Recent Posts

651

Find And Run Robot / Re: FARR v2.77.01 not launching apps from numeric keypad!

« Last post by Nod5 on August 27, 2009, 04:35 PM »

numlock on + inputbox focus + normal list: num keys write 123...
numlock on + results focus  + normal list: launches result 1, 2, 3...
numlock off + inputbox focus  + normal list: num key 2 = arrow down ...
numlock off + results focus  + normal list: num key 2 = arrow down ...

652

Find And Run Robot / Re: How to change background color for the results area

« Last post by Nod5 on August 27, 2009, 04:22 PM »

I said cool, not useful But I was thinking that visual cues for when an alias goes on/off might be a useful reminder/emphasizer. In most cases you of course see and know right away that an alias is activated because, for example, you typed "helpfarr" and that special list shows up. But when using very simple aliases, like  "^b (.+)$" or "^ (.+)$", to modify searches in subtle ways (and so not limit the results to just a few fixed matches), such reminders/emphasizers might be more useful. Hard to tell beforehand though. Maybe it can be compared to the bolding of matching parts in the results list that some launchers have. No essential launcher ingredient in any way, mostly just "visual topping".

653

DC Website Help and Extras / Re: lite dc forum version for mobile devices?

« Last post by Nod5 on August 27, 2009, 03:49 PM »

this is built into smf.

for example this thread in dif mobile modes:

• wap mode - https://www.donation....php?wap;topic=19208
• wap2 mode - https://www.donation...php?wap2;topic=19208
• imode - https://www.donation...hp?imode;topic=19208

-mouser (August 26, 2009, 10:36 AM)

Cool! Though all three strip a bit too much of the page, including the links. Are there even more modes than those? I'm using an android phone and browsing in standard mode is pretty ok navigation wise, but very slow on DC due to many images (I think). Standard mode with all images disabled would be just about perfect. But I guess there is no "no-image mode" right?

654

Find And Run Robot / Re: How to change background color for the results area

« Last post by Nod5 on August 27, 2009, 02:42 AM »

Confimed working. Got me thinking: Would it be easy to let aliases turn on this temporarily via a special string? And then revert to default when the alias goes inactive. Could look cool! 

655

Find And Run Robot / Re: FARR v2.77.01 not launching apps from numeric keypad!

« Last post by Nod5 on August 27, 2009, 02:27 AM »

it works if you press "down" first

656

Find And Run Robot / Re: bug: launch history bypass search directory file restrictions?

« Last post by Nod5 on August 22, 2009, 04:19 PM »

Right, I have no need for it ATM so I shouldn't call it a problem really. The aliases works as I hoped for now so all is well.

657

Find And Run Robot / Re: bug: launch history bypass search directory file restrictions?

« Last post by Nod5 on August 22, 2009, 08:13 AM »

my alias doesn't work at all when I add "-.txt".
edit: I accidentally unticked the alias box.  Works now. In the alias the file restrictions need to be individual, like so:
C:\aaa $$1 | dosearch +aaa -.txt -.jpg -.url $$1

A problem: the restriction excludes any file containing ".txt" in extension OR name. So both "file.txt.pdf" and "file.txt" are excluded. To avoid that we'd need some way to specify the restriction. Compare: in regexp $ marks the end of the string so ".txt$" would do the trick there.

658

General Software Discussion / Re: Firefox Extensions: Your favorite or most useful

« Last post by Nod5 on August 21, 2009, 04:28 PM »

I like drag and drop add-ons. But there's one feature I can't find in any such add-on: drag and drop some text that contains multiple links to open all of the links. Several add-ons support opening single dropped links but only do websearches when larger chunks of text (with or without links) are dropped. The Maxthon browser had support for such multi-link drag and dropping. Has anyone found a way to do that on FF?

List of found add-ons:

QuickDrag 2.0.2.1  - https://addons.mozil...S/firefox/addon/6912
+ drop actions for link, text, image
- drop text with multiple links to open them all

Easy DragToGo 1.1.2.4 - https://addons.mozil...S/firefox/addon/6639
+ drop actions for link, text, image
+ directional drag
- drop text with multiple links to open them all

DragIt (formerly Drag de Go) 0.4.1.1 -

https://addons.mozil.../firefox/addon/10875
+ drop actions for link, text, image and many more
+ directional drag
- drop text with multiple links to open them all

Drag & DropZones 1.2.6 - https://addons.mozil...S/firefox/addon/5595
+ various drop actions (search, open, save)
+ directional (positional) drag
- drop text with multiple links to open them all

older, not working in FF 3.5:
Drag de Go 0.2.5 - https://addons.mozil...E/firefox/addon/2918
Super DragAndGo 0.2.6  - https://addons.mozil...US/firefox/addon/137

somewhat similar add-ons:

FireGestures 1.5.1 - https://addons.mozil...S/firefox/addon/6366
+ ctrl+rclick+draw line over links = open them all

draw line/rectangle over multiple links to open them:
Multi Links 1.0.0.12 - https://addons.mozil.../firefox/addon/13494
OLD -- Chain Links 1.0  - https://addons.mozil.../firefox/addon/10844
OLD -- Snap Links [FF3] 1 - https://addons.mozil...S/firefox/addon/8675


dragdropupload 1.8  - https://addons.mozil...S/firefox/addon/2190

QuickDrag's FAQ gives a good overview of some of the differences between a few drag add-ons: http://code.kliu.org/quickdrag/faq.html

659

Find And Run Robot / bug: launch history bypass search directory file restrictions?

« Last post by Nod5 on August 20, 2009, 11:24 AM »

Bug replicated with these settings:

ALIAS:
^b (\w.*)[^\+]$
C:\aaa $$1 | dosearch +aaa $$1

SEARCH DIRECTORY:
path: C:\aaa
restrictions: -txt;url;jpg
modifier keyword: aaa

Given that then entering "b test" in FARR should match C:\aaa\test.png but not C:\aaa\test.txt . But if the user has previously launched C:\aaa\test.txt then FARR seems to ignore the set restriction and displays C:\aaa\phrase.txt among the alias matches. FARR does not include other matching .txt files (like  C:\aaa\test2.txt ) until such other files also have been launched by FARR once.

(background: the last part of the regex -- [^\+]$ -- is there to disable this alias by adding "+" to the end of the search phrase and then immediately let another alias -- ^b (\w.*)\+$  -- search the same folder but without the restrictions, using another search directory modifier. If I get this problem sorted out then that will be a very handy way to have an alias toggle between limited/full search within some folders)

660

General Software Discussion / Re: Why is it so hard to find a decent image organizer?

« Last post by Nod5 on August 18, 2009, 03:12 PM »

[...] tags directly to filenames  [...] ok, this can also be done in a one-click fashion using XYplorer's scripting. Like you could set up 20 Catalog items which on a click do whatever you want to the current file name. All imaginable logic and rename artistry is supported.  [...]  Very soon you will also get customizable toolbar buttons  [...]

-DonL (August 16, 2009, 02:43 PM)

Neat! Though by the time I read this I had already done a small standalone AHK tag toolbar that works ok for my purposes. It gets the selected files path from the active explorer/xyplorer/etc window through ctrl+c and then operates on the filenames. (If there's great demand for it -- unlikely! -- then I'll clean up the code later and post it. Drawback: I've found no easy way to re-select multiple files in Explorer programmatically from an AHK script after renaming.) Anyway, I will keep checking XYplorer's development on this front. Customizable toolbar buttons that allow the user to run almost anything is great for many other uses also I suspect. I still like the XY's thumbnail mode a lot so I might use it for that alone with my script - I'll testdrive some more and we'll see. Thanks for all the helpful feedback!

661

General Software Discussion / Re: Why is it so hard to find a decent image organizer?

« Last post by Nod5 on August 16, 2009, 04:13 AM »

Pretty long post. Could need some ellipsis... I added one...

-DonL (August 15, 2009, 12:02 PM)

Thanks for more pointers! Worth repeating: XYplorer has a lot of great features. Though in the end it seems I'd need some scripting to speed my final goal (tags to filenames) after all. I haven't found any other application that without scripting achieves that (very narrow) goals exactly either so I'm going for some AHK solution that operates on top of some thumbnail list view program like XYplorer or Explorer.

662

General Software Discussion / Re: Why is it so hard to find a decent image organizer?

« Last post by Nod5 on August 15, 2009, 04:14 AM »

DonL: Thanks! I had already downloaded the XYplorer trial and looked through the help file but found no EXIF tagging solution. So I was about to give up on it. But this gives new hope!  

BRU has four date metadata variables to work with: created, modified, accessed, taken. Will XYplorer's dateexif be equal to date taken?

The thumbnail mode in XYplorer is excellent. Very fast and configurable! Great with the right click popup previews. I think view mode "details with thumbnail#1" (where thumbnail#1 is set to pretty large) would be most useful since in the regular (non-detailed) thumbnail modes the filename is cut off which makes changes to the end of long filenames hard to see (ellipsis, grr!)

Problem regarding tagging and putting tags in filenames:  I've not yet found a very fast process in XYplorer for the type of filename tagging I need. It looks like there are two (or maybe three) alternatives:

A. set up rename commands that append a tag to filename (user > manage commands...). Select files and execute command through clicking user > rename > commandname or a set hotkey. But that might get slow/hard sometimes. Example: a folder of 100 images files where image subsets are to be tagged with multiple (different) tags from a set of 20 tags. 20 hotkeys is to much to remember. A repetitive three click menu process is too long. Things would speed up if the user commands could be put as a list (not menu) of text buttons directly on the toolbar AND if they somehow could be made into toggle commands (i.e. executing the command for tag "dog" on a file that already has "dog" in its name removes that tag from the filename). Advantages with A: the file name changes are immediate. No limit to the number of tags. Multiple tags can be added to each file (that is a must!).

B. set up Tags in Xyplorer by changing the default tag titles from "Red", "Yellow" and so on to whatever tags I need. Apply tags to selected files by adding the Tag dropdown to the toolbar and clicking Tag menu > tag. And then after tagging do an extra script to write tags to filenames. Drawbacks: each file can only have one such tag (?). For multiple tags I would need to (i) apply first tag for all files, (ii) write tags to file, (iii) apply second tag ... and so on. That seems to slow.

C. since XYplorer supports some form of scripting (I haven't looked into the details yet) AND dual pane mode, this might be possible: set up a folder with one script file per tag that when executes does a command like in A. Enable dual pane, let one pane view the script files then other the folder with images to tag. Select files to tag in one pane, the doubleclick a script in the other to apply tags.

Comments?


Edit: General brainstorming (not specifically regarding XYplorer): what I'm looking for seems to fall between two categories of common applications: Image managers are good at fast tagging of images but often presuppose that the user will also use the same application to later do tag based browsing/searching/viewing and so do not support complex file remaning based on a combination of datestamps and tags. File Renamers/Managers are excellent at complex file renaming but have obstacles for very quick multi-tagging and have no or limited thumbnail mode. So far I've mostly looked for File Renamers/Managers that can do the other part too. But maybe I should be looking from the other direction: some image manager that is excellent at tagging AND at least support some sort of database export (to XML, CSV or some other plaintext format). I could then make an AHK script that parses the export and for each path associated tags does a rename action.

663

General Software Discussion / Re: Why is it so hard to find a decent image organizer?

« Last post by Nod5 on August 14, 2009, 06:18 PM »

Ok, I'm looking for a file renamer or image manager or similar software with some very specific features. First some background.

I organize images (photos) primitively through timestamped directories and timestamped and tagged image filenames. I can then search images using tags via FARR/Everything. Path example:  C:\photo\20090815\090815-002609 john mary steve london.jpg

I use Bulk Rename Utility (BRU) and some AHK helper scripts to speed up tagging in BRU (to quickly add/remove common tags to some BRU boxes). Two main drawbacks with BRU:
- no thumbnail mode
- tagging via BRU is very slow. If you have 30 images and want to tag all with a date taken timestamp + some other fixed tag then that can be done very quickly. But if you in addition want different additional tags to different subgroups of those 30 images then BRU is slow to use.

I've worked around the problem somewhat with AHK scripts for faster adding of tags (faster than typing them) to BRU boxes and by having a thumbnailed explorer window of the same folder open next to the BRU win for visual cross reference while tagging. It works ok only because I never have that many photos to tag at a single time.

However, now I've got a significantly larger larger number of image files that I want to manage. So I need something faster. But I still want to keep my system with directory and filename timestamps and tags. For maximum portability and minimum lock-in.

So I seek something with these features:

1. thumbnail mode
2. some very fast way to add a tag to selected file(s) (For example, single click a tag in a list to toggle a tag on/off for all selected)
3. some simple way to rename the actual image file name based on its EXIF timestamp and the tags added in step 2

An extra bonus would be if the program can also work the other way i.e. import some image files by parsing existing tags in the filenames and adding files+tags to the applications internal database. But that is not very important.

Something very much like BRU but with thumbnails and better tagging would do the trick. Suggestions?

664

FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: CZB pack

« Last post by Nod5 on August 13, 2009, 05:13 PM »

Also, I suggest adding these lines to the Ninjawords plugin filter part at the end (to remove the background star image + pad the text from the FARR window edge a bit):

[Select]

          document.body.style.backgroundImage='none';\n\
           document.body.style.marginLeft='5';\n\
           document.getElementById('results').style.fontFamily='times new roman';\n\
           document.getElementById('history').style.display='none';\n\
           document.getElementById('history-iphone').style.display='none';\n\
           document.getElementById('hr-container').style.display='none';\n\

edit: improved code
edit2: one more change to remove history

665

Find And Run Robot / Re: FARR html view

« Last post by Nod5 on August 13, 2009, 05:01 PM »

skajfes: check out the fsubscript.js code for ninjawords in the CZB pack -- the latter part seems to use javascript to filter the page before showing it in FARR. Snippet:

[Select]

 js.setStrValue = function onSetStrValue(varname,value){
    if(varname == "EmbeddedWb.DocumentComplete"){
      var pl = pluginInCharge();
      if(pl == "Ninjawords_com" && loaded){
        loaded = false;
        execSafeJS(
          "document.getElementById('header').style.display='none';\n\
           document.getElementById('footer').style.display='none';\n\
           document.getElementById('footer-area').style.display='none';\n\
           document.getElementById('search-area').style.display='none';\n\
           ");
        hidePleaseWait();

edit: mouser already mentioned czb's plugins, I missed that before.

666

FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: CZB pack

« Last post by Nod5 on August 13, 2009, 04:36 PM »

Hi, the (very) old ninjawords plugin I've been using now stopped working. It seems http://ninjawords.co.../definitions/getdef/ has been taken down. The plugin in the CZB pack of course does not use that but instead loads a part of the regular NW page and works fine. But it requires a "return" to run. By now I'm really used to "alias phrase " (instead of "alias phrase" + enter) for word lookups. So what is currently the easiest way to mod the current CZB pack ninjawords script to run on regexmatch (without requiring a return)?

667

Find And Run Robot / Re: Fileinfo (file extension seeker) at top of list

« Last post by Nod5 on August 08, 2009, 12:02 PM »

Hi, one more tip: an alias that autolaunches firefox (so you don't have to press Enter) if "ff" is entered at the beginning of the input box. If you use english win XP then importing this (right click in myalias and choose "import...") should set it up for you:
 

[Select]

1000>>>ff firefox launcher>->Firefox | dolaunch C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox 3\firefox.exe>+>^ff$

I have set up multiple "double character" aliases to autolaunch stuff. They're good because very easy to remember, very quick to execute and the risk for unintentional launchings is low since it is pretty unusual to start any other FARR search with "ff" och "aa" or the likes.
(Actually I started with "triple character" aliases - "fff" - but later got lazy so reverted to "ff" )

668

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: CCCCtrlC - simple multiple clipboard utility

« Last post by Nod5 on August 06, 2009, 12:41 PM »

I'm not sure that it would have to be so very heavy-duty. AHK can check the active window and control class and for most purposes that would be fine. I'll try to put together some code for that when I have more time.

669

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: CCCCtrlC - simple multiple clipboard utility

« Last post by Nod5 on August 05, 2009, 04:13 PM »

Ok I'll try to use it a bit and see if my responses are quick enough :-)

Two more ideas that come to mind:
- For 4 or fewer clipboard use then CCCCtrlC could be more minimalistic to use if the number of clipboards weren't autoextended.
- ctrl+c-holding could be made to loop over those four clipboards until the user presses any other key (like space).

edit: One more thing, not CCCCtrlC specific but relating to clipboards in general: almost every time I need more than two clipboards it is because I am doing paste repetitions of some sort. Like pasting recipient, subject and contents for emails in a webmail interface multiple times. The perfect clipboard tool would have a learn mode in which the user pastes into the three types of input boxes from three different clipboards. Thereafter the user just needs to select each input box and ctrl+v. The script would then know what clipboard to paste from to that box.

670

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: CCCCtrlC - simple multiple clipboard utility

« Last post by Nod5 on August 05, 2009, 03:29 PM »

This is really cool TPReal! Minimalistic and useful. Good work!

I would very rarely have need for more than 4 clipboard items at a single time but for those that do then this hold-wait-release solution might pose a problem: either you speed it up and risk pasting to/copying from the wrong slot or you slow it down but then get annoyed by the wait time. So for 4+ clipboard items I'm thinking that a clickable gui solution, or multiple hotkey solution, could be better.

Do you yourself use it with the default speed? How often do you hit the wrong clipboard slot?

671

General Software Discussion / Re: 30 Days of DonationCoder Screencasts - Video Links Here

« Last post by Nod5 on August 03, 2009, 01:11 PM »

Day 1: video 1
Day 2: video 2 A & B
Day 3: video 3 A & B & C
...

I'm looking forward to Day 30, video 30 W  I hope you don't burn out on the way though 

ScreenShot Captor really has a lot of options and these videos gives a great overview.

672

General Software Discussion / Re: 30 Days of DonationCoder Screencasts - Video Links Here

« Last post by Nod5 on August 02, 2009, 03:22 AM »

Good start! This is such an ambitious, and cool, project that it needs stickying to the DC start page. 

673

FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: Plugin: AlbumDisplayer (BETA)

« Last post by Nod5 on July 31, 2009, 06:16 PM »

I never got this sorted  Tried both to solve it through changes in the .html (javascript to reload once after some time) and in the .js but without success. So I'm reverting to the previous alb version, at least for the moment. I'll just mod it so that the static index is generated via Everything since that is so much faster compared to a autohotkey file loop. That would be some progress, though not as much as I had aimed for.

674

Finished Programs / Re: tv_out: a shortcut for quickly turning extended desktop on/off

« Last post by Nod5 on July 29, 2009, 03:07 AM »

GimmeAreason: Great that you like it!  I also used to use Ati Tray Tools but felt that it had too many features for me - I only ever used it to switch extended desktop on/off. So I made a script for that instead.

Tip: check out tv_out's "sibling" ExtDesk: http://nod5.dcmembers.com/extdesk.html

675

General Software Discussion / Re: Program Whose Time Has Come: virtual folders, collections, file baskets...

« Last post by Nod5 on July 27, 2009, 05:35 PM »

Great post Tranglos! I agree that there is a strong need for virtual folder type programs on Windows. I think the most important challenge is to find a way to make the virtual folders usable from many/all programs.

Re the need for a database: I am really impressed by the speed of Everything. So impressed that I'm more and more thinking that a separate database might not be necessary for some virtual folder usage. It might be enough to have a link to a (complex, regexp) Everything search phrase which, when run, immediately does the search and display the results as a virtual folder + files.