BingThing 1.6.1.0 guilty pleasure

[MilesAhead]

BingThing 1.5.8.0 is now on my page:  MilesAheadSoftware
I believe it is in a usable condition now.  Tooltips should explain most functions.  For more detail see the included Readme.txt file.

I haven't posted this software on my site yet.  It probably needs an incremental search or filtering feature.  That may take awhile.  But it is meant to do some of the stuff I tried to do with BrowserBunch while also letting me search Bing(the guilty pleasure is naming it BingThing so I could not exactly have it use google.)

I notice browsers are very slow loading lately.  For those who leave the browser open all the time that may not matter.  But the way I roll is to close the browser when not using it and open it when I need something.  So I wrote BingThing to make it easier to have something feed the address line of the browser via the command line rather than waiting 45 seconds for Firefox or whatever it is to let me type into the field.

A nice feature is that it uses Single Instance to transfer the command line options to the first instance.  This simplifies using it with a hotkey program.  My ahk general purpose hotkey saves the current clipboard text, then sends Control c to copy the highlighted text in the active window.  Then is restores the saved text to the clipboard after launching BingThing.exe with the selected text.  If nothing is selected that is OK.  Either a new BingThing process starts, or if it is already running, it activates and gets the focus.

Anything on the command tail BingThing copies to the Input Line ready for either search or launch.  As shown in the screen shot, if you have browsers set to open urls in new tabs and they support multiple urls on the command line, such as Firefox or chrome or opera, then it will open multiple sites by just typing the domains on the same line.

BingThing saves the most recently used 128 url/search items.  The file handling is still a bit rough.  But at least there is some history.

Like browser bunch it starts with multiple blank buttons.  I expanded these to 8 over browser bunch's 6.  Pressing a blank button will associate a browser with that button and stick its icon on the button, just like browser bunch did.

There are still a few bugs but I thought I would post it in case anyone would like to play around with it.  I have a feeling the incremental search filtering in the history will be a pita so I am putting it off for now. 

Edit: I may have left out the most important bit of info to clarify using BingThing.  If the radio button Launch is selected, whatever browser button you push will be launched with a command tail of whatever is in the Input Line.  If the Search radio button is selected, then the contents of the Input Line are added to the Bing search string.  Any spaces are replaced with "%20" to avoid the command tail being chopped short by cmd.exe seeing a space character.

Bing supports the "site" parameter so for example if you wish to search Walmart for baseball caps you may type "site:walmart.com baseball caps" in the Input Line, make sure the Search radio is selected, then press the button for the Browser you wish to use for that particular search.  I find it handy for videos as some sites work better with Firefox when trying to play flash video but espn3.com seems to prefer Opera.  Also if you have your hotkey thing going you can copy from most any other program such as another browser or editor and open one of your browsers to the url.

For grins here is the section I use for hotkey.  I use Control Winkey b, but you can change it how you like:

Code: Autohotkey [Select]

1. ^#b::
2.     ClipSave := Clipboard
3.     Clipboard := ""
4.     Send,^c
5.     ClipWait,2
6. ; set the path to BingThing.exe on your system
7.     Run, C:\Utils\BingThing\BingThing.exe %Clipboard%
8.     Clipboard := ClipSave
9.      ClipSave = ; free memory
10. return

[/s]

See the script included in the Zip File download

[MilesAhead]

I tried various ways to filter or search the ListBox and none are smooth.  So for the time being BingThing will plateau.  But I did add a wrinkle to the AHK hotkey trigger that may be generally useful.  I use Winkey b to copy to clipboard without saving the previous clipboard contents.  And Control Winkey b that saves and restores the clipboard text contents around the copy operation.

The rationale being there may be times when it is convenient to paste the same copied link or text multiple times.  Here is the new AHK snippet

Code: Autohotkey [Select]

1. #b::
2. ^#b::
3. UseClipSave := (A_ThisHotkey = "^#b")
4. If (UseClipSave)
5.     ClipSave := Clipboard
6.   Clipboard := ""
7.   Send,^c
8.   ClipWait,2
9.   Run, C:\Utils\BingThing\BingThing.exe %Clipboard%
10.   If (UseClipSave)
11.   {
12.     Clipboard := ClipSave
13.     ClipSave = ; free memory
14.   }
15. return

[MilesAhead]

OK here is a bit better version of BingThing to try.  Please read the Readme.txt for info.  Also hover the mouse on the controls for Tooltip help.  Pressing F1 brings up the About Box.

As I mentioned, incremental search while typing is too busy for this application.  To search the history I added a Filter List Button.  If the Input Line is empty, pressing Filter List will display the entire history(so as to undo a previous filter.)  If text is in the Input Line any history line containing the sub-string will be displayed.

At this point I am not sure if things will get confused if you delete lines while displaying a filtered list.  But I tried it a couple of times and it did not seem to break anything.  But only casually tested so far.

OK, I don't want to reproduce the entire readme here.  The attached zip has the 1.4.0.0 version.  It works much better if you also use the included ahk hotkey snippet.  Select any text is nearly any program, hit the hotkey, and BingThing is up with the text in the Input Line.

Please let me know if weird stuff happens. 

Also please keep the index.html file in the same folder as BingThing.exe.
It makes it easier to guess the default browser. 

[MilesAhead]

Attached is the latest version of BingThing.  1.5.2.0.

Changes:

I start with a List of only one blank item for history.  Then the file is read and added.  Then any blanks are remove before filling the List control.  This should get rid of blank lines in the history.


The Filter List Button is now set as the Default Button.  While typing in the Input Line hitting Enter will filter the list without necessitating taking your fingers from the keyboard.

The latest zip file is attached to this post.

[MilesAhead]

BingThing rev 1.5.3.0  Fixed bug where search strings with %20 instead of spaces were added to history.

[MilesAhead]

BingThing 1.5.5.0  Improved history file load speed on startup.  Eliminated blank lines in history list.  Latest zip attached in this post.

[MilesAhead]

BingThing 1.5.6.0

Slightly modified About Box.  Increased Max History to 256 lines. Fixed regression in
previous update that caused the history order to be reversed on each program load.

[MilesAhead]

BingThing 1.5.7.0  Pressing F1 now opens an About Dialog that allows donations.  All it does if Yes is clicked is copy MilesAheadSoftware.org to the Input Line of BingThing.  Then use whatever browser you wish to go to my site and donate.  Speaking of which, the link in the first post goes to my page.  The latest version is available for download.  I think it is in a pretty useful state now.

To quickly search the history type a few characters that would be in the lines of interest and hit <Enter>.  That will trigger the Filter Button to show only lines where that substring is found.  Filtering on an empty Input Line restores the full History List.

Anyway, enjoy.  If you find a big bug please let me know. 

[MilesAhead]

BingThing 1.5.8.0  One small tweak.  After some operations I set the focus back to the Input Line.  This makes it a bit easier to filter the History List by hitting the Enter key.

Link is in the first post as usual.

[MilesAhead]

BingThing 1.5.9.0  A very minor update.  I use a file to transfer the command line from the secondary instance of BingThing to the primary, if it is run while a copy is already running.  I insert a small delay after file operations to give the file changes time to "take."  These delays have been made shorter.  Also if the file does not exist it does not need to be deleted, therefore that delay is obviated.

The idea is to get the "single instance" behavior to be a bit snappier.  But it is not that noticeable.  Faster is better than slower though, so I guess it was a minor tweak worth making.

As usual the first post in the thread has the link to my page.

[MilesAhead]

BingThing 1.6.0.0  I added a hotkey to the application itself.  Alt Winkey b

Press when BingThing.exe is already running to have it use selected text.  This is mainly because my HD is kind of slow.  Since the program is already loaded I use the clipboard to get selected text, then move BingThing to the foreground and put the text in the Input Box.  Note that clipboard contents is not preserved.  I tried it preserving the current clipboard contents but ensuring the clipboard Gets and Sets succeed requires Sleep() delays.  With saving the clipboard and then getting selected text this would make it nearly as slow as loading from the HD.

In order to give some advantage to the fact the program is already loaded in ram the clipboard is left with selected text or blank if none was selected.

As example, say you have a video loaded in Firefox but play is erratic.  So you want to try playing it in Opera.  Click the Address Bar, the text will be selected, press Alt Winkey b, then when BingThing has the focus press the button for the Opera browser(assuming BingThing is set to Launch not Search etc..)

Hopefully Alt Winkey b is sufficiently unusual that it should be free for BingThing to use.
I have uploaded this version to my page already.  Link is in first post.   

[MilesAhead]

BingThing 1.6.1.0   Added feature to Filter List Button.  Hold down Shift if you only wish to add the text from the Input Line to the top of the list.

The new zip has been uploaded to my page.  The link is in the first post.

[MilesAhead]

BingThing itself has not been updated.  But the ahk hotkey script included in the zip file has been updated to detect if BingThing.exe is already running when you press Winkey b or Control Winkey b hotkeys.  If so it is given the focus and the selected text is inserted in the Input Line.

This is much faster than doing it through BingThing.exe.  Most likely the reason is that AutoHotkey is better at handling the hotkeys and clipboard than AutoIt3.  But I used AutoIt3 for the BingThing program itself since displaying the icons on the program buttons is way easier in AU3 than in AHK.

If BingThing.exe is not running it loads it off disk.  So please make sure to update the .ahk hotkey script if you have stored BingThing.exe someplace other than  the C:\Utils folder.

Doing it through the ahk script the response is noticeably snappier.  So I encourage you to go to the bit of extra trouble.  The BingThing window snaps to the front using the AHK script! 

The zip file on my site has already been updated.  Link in first post.

[MilesAhead]

I am not set up to compile BingThing.exe anymore.  Since having Windows 10 I see that if BingThing 1.6.1.0 cannot register the hotkey it quits with a dialog box.  This is not good.  So out of necessity I reverted back to version 1.5.9.0 but I included a compiled BingThingHotkey.exe to do the hotkey work.  If you unzip to a folder not underneath a system folder(i.e. stay clear of the Program Files folder trees) things should work Ok. 

BingThing.zip version 1.5.9.0 has been uploaded to MilesAheadSoftware and the index.html has been edited to reflect the change.  Sorry for the hack but I only have a little notebook W10 to work with so I cannot do anything ambitious.