It’s been quite random two weeks. It’s probably the spring that makes it difficult to concentrate. Last week I started to work with the plugin scheme. It’s part of the CubicCore project so I didn’t hurry with it. Lot’s of time went in research to find out what is the best way to do things so it works cross platform and cross language. There’s still a lot to learn but I managed to write some code that can be implemented in CE. I didn’t have time to implement it yet, maybe next week.

For the past few days I’ve done lot’s of random changes. There’s now a Workspace panel which basically is another FileView. Until we have a proper dual/multi pane support, this panel can be used. I wrote it just yesterday so there is very little testing done, let me know if you find bugs or have ideas for improvement.

I also added support for per folder settings. It’s part of the component set I’m using so I don’t if it has some performance penalties. It’s disabled by default but you can enable it from Options -> Display -> FileView -> Use per folder settings. All those settings are stored in a perfolder.dat file located in the settings folder. Let me know how it works.

Oh, and you can now access bookmarks by right clicking the Tray Icon.

Change Log (0.96.0.1544)

• Added Workspace panel.
• Added Per folder settings to FileView.
• Added Bookmarks to Tray icon.
• Added Panels popup menu.
• Added Make Visible action.
• Added AlwaysSaveAsPIDL advanced option to Bookmarks.
• It’s now possible to open links from the text editor.
• Esc now closes Text Editor. It can be disabled from Advanced settings.
• Unknown files are now opened in Text Editor by default.
• Fixed focus and usability issues in Text editor’s Find and Replace.
• Fixed issues in tab bar.
• Fixed translation bugs.
• Fixed Alt key bug in Options dialogs.
• Fixed Alt+Click issue in FileView’s Single click mode.
• Fixed memory leak and dialog visibility issue in Version Manager.
• Fixed crashes in QuickView’s image viewer.
• Fixed bug in text file preview.
• Misc changes to fix possible crashes.
• Fixed bug when closing detached QuickView.
• Updated French translation (thanks to BB).
• Updated Japanese translation (thanks to Benok).
• Updated Italian translation (thanks to Folgore101).

****** EDIT – 14.5.2012 ******
There was one nasty bug that caused all sort of weird behavior in last snapshot. So here’s an update with bunch of fixes and few new advanced settings.

Change Log (0.96.0.1550)

• Added advanced options HideComputerCrumb, HideDesktopCrumb and MaxCrumbSize for Breadcrumb.
• Added OpenOnFilelistSelect and OpenOnPlaylistSelect advanced options to QuickView.
• Added MainForm->Wow64Enabled advanced setting.
• Double click on tray now works correctly.
• Enter now opens file in QuickView’s file/playlist.
• Text editor is now focused when file is opened.
• Shift+Enter now searches backward in Text Editor.
• Fixed "CE clicks mouse" bug.
• Small speed improvement to Bookmarks.
• Fixed bug that opens tab when Alt+Left dragging file/folder.
• Fixed "Select first item" issue with Per folder settings.
• Fixed tab closing issues.
• Fixed drawing issues in text file preview.
• Updated Polish translation (thanks to Seethi).

CubicExplorer 0.96.0.1550 (SVN Snapshot)
Installer (3.1MB)
Portable (3.6MB)

So, I rewrote the text editor. Or to be precise, I replaced it with QuickView and a text editor plugin. It’s not very big change to the old editor but it finally saves those editor settings. Also I redesigned the find/replace function. It’s now smaller and more simple to use.

I changed the highlighters to be little more colorful. Also there’s a new multi highlighter for HTML that supports inline sections for PHP, CSS and JS. The colors used are my personal preferences so they might not fit everyone’s taste. I am planning to add a customizer at some point for the highlighters so you can tweak the colors yourself.

For the file preview you see in QuickView panel when selecting a file, I added a text thumbnail for unknown files. It shows the content of any file that doesn’t have regular thumbnail. It’s not very pretty looking at the moment but I’ll try to work on that.

Change Log

• Rewrote text editor.
• Added file preview for text files.
• Added FontSize to Options->Advanced->Tabs.
• Dragging file/folder to tab bar will now open a new tab.
• QuickView video/audio player now moves to click position.
• Old file previews should be now disregarded properly.
• QuickView tab now closes on Detach.
• Fixed startup crash when CubicExplorer.exe is located in Unicode path.
• Fixed translation issues.
• Added "Paint It Black" theme (thanks to PirateMonkey)
• Updated French translation (thanks to BB).
• Updated Slovak translation (thanks to Sepp Winkler).
• Updated Russian translation (thanks to lzsaver).
• Updated Swedish translation (thanks to eson).

CubicExplorer 0.96.0.1528 (SVN Snapshot)
Installer (3.1MB)
Portable (3.6MB)

Phew, finally the new QuickView is ready. Or well, it’s not ready but it’s usable. I wasn’t planning on spending so much time with this but it turned out to be more complicated job than I initially thought (as usual). However, I’m quite happy how it turned out. Also I learned a lot on the road and wrote some reusable code that will be helpful in the future.

Little bit about how the QuickView works. The QuickView panel will show a file preview (thumbnail and information) when you select a file (or folder). When you click on that preview, the file will be opened in a viewer that will let you pan/zoom images, play videos or edit text (the text editor is still a work in progress). QuickView tab will open the file directly in a viewer.

There is a Filelist that will automatically find all supported files from current folder. If you want to play a slideshow of those files, make sure to change the loop mode to “Loop Filelist”. At the moment all supported files will be added in the Filelist, including text files. I’ll add some way to filter that list.

There’s also a Playlist where you can drag and drop files. I’ll create more ways to add files there including the possibility to load/save playlists. Again, if you want to automatically play all files from the Playlist, choose the “Loop Playlist” option as a loop mode.

By right clicking and selecting “Detach to Window”, you can open the QuickView in a separate window. At the moment if you have video open, you’ll need to right click over the toolbar to show that popup. I’ll fix that.

Notice, the QuickView is running but it’s still a work in progress, so there are bugs and missing features in it. I’ll keep tweaking it next week. After it’s finished, I’ll start a bug hunt/feature request tour. I’ll try to (finally) fix/implement those long standing bugs/features (like the "text editor settings not saving" and "per folder settings"). All these changes will be part of version 0.96 to which I moved with this snapshot.

Change Log

• Added new QuickView.
• Added Save As button to translator.
• Updated Polish translation (thanks to Seethi).
• Updated Hungarian translation (thanks to Mezei Zoltan).
• Updated Italian translation (thanks to Folgore101).
• Updated French translation (thanks to BB).
• Updated Swedish translation (thanks to eson).

CubicExplorer 0.96.0.1512 (SVN Snapshot)
Installer (3.0MB)
Portable (3.5MB)

Still no snapshot I’m afraid. Last week I coded a file previewer for the QuickView (first image). This week I finished coding the image viewer (second image). I’m pretty happy how it turned out. You can now zoom and pan images. Also it supports optimized loading of JPEG images which makes things nice and fast.

I was planning to release a snapshot this week but due to some nasty memory leaks (Delphi’s TJPEGImage is not thread-safe it turns out) I wasn’t able to finish things on time. However, I have managed to finally move the prototype code into CE.

I’ll finish things up next week and release new snapshot on Friday.

No snapshot this week unfortunately. I started last week by transferring the QuickView prototype code into CE. Once everything was up and running I noticed severe painting issues on resize. It was something I hadn’t seen before and it made very little sense. So I spent many days in trying to figure out what the problem was. Eventually I realized that the problem appeared when using too many nested windows. In the prototype everything worked fine because I was using only few nested windows but since CE has more complex layout, the limit was reached.

It turned out to be a limit in Windows Kernel that caused those painting issues. Here’s a good description about the issue by Jordan Russell: http://news.jrsoftware.org/news/toolbar2000/msg07779.html. Thankfully there was already a fix available so I didn’t have to do any major changes.

For those interested, here’s the fix (credits goes to Andreas Hausladen)

ControlResizeBugFix.pas (not needed for Delphi 2009 and up)
http://cubicexplorer.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/Source/ControlResizeBugFix.pas

Just a quick note. For the past few days I’ve been rewriting the About and Download page for CE. I thought we might as well update the official version. Compared to previous snapshot, there’s not many changes. Few bug fixes and I changed the update type Weekly to Snapshot.

Change Log (from previous Snapshot)

• Fixed Allow Move button in Stack toolbar.
• Check selection now changes focus.
• Fixed status bar not updating on tab change bug.
• Chanced Update type Weekly to Snapshot.
• Updated Chinese Simplified translation (thanks to lcz20).

CubicExplorer 0.95.1.1494 (Official)
Installer (3.0MB)
Portable (3.4MB)

Did tons of work in the past two weeks. My goal was to have the new QuickView in this snapshot but couldn’t get it finished in time. Hopefully I can finish it next week, it’s about 3/4 done. This new QuickView will be available in panel, tab and as a separate window. I’ll also add a command line switch for it so it’s possible to use it as a standalone media player.

There was some progress on CE itself too. Mainly some random bug fixes. Biggest visible changes are the loading screen at start and the possibility to customize Stack toolbar. I added the loading screen to hide the bouncing layout when CE is started. It also speeds up the loading time about 20% since CE don’t have to draw the layout until it’s fully loaded.

Biweekly snapshots

In the past I’ve tried to release a snapshot every week. Lately I’ve been doing it every other week and it feels much better. I get more done and it’s easier to concentrate on big features when you don’t have to break the flow every Friday. So I’ll keep this biweekly schedule for now.

Change Log

• Added loading screen.
• Fixed bug that caused MainToolbar to not remember it’s visibility.
• Fixed crash in FileSearch when search has finished.
• Removed exceptions when setting files are locked.
• Fixed translation issue in FileSearch.
• Fixed toolbar bugs.
• It’s now possible to customize StackToolbar.
• Changed QuickView text viewer so it doesn’t lock files.
• Shortcuts are now opened properly when middle clicking.
• Updated French translation (thanks to BB).
• Updated Portuguese translation (thanks to Mário Gonçalves).

CubicExplorer 0.95.1.1490 (SVN Snapshot)
Installer (3.0MB)
Portable (3.4MB)

It’s been pretty random two weeks. I decided to take little distance to CubicCore so it’s easier to see the big picture. So instead of working with that, I started to work with QuickView. I created a new picture viewer and base for new media player. The picture viewer turned out great although it was quite a challenge, lot’s of math involved. The media player is still a work in progress. Once it’s finished, it will let you choose what engine to use for playing video/audio (DirectShow, WMP and VLC are supported at first). I’m hoping to finish the new QuickView for next snapshot.

This week I did bunch of random stuff here and there. I added Tabs toolbar button. By default it will show you controls to add/close tabs but you can hide them from Options -> Advanced -> Buttons -> Tabs_ShowTabControls.

I also added a Stretcher toolbar item. You can use it to stretch buttons or text fields to fill the empty space in toolbar. It’s not that useful for buttons (unless you like wide buttons), it’s mainly meant to be used with text fields. Another visible change is the Filters toolbar which can now be customized. I also did bunch of changes under the skin to make things easier when adding new customizable toolbars. The Stack toolbar is not yet customizable but I’ll convert it.

Notice, for the Stretcher to work, the toolbar has to have the Stretch option enabled.

Change Log

• Added Tabs toolbar button.
• Added Stretcher toolbar item.
• Added "New File" button.
• Fixed translation bug.
• Fixed tab X button draw bug.
• Fixed bug that might cause crash when closing File Search tab.
• Filters toolbar can now be customized.
• Text Filter toolbar item now supports history.
• File Search now shows the search values in the tab title.
• Session now remembers most of FileSearch settings.
• Updated default settings.
• Updated Italian translation (thanks to Folgore101).
• Updated French translation (thanks to BB).
• Updated Spanish translation (thanks to juanmanuel).

CubicExplorer 0.95.1.1474 (SVN Snapshot)
Installer (2.9MB)
Portable (3.4MB)

Good progress on CubicCore/CE 2.0. I’ve started to build the base structure for the application itself. ServiceHost and two services, MessageHub and Jobs (threaded tasks) are ready. I still need to go over the code and figure out if there are some limitations in the design. After that I’ll move on to Components and Setting storage. It’s been really fun to code this stuff, enjoying every minute.

There’s some progress in CE 1.0 too. Mainly I rewrote some of the filtering stuff. Now it updates the extension list and file counts when using text filter. I also fixed few bugs and added confirmation prompt on Close if there’s any dialogs found. Oh, and there’s now a “Restore Default Layout” button in Help menu and Options -> Display. It only restores toolbar and panel positions, it does not restore toolbar buttons.

Last week I made it so that CE changes the CurrentDirectory to active folder. This caused a “Folder in use” problem when trying to delete a folder that is open in CE. There’s now an advanced option MainForm -> ChangeCurrentDirVar to let you control this behaviour. It’s disabled by default. If you don’t need it or don’t know what I’m talking about, just leave it like that.

Change Log

• Added "OpenInNewTab" advanced option for DriveBar.
• Added icon for InfoBar.
• Added confirmation prompt if open dialogs are found when quitting CE.
• Added "Restore Default Layout" button to Help menu and Options->Display.
• Added "New Folder" to the background menu.
• Added advanced option MainForm -> ChangeCurrentDirVar.
• Added Exclude to Filters menu.
• Added Exclude and Strict filter buttons to Customizer.
• Fixed background text bug when file/folder is added in empty folder.
• Filter list now updated file counts when text filter is used.
• Changed Text editor default title from "Untitled" to "New text file".
• Auto scrolls now after paste.
• Pressing Enter or selecting "Open in new tab" from context menu will now open multiple folders.
• Updated Brazilian Portuguese translation (thanks to Luciano Sturaro).
• Updated Russian translation (thanks to sergus).

CubicExplorer 0.95.1.1459 (SVN Snapshot)
Installer (2.9MB)
Portable (3.4MB)

I’m still working with the basic stuff needed for cross-platform support. For those interested, I’ve been collecting/creating code that can be used in both Delphi and FPC, mainly string handling routines and classes like StringList. To make things easier, I’ll only support Windows versions that have Unicode support (Win2000 and up).

Today I did some work with CE. I added Exclude button to the Filters panel. If it’s checked, filtered files will be hidden instead of shown. I also added options to automatically select and/or sort pasted files. Both are enabled by default but they can be turned off from Options -> Advanced -> FileView. I did very little testing with them so let me know if there’s problems.

Change Log

• Added exclude button to filters panel.
• Added SelectPasted and SortAfterPaste settings for Fileview.
• Fixed resize bug when using Fullscreen mode.
• Rename is now possible in Search tab.
• Changed "Refresh Fileview" icon to green.
• Text filter now searches from complete filename (including extension).
• Swapped default mapping of Ctrl+PageUp and Ctrl+PageDown to work other way around.
• Updated French translation (thanks to BB).
• Updated Russian translation (thanks to Vitaly).

CubicExplorer 0.95.1.1454 (SVN Snapshot)
Installer (2.9MB)
Portable (3.4MB)