Hi epCheck dev, the program is really fun, thank you for your hard work.

I know you don't make any promises for epCheck's usability on Win8.1 (x64) - I mention this only, well, to mention it 

For no apparent reason and at various times the tooltip for "Search and add series" will pop up and the icon will highlight (as if the icon was moused over), for example, when epCheck is minimized then maximized. Where it happens regularly is when I update series data. Within moments of clicking "Refresh all series data now", magically the tooltip slowly appears and the icon reacts as if it was moused over yet the cursor is still located over the refresh data button - hopefully the image is attached.



My wishlist for epCheck 

1 ... The ability to add our own (extra) series images, abiding by the image dimensions already specified. I think you can but they get deleted when the series is updated.

2 ... When any Series info is elipsed (Title, Network, etc, blahblahblah ...), mousing over it reveals the full text instead of needing to drag the control which creates the horizontal scrollbar while also hiding info to the right, depending on your screen size of course. Many series episodes have long titles or they have multi-titled episodes. The Love Boat for example has very long multi-titled episodes and all of them are elipsed (...). The only way to see the complete title is by dragging the Title over to the right. It would be pretty cool to mouse over any elipsed text and the full line is revealed, maybe as a bubble/balloon tooltip.

3 ... The ability to Search for an episode title or for an episode title keyword that appears in various episodes, similiar to Find, Find Next, (Find All in Current Series) - similiar to text editor functionality. Example, I highlight a series from my list of shows, an Episode Search button is created or activated while the episode list is populated as usual. I type in the search box my keyword, click Find - the episode or keyword is located and highlighted, or a list of episodes with the keyword is presented in a list associated with the Series I highlighted.

4 ... Series and Series Episode "Details" buttons - highlight a series from list, click "Series Details", the details would be something like Starring, From/To Dates, # of eps, etc. Click an episode, "Episode Details" might contain guest stars, etc. Possibly this info could be user created and maintained, stored in a file, the button might bring up the text in the default text editor, maybe something a bit nicer, a nice dialog box with preconfigured fields that are read from a file that the user will maintain and edit with a specified layout

I fully understand that you have a life and if I remember correctly you didn't want epCheck to become a behemoth of an app. I've been using epCheck for quite a while now, consulting it often for specifics, as I frequent fan sites for some shows on my list. The features I mention (IMO) would make epCheck quicker to use and even more robust, search rather than scrolling up and down long lists for an episode, greater details for series and series episodes (user maintained), etc.

Again, I don't have any expectations and I'm definately not making even subtle demands, I offer my wishlist as food for thought only.

Mike

Darn if that isn't the most polite feature request I've seen!

Jim

Hmm, looking at your sig I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not. Just so you know, I'm licensed to carry, and I've warn the nickel off the trigger

Hi epCheck dev, the program is really fun, thank you for your hard work.

You're very welcome.  I'm glad you find it useful.  Welcome to DonationCoder, too.    And, I'm sure Jim was being quite sincere about his comment regarding your post.  I agree with him; it's a great first post. 

For no apparent reason and at various times the tooltip for "Search and add series" will pop up

I see this as well from time to time and I'm 99.9% positive it's due to the toolbar class I use.  I can ask the toolbar class author about it.

1 ... The ability to add our own (extra) series images, abiding by the image dimensions already specified. I think you can but they get deleted when the series is updated.

Sure, this is absolutely doable and add to my ToDo list.

It would be pretty cool to mouse over any elipsed text and the full line is revealed, maybe as a bubble/balloon tooltip.

This is easily doable with one caveat -- when a window is set to AlwaysOnTop, the tooltip doesn't work.  I think it's a bug/limitation within AHK, so, if you can live with that, I can add that.

3 ... The ability to Search for an episode title or for an episode title keyword that appears in various episodes, similiar to Find, Find Next, (Find All in Current Series) - similiar to text editor functionality.

This has been asked for before but I held off then to allow epCheck to mature a bit.  However, it might be time to reinvestigate adding something like this.  I've added it to my ToDo.

4 ... Series and Series Episode "Details" buttons - highlight a series from list, click "Series Details", the details would be something like Starring, From/To Dates, # of eps, etc. Click an episode, "Episode Details" might contain guest stars, etc. Possibly this info could be user created and maintained, stored in a file, the button might bring up the text in the default text editor, maybe something a bit nicer, a nice dialog box with preconfigured fields that are read from a file that the user will maintain and edit with a specified layout

I like this idea.  However, I doubt I'd make it user-definable since I think most of the data you want is contained within the XML data files.  If it's missing, say, certain guest stars, I think it'd be preferable to add that data to TVDB.com so that all can benefit.

It might be a few weeks before I can get to any of this, though.  Work deadlines this week, holiday next week, NANY coding in December, etc.  In the meantime, have you checked out the latest beta?  If not:

https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=36877.msg368839#msg368839

I already incorporated your ellipsed/tooltip feature into that build.  Cheers. 

Nice to hear that you might implement that search function I asked for a ways back.

Another request I was wondering about. Maybe Making the entire line/background of en episode another color for the last listed episode for us who are not keeping track of how long the season is. Not to mention so series have 13 then change to 18, then back to 13. Either way it would be nice to be able to see at a glance when a season finale is here.

The URL is different so I imagine the program can not search it correctly.

Eye Candy:    http:// www.thetvdb.com/?tab=series&id=278448&lid=7
Supernatural: http:// www.thetvdb.com/index.php?tab=series&id=78901&lid=7

Thanks for the reply...I am not too sure how to do it manually, so if you could give me a step by step that would be great  

Oh and I have downloaded the beta and I am trying it out now...Love the new monthly view...Great Program!

Thanks for the reply...I am not too sure how to do it manually, so if you could give me a step by step that would be great 

@wallman2001: Here you are.  If this proves too complicated, I'd be happy to do a TeamViewer session with you where I can remote in to your computer (with your permission and authorization, of course) and do this for you.

1. Search for and add any show.  Make note of the show name and the profile name you added it to.
2. Go to the Series tab, find the show, right-click and use the "Web Search > TVDB.com" option.  At the end of the URL is the show's ID number.  Make note of this ID number.
3. Close epCheck.
4. Use a file manager (Windows Explorer, etc.) to navigate to the "data" folder within your epCheck install folder.
5. Open the <profile name>.txt file in a text editor.
6. Find the line which corresponds to the show you just added.  Modify the ID and name as necessary.  Save the file.
7. Open epCheck, choose the correct profile, and you should see a row with your desired show.  Right-click it and choose the "Refresh series data" option.
8. Done.

Just installed the beta with the monthly view. Can you please add the option to allow "Monday" to be the first day of the week? I hate calendars with Sunday as the first day!

@J-Mac: No promises, but I'll add it to my list. 

So I opened up epCheck to do the manual steps and it was refreshing the series data it came up with error:
There was a problem unzipping the series data. You might have to run epCheck as an administrator.
I am running as an administrator, so is this a serious issue?

Nah...happens sometimes.  Does restarting epCheck help?

I restarted and it loaded fine, but I did go to each of the shows that wouldn't unzip and refresh them so that the data was loaded...When I did the refresh on all shows a couple of times, the error came up for different shows as well..


On another note, I followed your manual steps and it worked perfectly...thanks.

Also a new question...I have 3 different shows that aren't showing a banner picture even though they do have banners on thetvdb.com...is there a reason they aren't showing?
-Quick update on this, I deleted the folders and uploaded images to thetvdb.com and when I refreshed the tv data for the shows, my image did show up, but the others didn't, so I am not sure what is happening there.

Howdy. 1.1.5.1 spent a considerable amount of time (Not Responding) and then presented the "problem unzipping" message.  And I had to close it with Task Manager.  So I came over here and found 1.1.5.163 and that seems to unzip all the data but epCheck does enter into (Not Responding) a half a dozen times or so.  Actually, then, not so sure all the data gets unzipped...

The calendar is a big  

Anyhow, I created an account here so I don't have to bother you with emails as I did when we worked on ClipTrap's timed clearing over at my gmail account.    I'll turn on the "notify me" to this thread.  I'll keep an eye out for any more betas or if you need more info. -Dallas E.

Cheers.

UPDATE:
Responding to an epiphany, after moving out my Data folder, I created an empty Data folder and dropped in only the MyShows.txt file.

After several “Refresh all series data now” and restarts, all seems to have settled down and the data for all series appears complete.

I did disable Banners, but I’ve been wanting to do that for a while.  All 35 folders were re-built with the three xml files in each.  As well as TVDB_Languages.xml and watched.ini.

I’m going to use epCheck again next week and see what pans out.

Quote from: dallas7 on January 13, 2015, 11:06 PM

So I came over here and found 1.1.5.163 and that seems to unzip all the data but epCheck does enter into (Not Responding) a half a dozen times or so.

The problem is two-fold:

1. I use the 7-zip application to handle the unzipping so while it's actually unzipping a file, epCheck can't do anything but wait.  However, most of the zips are pretty small so the waits here shouldn't affect things much.
2. The bigger issue at hand is that the TVDB.com site has been really slow lately.  Most of the Not Responding is epCheck simply waiting for the zip downloads to finish.

It's rather frustrating as there isn't a whole lot that I can do about it.  Sadly, the best advice I can give is to simply leave epCheck alone while it's doing the updates.

Is it possible to call 7-zip on a worker thread so the UI at least won't lock up?  Not sure what your limitations are, but I figured I'd at least suggest it.

Monthly view is awesome. Thanks for adding this!