: Forte Agent reaches 6.0, now with "hide quoted text"

« Last post by tranglos on November 23, 2009, 02:57 AM »

Good luck...Ritlabs only adds extremely subtle and minor features as far as I've seen.  For them to add newsreader support like that, well, that would be the most significant thing they've done in  several years. 

-superboyac (November 22, 2009, 10:53 PM)

It is a minor feature, though. TheBat already highlights quotes better than Agent, since it can use different colors for nested levels of quoted text. To simply hide the quoted lines instead of coloring them should be relatively easy, especially in the viewer, where text is not editable.

Don't get me wrong, I love the Bat, but they never ever add any useful features to the program.

-superboyac (November 22, 2009, 10:53 PM)

This I agree with. The last feature that meant anything to me was the automatic versioned backup. Then again, the one time I tried to restore account data from a .tbk file, it crashed

523

General Software Discussion / Forte Agent reaches 6.0, now with "hide quoted text"

« Last post by tranglos on November 22, 2009, 06:36 PM »

Forte has released version 6.0 of its venerable newsreader, Agent. Their mailing highlights these new features:

   * Automatic server failover when downloading message bodies
   * Faster Usenet header downloads (compressed headers)
  * A new hide-quoted-text command
   * Improved browser navigation
   * New go-offline and retry-failed-tasks-now commands
   * Improvements to searching

I just had to upgrade. The "hide quoted text" feature (press "Q" to toggle) is something I've asked from Forte a number of times, starting in 2002 or maybe even earlier. I'd seen it around that time in a Linux text-mode newsreader 'mutt', and couldn't believe Windows newsreaders and email clients did not have it. A mere 7 years later, my wish has been granted :)

(New users: $US 29.00, upgrade: $US 19.00. They don't appear to surcharge VAT for EU buyers.)

Now, since I no longer use Agent for email, I wonder how much longer it'll take Ritlabs to implement the same in TheBat! I've been asking them, too, for just about as long.

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Living Room / Re: Bad technology day!

« Last post by tranglos on November 21, 2009, 03:02 PM »

Hang in there tranglos!

-mouser (November 21, 2009, 01:42 PM)

No new failures since that post

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Living Room / Bad technology day - continues!

« Last post by tranglos on November 21, 2009, 10:41 AM »

Within a few hours of each other:

- two light bulbs went poof, kitchen and bedroom...

- my puter started freezing when the screensaver came in, and soon after that all I got was a garbled screen right from the boot-up time. After unplugging and reconnecting the displays the problem seems to have disappeared, but I suspect the electronics on the video card may be overheating or just getting flaky...

- my car broke down. Could be anything from a faulty spark plug, the fuel pump, some high-voltage wiring, some blackbox electronic part or spiked fuel, who knows. It's losing power, chugs like a Diesel, and the "check engine" light is on, and the bad thing is, I must wait til Monday before I can have it diagnosed.

There's an old Polish saying, "misfortunes come in pairs". I've had quadruplets already today, and it's certainly not my first bad technology day. Things tend to break down in batches, don't they?