Archives

I've uploaded new Alpha builds from current SVN. As always, only Unicode builds for x86 and x64 are available and they need the VC 2008 runtime.

Also, you should only use this with a recent Miranda build. Officially, only Miranda 0.9 is supported for TabSRMM 3, but recent builds of 0.8 should work (there is no guarantee though).

Noteworthy changes

The biggest change is the new send later framework which has its own WIKI page in the documentation and you really, really should read that page before playing with it. Both the feature and the documentation is not complete at this time, but basically, it should work. Do not use this for critical messages as there might be a few issues.

Download from my googlecode site

The send later queue manager

A new feature that has been dormant in TabSRMM 3 for a while is now complete enough to be ready for some basic testing.

Unattended send framework

It allows you to send messages, which cannot be delivered immediately for whatever reason, delayed and automatically. It is also used to re-implement the multisend ability which was available in TabSRMM 2 in a slightly different and hopefully more reliable way.

The WIKI article describes it with a bit more detail and you really should read it before using the feature. My advice is to use it only for testing and not for important messages at this time - this is fairly new and there are possible issues lurking under the hood.

Also, it is not yet complete - a few minor things are missing, mainly better integration into the existing message window UI and a service API for developers. I'm still considering to move the entire thing into a independent plugin so that it could be used without the need to install TabSRMM as your message window plugin.

Availability

This is available, beginning with version 3.0.0.26 (not yet released - there will be a separate announcement).

Text mode doesn't have to be ugly :)

GNU Midnight Commander

Working on a text console is sometimes necessary, even if you don't like it and prefer a graphical desktop. But on many *iX systems which are mainly performing server tasks, a graphical desktop often doesn't exist. That doesn't mean you have to live with zero comfort.

There are many tools for the character based text mode (or console) and one of the better known is the GNU Midnight Commander. It is a text-mode based file manager, file viewer and text editor, combined in a relatively small and fast package. Its feature set is vast and its interface basically resembles a more than 20 years old concept - the dual pane view.

By default, MC also imitates the color scheme of the first Norton Commander - white text on a medium blue background - a scheme instantly recognized by many older users out there. But not anyone may like this default scheme and the developers know this, so they always allowed you to change the colors in the Midnight Commander INI file. Read more...

Update for the switch bar

New build and this one has, surprise, surprise, a new feature. Two new switch bar layouts were added. They provide larger buttons and can therefore show the avatar. Both vertical and horizontal buttons are available.

Please not that the switch bar is still not complete. It misses a few features, like drag & drop reordering of buttons or a context menu like you can find on the normal tabs.

In skinned mode, the switch bar drawing was slightly improved and there is a new skin item for the switch bar background. Some minor visual glitches are still possible with the switch bar in skinned mode.

Other noteworthy changes in this build

• fixed possible crash when AVS plugin was not installed
• fixed problem with info panel configuration dialog popping up after right-clicking a link in the message log (this only happened, when the info panel was disabled).
• attempt to fix a few rare drawing errors in the tab control

As always with TabSRMM 3, the build should be considered ALPHA quality.

Download from my googlecode site

Don't like the default dark-ish theme in Visual Studio 2010?

A custom theme

Well, me neither. For my taste, it is a bit too dark and I would prefer an IDE with a more Windows-like color scheme. Fortunately, this is possible, because Visual Studio allows to customize almost any color that is being used for the UI. It just does not provide an UI for it, but an extension which you can find here, will be more than happy to help out.

It comes with a few predefined color themes plus a theme editor that allows you to create your own themes. Doing so can be quite a bit of work, because the number of customizable colors is high. However, you can use one of the custom themes included in the extension as a base point for your own creations. The screenshot shows the included "classic" theme re-creating the classic Windows look. There are other themes, one that closely matches the Vista/Win7 Aero theme and 3 themes which almost perfectly fit the three standard Windows XP Luna styles (blue, olive and silver).

Disable visual effects

Also, if you don't like the colorful gradients and other effects (and as a side effect, want a slightly faster UI), you can disable the "rich client visual experience" (sounds cute, eh?) in Options->General (see screenshot at the right).

This won't disable custom colors themes, just the background texture and some of the gradient effects on tabs, menus and toolbars. Also, it will stop some of the animations. On slower machines, it may give you back some performance, but only if you are running Windows Vista or Windows 7, because on XP, the visual enhancements are disabled anyway.

Have to write lots of code in VS, here is a excellent time saver

A new version of Visual Studio was released recently, so it's time to talk about it. The 2010 release of

Visual Studio with Visual Assist

this most popular IDE for Microsoft Windows adds a number of new features, a new language (F#), a overhauled WPF based user interface that looks and performs better, multi-monitor support (it was about time) a new browser based help system, a improved debugger (historical debugging can be incredibly useful, really), and a lot more. It also comes with a new .NET framework (version 4) and the ability to build for different platform toolsets - even in C++ it is possible to build for the old Visual C++ 2008 version, thus avoiding the need for a new runtime at the user's end and new toolsets can be added with relative ease.

Also, Visual Studio 2010 has a new extension system which should greatly simplify the development of add-ins (aka extensions). MEF (Managed Extensibility Framework) is the name for the new extension framework and one of the most useful extensions that did exist for previous versions has already been adopted. I'm talking about Visual Assist X, a tool that aims at developers who need to write large amounts of code and have a strong demand for an improved code editor.

Read more...

Switched to Visual Studio 2010

Effective by April, 20 2010, I've switched from Visual Studio 2008 to Visual Studio 2010 to maintain the projects for TabSRMM 3 and. Other projects like clist_nicer will follow.

The new project files are:

• tabsrmm_10.sln - solution file
• tabsrmm_10.vcxproj - the project file

All other project files should be considered deprecated with the exception of the Visual C++ 6.0 projects (.dsw/.dsp files) which are maintained for the x86 ANSI and UNICODE builds.

Read more...

Small things matter

It's annoying when all of a sudden, a nice feature you do not want to miss in your IDE, appears to be broken. That can really ruin your day. Now, we know that such things happen when you upgrade your environment to the next major release - it can still be annoying as hell.

Visual Studio 2010 is now out for a few days and so far it looks good. I'm using VS mostly for C and C++ work and from that point of view, it works fine and I have not yet found major showstopper bugs. One thing, however, made me almost tear my hair out - the comment task list. Every developer knows this feature - it's a convenient little thing that aids you in not forgetting important tasks left unfixed or unfinished in your code. The IDE will scan the code for certain tags inside comments (for example: TODO) and for each tag it finds, it will create a task list item.

Enable the Task List

So far so good. This was always working in Visual Studio, but for some reason, it didn't in 2010. No matter what comment I typed or what tag (predefined or self-defined) I was using, the task list kept itself totally empty. First, I thought it was a bug, but then, while browsing the advanced editor settings (which are new in VS 2010), I found the culprit: The feature is disabled by default. The screenshot shows where the setting is hidden and I must say, it is, without doubt, well hidden :) Why it is disabled by default, I do not know and since I found only a few hits on the web regarding this problem, it might even be an installation issue that does not happen on everyone's system. But if it does for you, then here is the easy fix.

Simply open the options, navigate to Text Editor->C++->Formatting and enable the option Enumerate comment tasks under the Miscellaneous section.

Obviously, still an alpha/preview quality build. Some things are missing. Development goes slow for recent weeks, but eventually, it should get there. The build can be considered feature-complete (no other major additions for TabSRMM 3), but not all features are completely implemented and working.

Both versions are compiled with the Visual Studio 2008 SP1 toolset (but using Visual Studio 2010), so you need the runtime, as always. There is no ANSI build for this test release and TabSRMM 3 will no longer run on Windows 9x. Windows XP is the minimum supported operating system, but it should work on Windows 2000.

Read more...

Secure your blog

Using the most popular blogware also means using an attractive target for the bad guys out there. In fact, WordPress does not have the best security records which is, at least partially, a result of its popularity. Developing a successful method to exploit it, opens up a huge number of possibly vulnerable target sites and is therefore much more attractive than exploiting a software used by only a small number of sites. It is pretty much like using a very popular operating system (Windows) or browser (IE, Firefox) - the most popular ones always get the most attention not only by users but also by the bad guys.

That said, no reason for a panic attack. With a few simple rules, you can significantly decrease the chance that someone will break into your blog.

Read more...