ArsClip Icons

I've uploaded a beta showing off the new icons and fixing some small problems. You'll notice that all the icons haven't been fixed - especially since the the "system tray menu" is shown in three different places three different ways. This is on my must-fix-list.

Icons Continued

As harsh as I was on Inkscape, seen below, I thought it fair to show the icons I was able to create for Arsclip that are only 16 pixels in size. After fumbling with the program and dodging crashes for hours, I learned to whip up an icon in about 20 minutes that looked decent at such a small size. For reference, I included some of the icons scaled up 3 times. I can say that I worked harder making much, much worse icons before using Inkscape.

Icons, Icons, Icons

Every once in a while, I'll get a message or two concerning the icons in Rename Master or ArsClip. Usually, I'll update them with something that's a bit better, but they're not great by any means. It's that time again and not only did I get feedback on the icons but this time I also got a user created icon.

For creating all my images, I've been using an ancient version of PaintShopPro that's around 9 years old. While great back then, it's now really behind the times and only barely supports vector based graphics. I did some searching for freeware solutions and found Inkscape, a rather horrible and sluggish program but very functional -- with a very, very useful Icon Preview feature. With just 3 objects on the screen and a 32x32 pixel sized page, it brought my modern system to a crawl once a filter was added and happily crashed several times. When it's free, it's hard to complain too much.

I've icon amnesia. Every time I start to make icons, I alway forget how difficult it is to get something that looks good at only 32 or 16 pixels square. With Inkscape, it's damn easy to get a 48x48 icon that looks good and scales up extremely well - something that vector graphics are very good at. The opposite, however, isn't true. Scaling images down make them horrible.

Based off the work of a user submitted icon, this is what I came up with for a new Rename Master icon.



It's no where near as fancy as it should look, but that's a side effect of creating something that's simple enough to scale down to 16x16 pixels in size and not look completely awful. I only had to minimally change the smallest icon by hand to have something that's a representation.

I've uploaded a new build of Rename Master using the new icon. In the next upload, I'll update the upload for more color depth, a transparent taskbar icon, and a super huge 256x256 icon (with the last 2 changes only for Vista/Win7).

I've also updated some of the icons in ArsClip, but it needs more work. Seeing it took a full day just to create a single icon, it might take a little while more to update the dozen icons used in ArsClip.

ArsClip Mystery

I've had a few reports of an Access Violation when right-clicking items on the popup. While this can be worked around usually by flushing the popup, I've not been able to find a cause. I've tested the cached items from a user with this problem and was unable to replicate the error. There's one or more factors that I've not replicated. The only commonality I've seen is Windows 7 (which I use as my main OS).

If your receive the same error in version 3.1.4 Test 9: close the program, make a copy of the ArsClip folder, and run the new copy. If the same error occurs, send me an email. I would like to get a copy of the cache and settings that's causing this seemingly rare problem.

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Also, there's a known bug where Unicode text may not be mistaken as already on the popup (especially when copying short text items). I'm aware of this problem but haven't coded a solution yet.

The Cloud

I've been thinking a little about cloud support for my programs. Since my programs are already portable, copying the files to a service - like Google Docs - is already possible manually. This lets you have a the program and its settings so that you can download it from anywhere and use it.

Since a service like Google Docs makes public API's, it's open for a program to automate tasks for it. The problem here is that it would require quite a bit of work and there's no reason to think it would be a popular feature.

For one, there's a trust issue since the program would have to prompt for login information at least once. To save the login for automatically logging in, the program would need to store the data in some form and it wouldn't be secure by any means. A second issue is that not much changes, so syncing data often isn't an expected pattern. In ArsClip, only the current and removed clips change but it doesn't make much sense to overwrite the current computer's history with history from another system.

As you can tell, I've pretty much talked myself out of adding this feature on a whim. While I'm still keeping it in mind, I doubt it will generate much discussion. The percentage of users that take advantage of the portable nature of my programs is small and the subsection of those that would also want to sync the data online is even smaller.

JumpListDo Progress

Above is an example of the current JumpListDo Public Beta. It's now grouping together outside windows with it's own taskbar icon, this makes the taskbar icon behave like the command prompts it executes are a part of the program itself. This also helps identify the jump list history as belonging to the command prompt, which is the goal of this program - to add jump list support for both files and folder to programs that don't support it. No program, other than Explorer itself, has folder history.

One option I've been thinking about added is the ability to import the Recent folder list from Explorer. When the program first starts, the jump list is mostly bare. Unless the initial help message is read, it's not clear that the folder history is generated by using a folder's context menu to execute JumpListDo on that location.

Currently, the program is mostly functional but there are still some notable omissions - like a way to remove the registry entries made during the first run as well as other items mentioned in another post. I think before an official release, the program must - at a minimum - offer a way to remove the file association entries it creates. I'd also like to try and find a way to make clear exactly the main way of executing JLD from a folder's right-click menu. Since this program is mostly a background process, this major core functionality is hard to convey.

Codename JumpListDo Prototype

A prototype of JumpListDo (for Windows 7 only) has been uploaded as a Public Beta. By default, this program is configured to give you a context menu on every folder to open a command prompt. Folders opened will show up in the jump list to be re-opened with a command prompt.

Support for UAC elevation is already included. Since items in the jump list are shell items, the CTRL+Shift+Click shortcut key will execute the item with elevated privileges. Items run elevated will be added in a separate list to that will automatically run the program elevated.

When the program is running, it will update it's icon to include the icon of the host program. By default, you should see a small command prompt icon added to the JumpListDo's tasbar icon.

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Example JumpListDo.ini file:
[Associations]
Count=1
0=Folder
[Host]
Filename="CMD.EXE"
Parameters="/K cd /D ""%1"""

0 is the first file association, in this case "Folder" is the file type to be associated. Types like ".jpg" are also valid. If Count was "2" instead of "1", items "0" and "1" would define two unique file types to associate with the program.

The "Filename" host executable is executed by the shell, in this case "CMD.EXE" will be resolved using the systems path environment variable, so no full path is required. A fully qualified path may be required for some programs.

"Parameters" is the list of command line parameters to pass to "Filename". The %1 variable will be replaced with the name of the associated file or folder. The doubled full quotes are required around the %1 variable only in this special case.

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This program is not yet fully functional. For example, there's no way to just open the host program. Shortcuts to folders are saved in the "links" folder, but deleting all the files does not clear the jump list. The jump list shown on the taskbar is only updated when the program is first run, when the program is run from a context menu, or when items are selected from the jump list. There's no Window to configure the program, and so on.

A new program idea for Windows 7

Working with the Jump List feature in Win7 had me thinking about possibly creating a new tool. One thing about jump lists is that they won't track folders (except for Explorer). Also, only file types registered with the program will show up under the Recent/Frequent listings and only files opened associated with the target program will show up under those lists.

My first prototype, codename JumpListDo, is a program that will register file types on behalf of an outside program (including folders) and manage a list of those files and folders in the jump list. This would add virtually add jump list support for programs that don't have any. For example, my first use was to pin it to the taskbar and associate folders on behalf of the command prompt. This way, I can right-click on a folder and select "JumpListDo" from the context menu and have a command prompt open at that location. This simulates having a taskbar item for command prompts that also keeps a history of folder locations to re-launch the prompt.

Though my first idea for JumpListDo was just a program to remember folder locations for CMD.EXE, I quickly realized it could work for any program that doesn't support the "Recent" list or needs to be opened with a folder. This stub program could add jump list support to any program that supports command line parameters or file associations.

After I work on the last of the small issues, I'll release it as a public beta.

The latest prototype

Here's a look at the jump list in action for the latest Public Beta upload of ArsClip. Since ArsClip doesn't have a taskbar icon by default, I'll need to think of some way to allow the user to discover the jump list. At a minimum, I'll include a listing under Configuration>Misc, but this likely isn't enough.

Windows 7 plans

System tray [or Notification Area] usage is being discouraged even more in this OS release. Both ArsClip and MouseWrangler are background programs that rely on a popup generated from clicking on the tray icon for configuration. Users can decide to show certain programs icon on the tray, but this isn't normal behavior for most users.

One change introduced in Win7 is the use of Jump Lists. Jump Lists are really just shell icons, similar to files listed in Explorer [shortcuts and documents]. For older programs that correctly used the recently used documents interface, Windows will automatically generate a "Recent" jump list on the right-click of the program's taskbar icon. So, instead of right-clicking a tiny tray icon to show a popup, you would be able to right-click the taskbar icon for the ArsClip and MouseWrangler popup.

I'm currently researching and coding support for Jump Lists for ArsClip and MouseWrangler. The idea is that once the programs are pinned to the taskbar, a right-click will show the same options shown on the tray icon popup, but will be much easier to access. I'm also thinking about if it would be good to show the icon just on the taskbar of a Win7 system. Without it, I'm unsure if the average user will be able to discover the jump list support added into the programs.

The new script step ...

As mentioned below, I've designed a Remove Expression option for Rename Master and uploaded it as a Public Beta. I tend to think of this new option as a swiss army knife. It's as powerful as your imagination is for removing (and optionally moving) a part of a filename by defining a general "expression" or pattern to match. However, compared to true Regular Expressions, it very limited.

For example, lets say you want to remove all numbers for the end of a filename. With the new option you specific to remove any of the characters 0123456789 from the end of the filename. Currently, since this is truly just a GUI for regular expression, you can use shortcuts like "a-z", "A-Z", and "0-9" to specify character and number ranges for the character lists. This can be problematic, though, as special characters would need to be escaped using the "\" escape character first. In the future, I'll likely need to address this problem with some user friendly way of enabling/disabling the behavior.

In this new option, you can limit the expression 4 ways - all optional. As said above, you can limit it to either the beginning or the ending of the name. Also, you can define the beginning, the middle, and the end of the expression using a combination of literal phrases or character lists. I might add a third option for "any character expect the following", but even this can actually be done currently if you look up the the "^" regular expression not operator. So, if you specify "^-" as a character list, it will match any character that is not a dash. This is very useful, but extremely unfriendly for a user so the GUI option will likely be added.

In previous versions, there was already a "remove before/after" option. This step is similar to the "split" option I thought of below that doesn't interest me; however, this step can be thought of as a very specific version of "any character except" option and it may become extraneous.

Also, this new step is limited to a single expression. If you want to remove two or more instances of the same expression, you'd have to duplicate this step multiple times. I, also, might add an option to specify to remove all instances of the expression instead of just the first instance found.

As always, this new step will be changed based off of user feedback. If you've an idea of how to improve this option or think something's missing or just broken, send me your comments.