Thursday, March 25, 2010

v8.90.0016 - 2010-03-25 12:33

BETA versions are now only available for registered users.
Find the download link at the bottom of the License Lounge.

  • + Menu File | Settings: Added command "Backup All Settings...". Backups the whole contents of the Application Data Folder to a folder of your choice (defaulting to the current folder). The hard-coded operation type is "Backup" with "Overwrite only older files" and "Preserve item dates".
  • * Updated the help file.

v8.90.0015 - 2010-03-25 09:10

BETA versions are now only available for registered users.
Find the download link at the bottom of the License Lounge.

  • ! Possible error 380 on startup in v8.90.0014. Fixed.

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

v8.90.0012 - 2010-03-23 12:41

BETA versions are now only available for registered users.
Find the download link at the bottom of the License Lounge.

  • + New variable <get item [pane]> returns the focused item of any of the two panes. The optional "pane" argument can be:
      a = [default] active pane
      i = inactive pane
      1 = pane 1
      2 = pane 2
    For example:
      <get item>   //active pane's focused item
      <get item i> //inactive pane's focused item
    As always, SC getinfo supports the same argument:
      echo getinfo("item");    //active pane's focused item
      echo getinfo("item", i); //inactive pane's focused item
  • * XYcopy: Status Log now shows if jobs were cancelled or partially completed, and other improvements.
  • ! Recycle Bin: Shell-pasting of items shell-cut from RB did not work as expected. Fixed. (Shell-paste and shell-cut means using the commands from the shell context menu.)
  • ! List: Under certain conditions uncovered thumbnails were not repainted on IP show/hide. Fixed.

Monday, March 22, 2010

v8.90.0010 - 2010-03-22 14:59

BETA versions are now only available for registered users.
Find the download link at the bottom of the License Lounge.

  • + A bunch of modal dialogs showing a simple list were not resizable. Now they are.
  • * XYcopy: Pimped up the Status Log.
  • * Configuration | File Operations:
    - Reorganized the order of options and the head lines.
    - Renamed "Background processing" to "Enable background
      processing".
    - Added some tooltips.
  • * Configuration | Advanced: Readded "Refresh During File Operations". It had been only available in the context menu of the Refresh toolbar buttons for a while.
  • * Toolbar | Queue Multiple Operations: New icon. The Jamaican Mandala did not transport the Queue motif in a consumer compatible way.
  • * XYcopy: Drag'n'drop operations from other apps into XYplorer are now forced to run in the foreground no matter what. This solves known problems with some archivers who depend on the volatile existence of temporary files in %TEMP%, and probably yet unknown problems where the source app expects immediate action.
  • ! With "Refresh during file operations" OFF, Auto-Refresh kept being suspended after a file operation. Fixed.
  • ! Info Panel | Current List: Did not honour the "Hide Extensions" list style. Fixed. Also fixed for SC report().
  • ! Menu File | File Special | Delete (Skip Locked): Would misinterpret read-only files as "Locked". Fixed.
  • ! When dbl-clicking an empty CD-drive (or otherwise unavailable drive) on a locked MyComputer tab, the (locked) tab would then point to the CD-drive. Fixed. Now the first existing tab pointing to this location is selected, or a new tab is opened.
  • ! FVS: On startup and with "Don't save tabs" enabled, the inactive pane's tab would not honour any applicable FVS. Fixed.

Friday, March 19, 2010

v8.90.0009 - 2010-03-19 15:58

BETA versions are now only available for registered users.
Find the download link at the bottom of the License Lounge.

  • * Configuration | File Operations: Renamed "Process file operations in the background" to "Background processing".
  • * XYcopy: Now, when "Background processing" is ON and "Queue file operations" is OFF, new file operations are immediately triggered in their own fresh process.
    Notes:
    - This option is applied on a per-job basis in the moment the jobs
      are initiated by the user, so while one or more jobs are running
      in the background you can change the setting of "Queue file
      operations" to control how the *next* job is handled; running
      or pending jobs are not affected.
    - There's no explicit limit applied to the number of parallel
      processes, but I assume Windows will let you know before your
      computer explodes.
  • * XYcopy: Now also the various commands in the drag'n'drop context menu (Move/Copy Here with Suffix...) support background processing.
  • * Menu Go | Go to Application Data Folder: This item is now always shown. Before it had been hidden when the Application Data Folder was identical to the Application Folder, but this made support unnecessarily hard ("If you see an item ... then click else ...").
  • * Upgrading Application Data from a pre-8.90 version: Now also data that hang out in Vista/W7's VirtualStore are correctly auto-upgraded to a UAC conforming app data path.
  • + Menu Tools | List Management: Added command "Recent Locations".
    Here you can edit the data which feed Recent Locations, Hotlist, Mini Tree From Recent, Breadcrumb, and Down (menu Go).
  • ! Environment Variables: Worked around a Windows (!) bug where %appdata% is not resolved when XYplorer is started via 'Run As...' for <admin> privileges.

Thursday, March 18, 2010

v8.90.0006 - 2010-03-18 20:45

BETA versions are now only available for registered users.
Find the download link at the bottom of the License Lounge.

  • + Toolbar: Added button "Queue file operations". Identical to "Queue file operations" in Configuration | File Operations. If pressed then any new file operation is delayed until any pending file operations are completed.
    The button's context menu allows you to turn off background processing in which case the button is displayed disabled (but you still can use its context menu).
    The button is tributed to Bob Marley.
  • + Toolbar | Queue file operations: The button's context menu has an item "Status Log..." which displays a list of all file operations executed (or queued for execution) in the background (through XYcopy) within the current session. The log is not stored between sessions. Makeup of a log line:
    - Time the job was initiated by the user (not the time when it was
      actually triggered in case of queueing)
    - Description of the job
    - Status and duration
  • * Configuration | File Operations: Renamed "Auto-queue pending file operations" to "Queue file operations".
  • * XYcopy: Now only Copies and cross-partition Moves are done in the background. Within-partition Moves are fast because they are just renames, and Deletes are fast as well anyway.
  • * Installer Package: Readded the "Run XYplorer" checkbox. It was not to blame.
  • * Installer Package: Now you can run the installer with /S (case sensitive) on the command line, and you get a totally silent install with all the default choices made for you.

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

v8.90.0005 - 2010-03-17 12:53

BETA versions are now only available for registered users.
Find the download link at the bottom of the License Lounge.

  • +++ XYcopy aka File Operations in the Background (FOB): This should work pretty good now, so it's official: XYplorer supports multithreaded and queued file operations.
    Note that this feature is now optional and configurable in Configuration | File Operations (see below). The factory default is OFF so you have to turn it on if you want to use it.
  • + Configuration: Added new section "File Operations" and moved topic "Backup Operations" to here. Also moved the following options from Advanced settings to here:
      File operation progress dialog modeless
      Turn off delete confirmation
      Preserve permissions on move operation
  • + Configuration | File Operations: Added a couple of options related to recent developments in asynchronous handling of file operations.
    - Process file operations in the background: Check to enable the
      new asynchronous handling of file operations using XYcopy.exe.
      Affected are operations of type Copy, Move, and Delete.
    - Auto-queue pending file operations: Check to keep new operations
      pending until the old operations are completed. If unchecked,
      then new operations are triggered in the foreground if
      background operations are still in progress.
      This option is only enabled if background processing is.
  • * Configuration File Operations: Note that the setting "File operation progress dialog modeless" is pointless and therefore ignored if "Process file operations in the background" is enabled.
  • * Configuration: Renamed "Backup & Report" to "Report".
  • + In v8.70.0154 - 2009-12-21 11:45 I did this:
      Menu Tools | Tools Special: Removed the following commands which
      have been rendered useless by the new Recycle Bin support:
        Open Recycle Bin...
        Empty Recycle Bin...
        Recycle Bin Stats...
    But now I changed my mind. Those commands still have their use
    depending on your work style.
  • * Menu Go | Drives... and TB "MyComputer" and "Drives": Now by factory default all known drives are shown, including empty CD-drives. To exclude the latter use the following tweak.
  • + Tweak to show only available drives in Go | Drives... and TB "MyComputer" and "Drives":
      [Settings]
      PopupAvailableDrivesOnly=1

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

v8.90.0004 - 2010-03-16 22:37

BETA versions are now only available for registered users.
Find the download link at the bottom of the License Lounge.

  • * XYcopy: Still in experimental stage but improving. You should get
    pretty good refreshing (means almost as good as it always was) now for most file operations. Also the Action Log should be fed again.
    Notes:
    - The new asynchronous handling of file operations made
      necessary a drastic rewrite of the internal refresh routines.
      The best case scenario is that you note nothing of it. But it
      might be that some folder or list is not refreshed as it should
      be after completion of a file operation. Let me know...
    - When you (are so crazy to) terminate XYplorer while XYcopy is
      still working, the job in progress will be finished, but any
      jobs still waiting in queue will not be triggered.
    - Any file operations triggered by Undo/Redo are not spawned to
      XYcopy.
  • * Tag Find: Now MyComputer (or alias "*") as searched location will return matches from all locations. Before it was restricted to all local drives but excluded floppy, CD, and other removable drives, and network shares.
  • * SC filetype: Now it returns "UTF-16LE" resp. "UTF-16BE" for such files. Before it returned "Unicode" for both.
  • * Raw View: Now UTF-16BE (Big Endian) files are supported when they have the UTF-16BE BOM.
  • % Raw View: Improved the exactness of the load timing.
  • * Installer Package: Removed the "Run XYplorer" checkbox on the finish page. Too much trouble with unwanted elevation when the XYplorer process apparently inherited the admin level from the installer process.
  • * Installer Package: Improved Uninstall. Now it resets resp. removes any registry keys that might have been set to XYplorer using Shell Integration.
  • ! Tree: Inline-renaming a drive via Enter or focus loss would happen but the rename box stayed visible. Fixed.
  • ! Emptying the Recycle Bin would lead to trouble when done while an item in the Recycle Bin was being previewed. Fixed: Now any preview is stopped before empyting.

Sunday, March 14, 2010

v8.90.0003 - 2010-03-14 18:35

BETA versions are now only available for registered users.
Find the download link at the bottom of the License Lounge.

  • +++ Special Experimental Edition Attempting To Handle Blocking Issues with File Operations In Vista SP1 And Later.
    Since multi-threading is not an option within XY's current development tools, I opted for multi-processing. There's a new helper proggy called XYcopy.exe in the same path as XYplorer (it is contained in the download packages from now on). XYcopy.exe will handle Move, Copy, and Delete jobs in its own thread, which of course means you can continue working in XYplorer while the file operations are going on in the background.

    Further, the jobs are auto-queued. E.g. if you initiate a Copy operation while another one is still in progress, the new one will be delayed until the other one is finished. One job is triggered after the next, until all pending jobs are completed. This means there is no inefficient pseudo-parallel processing. Yes, I know that this can be refined later...

    This is just the beginning. Currently only the Shell API is employed (with all its nagging prompts). Later there will be options to use other (faster) API to do the work including an interface with shiny real time progress bars making you feel like a pilot in action, etc. Also the Backup operations will be (optionally) routed this way in future.
    But for now I just want to know one thing: Is that blocking issue in Vista/Win7 now history or still present???

    BEFORE YOU RUN THIS EDITION, PLEASE NOTE that this is work in progress, therefore:
    - Do not use this edition for any serious work, certain things
      like auto-refreshing and Action Log are not working 100% yet.
    - Turn ON "Refresh during file operations" (context menu of Auto-
      Refresh TB button), else you have to refresh manually after a
      file operation.
    - The whole XYcopy thing and its behavior will be optional /
      configurable later, of course, but for now it's all hard-coded.
      Note also that XYcopy is only for WinNT and later (not for Win9*
      or ME). And it will stay like this.
  • + Scripting got a new function.
      Name:   rand
      Action: Generates an integer random number.
      Syntax: rand([low=0], [high=1])
        low:    the lowest value to return (default: 0)
        high:   the highest value to return (default: 1)
                should be same or higher than low
        return: random number
      Examples:
        echo rand();      //returns 0 or 1
        echo rand(2, 4);  //returns 2 or 3 or 4
        echo rand(-1, 1); //returns -1 or 0 or 1
  • ! List: Better formula to auto-calculate the color of the sorted column (used in inactive pane and when "Apply box color to list" is enabled).

Friday, March 12, 2010

v8.90.0002 - 2010-03-12 10:43

BETA versions are now only available for registered users.
Find the download link at the bottom of the License Lounge.

  • * Shell Integration: Rewrote more code concerning setting and removing XYplorer as Default File Manager.