jv16's development blog

jv16

Here is something neat I have been working on yesterday and today: a very simple built-in web browser for PowerTools. By simple I mean very simple, all it does is displays a single web page with the most basic styling options supported.

And here is one way it will be used:

shot1.jpg

Notice the one really nice feature: "Show what's new..." link in the Check for Updates window. Clicking the link will open the built-in browser, which looks like this:

shot2.jpg

In this picture, the built-in browser shows the "News of jv16 PowerTools 2010" news item, but when we go live, the "Show what's new..." feature shows you the page from our News section that has the change log for the specific update.

Another good thing about the built-in browser is that it allows us to send users messages with some basic formating. This feature was designed for emergency use. For example, if a critical bug is found from a production version of PowerTools 2010, we will be now able to broadcast a message to all affected users.

The built-in browser is very lightweight, it adds only a few KBs to the program. At the moment it doesn't even support displaying of images, support for this might be added later if such improvement seems useful. Any links clicked within the built-in browser will be opened with the system's default browser (e.g. Firefox or Internet Explorer), the built-in browser is designed only for displaying a single web page, not for actual browsing. Also, the built-in browser allows you to open the currently open page in the system browser.

siliconman01

Looks very nice/attractive/professional. I'm confident it will be well received by your subscribers. 8)

rdtmk5

Be careful, Jouni - watch our for feature bloat :

jv16

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jv16

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regmos

jv16 wrote
all the main tool buttons are dynamically positioned and sized according to the text caption they show.

Thank you!

jv16

Today I have been doing a lot of maintenance work, such as removing old unused code from the program, removing unused components, replacing some components with others etc.

Also, some parts of the application uses different versions of different components, I have been removing all the old versions and replacing them with the new versions.

Anothering thing I have been working on is the x64 compatibility. I believe the 64 bit Windows users will be positively surprised with the next test version.

All this will result in faster and more stable program. The plan is to release one more private test version before Monday and then release the first public beta version later in next week.

jv16

With PowerTools 2010 I have been really trying to take distance and really think outside of the box.

The Preference Saving feature is the perfect example. The feature allows you to save a set of preferences, such as the way you want the Registry Cleaner or the File Finder to be run, so you can later load the exact same settings without the need to re-set everything all over again.

The feature can be used from the botton left corner of the tool window, here is how it looks with PowerTools 2009:

pref0.jpg

It's there, and it does the job. However, it's not very intuitive. If the user has never used the feature the box "Saved preferences..." will be empty, so clicking it will only show the user an empty list. Clicking the red delete icon does nothing if no saved preference is selected.

This is how it looks with PowerTools 2010:

pref1.jpg

Since there are no previously saved preferences, there is no list and no delete icon. Instead, just the disk icon (which is now much larger, by the way). If you move the mouse cursor over it you are shown a tip: "Saves the current settings of for later use."

After the user has a saved a preference, the GUI looks more like PT 2009:

pref2.jpg

The PowerTools 2010 is full of small improvements such as this, this is part of the second design goal of the PowerTools 2010: the software being smart.

jv16

Test Version 14 released for a selected group of users. If no major issues are found, a public beta version will be released in next week.

jv16

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jv16

Test Version 14b released for a selected group of people. The original Test Version 14 had quite a few issues, mainly with 64 bit Windows, these issues are now fixed and everything should look and feel much better.

jv16

Following done today:

Bugs Fixed (since TestVersion 14b):

1. When you chose "Do not group" in the Directory Finder, the list appears, then quickly turns into white space.

2. Fixes done with Custom Fix are not accounted for in Statistics nor Registry Health

3. The Status Bar of the Custom Fix feature is not correctly updated.

4. Aborting the Registry Cleaner does not bring up the action buttons to close the window.

5. With successive starts, the main window gets larger, and larger, and larger.

6. Closing the Message Log from the main window does not properly resize the window back to its original size.

7. Resizing of the main window is not correctly remembered.

8. The default window size of the following tools is incorrect: Start Menu Tool, License Tool.

9. Anti-Malware Tool: when the scan completes, a message appears: Internal error STU-ID-1

10. Anti-Malware's Preference Saving (or loading) does not work, instead it shows Internal Error messages.

11. Using custom columns such as Size or File Dates does not work properly with the Anti-Malware

Other Improvements (since TestVersion 14b):

1. Improved the speed of the Registry Cleaner and Initial Setup.

jv16

Bugs fixed today:

12. The File Cleaner list's top panel is gone.

13. PowerTools doesn't correctly select a translation matching the default language of the system. In other words, if you are using Windows in Dutch, PowerTools should automatically select and use the Dutch translation when first time started.

14. If the user attempts to delete a critical key such as HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\exefile PowerTools' SafetyNet feature stops the action and shows an error message. However, the SafetyNet allows this action if the user attempts to delete HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Classes\exefile and this key is a mirror of the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT key. In other words, the SafetyNet feature has a hole!

15. File Recovery can report "Operation completed, 10 files found" while the list doesn't show any files.

16. Registry tools such as the Registry Finder can show duplicate data under 64 bit Windows.

17. If History Cleaner's Abort button is used once, it is disabled the next time and cannot be used again.

18. You do not get any confirmation if the operation was succesful after starting an automation task from the Automation Tool.

19. After running an automation task, the program no longer displays any messages to the user before program is restarted.

A pre-beta version will be released to a selected group of users within two days. The pre-beta will come with the new and improved installer (and uninstaller).

jv16

I have been fixing some bugs today. Next, I will be updating the Registry Info Tool in a way it will show two views if the user is using 64 bit Windows.

With 64 bit windows, there are basically two system registries, the 32 bit one for 32 bit applications, and the 64 bit one for the 64 bit applications. Normally, all 32 bit applications, such as jv16 PowerTools, only sees the 32 bit registry.

So, I think it would be quite interesting to allow the user to see with the Registry Info Tool the contents of the 32 bit registry and the 64 bit registry separately.

jv16

These bugs were fixed today:

20. Directory Tool's Empty feature also removes all sub-directories of the given directory, even as the feature should only remove files, not directories at all.

21. Directory Tool's Empty, Wipe and Move to Recycle Bin features show an incorrect information message: they all say that 0 files and 0 directories were removed, even as files were removed. Only Delete feature gives the correct report.

22. The buttons fo the Internal Browser do not turn to green when clicked.

23. Registry tools including the Registry Cleaner could show a valid registry key in red color coding in the Top Panel.

24. "Invalid ActiveX/DDE/COM/DCOM/OLE" scan can produce false positives.

25. Maintenance Tool's Remove Old Backups feature crashes if you ask it to delete all backups older than "0" days.

And these improvements were made today:

3. When using the Explore feature, the opening Explorer window could stay behind other windows (second try to fix this)

4. All progress panels are now correctly placed in the center of the tool window.

5. Converted the Registry Info Tool to use the new registry access component.

6. Improved the way the "Invalid ActiveX/DDE/COM/DCOM/OLE" scan of the Registry Cleaner shows its progress to the user.

Tomorrow I will be doing the update for the Registry Info Tool I mentioned earlier, and the pre-beta version with the new installer should be ready tomorrow as well. I know a lot of people are waiting to see how PowerTools 2010 looks like, so the reason for all this private test versions and the pre-beta is to make sure the quality of the program is good even with the very first beta version. My feeling is that the Beta1 version of PowerTools 2010 is as good as the RC1 version of PowerTools 2009 was.

siliconman01

One thing I really enjoy about alpha/beta testing PT is that new builds are issued at a rapid pace with improvements each time. Testers do not have to endure known bugs for weeks while waiting for a new beta version to be released.

jv16

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jv16

I had yesterday off, today I have been working on getting everything ready for the first public beta version of PowerTools 2010. There will not be any more private test versions for now.

Here is what I have done so far:

Bugs Fixed (since Pre-Beta):

1. Some tool windows show up so small they cannot be used.

2. Clicking the "Simulation" tab of the File Split tool causes duplicate data to be added to the Simulated Results list.

3. Debug Tool: the Unit testing tool Close button does not turn green when used.

4. Custom Uninstall: when you use Re-analyze, the list's registry data doubles up

5. Anti-Malware Tool: the progress indicator is not wide enough to show many path names.

6. The Progress panel sometimes show up incorrectly positioned.

7. Unit Testing Tool's window opens so small it cannot be used.

8. Debug tool: the tip to users of the simple interface appears regardless of the interface chosen.

9. A progress panel would flicker at the moment a Log Window shows up to a tool window. This is now fixed.

10. There is another hole in the Safety Net: critical registry data of 64 bit Windows can be deleted without the Safety Net saying anything.

Other Improvements (since Pre-Beta):

1. Improved the GUI of the Mass File Renamer.

2. Improved the GUI of the Registry Info tool

There are still a few issues I want to do before the Beta1: the Registry Info tool still needs a little bit of work so it will have full 64 bit support, and the generic 64 bit support of the entire program also needs some improvements as now it can show duplicate data. But that's about all.

All the main GUI updates will be saved for Beta2, I don't wish to postpone the first beta any longer.

jv16

Wow, Hukka got the new menu control done and it gets to Beta1!

Check it out:

screenshot.jpg

And I don't really care about the improved eye candy, but the new menus improve the usability of the program a lot: the new Right-Click menus now show to the user which features work with selected items and which features work with the currently highlighted item.

For example, from the screenshot above we can tell right away that Delete, Never show again and all the List Control features work with the selected items because they have the checkbox icon with them! Very nice improvement IMHO.

jv16

I just implemented a really handy new feature called "Select by Search Word", it's available under the List Control menu (shows up when you right-click most of the tool's lists).

The feature allows you to easily select items by search word. For example, if you enter a search word "foobar", all lines from the list with the word "foobar" will be selected. Very fast and handy way to select items.

Before, you could do this using the Search tool (Ctrl+F) but the tool is so full of features and options, sometimes you would only need a quick and easy way to select a few lines from the list. And now it's possible.

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