I spent some time polishing the Info Bar this week. I’m pretty happy with the results. It now has some text formatting to make it more pleasant for eyes. Also the thumbnail image is resized smoothly now. The file information shown comes from Windows (same info as you see when hovering mouse over file in Explorer). That means I have little control over what information is shown. However, it does allow people to use 3rd party extensions to add more information. Plans are to make Info Bar customizable but at the moment it’s not top priority.

So what is top priority at the moment? Hmm, I’ve been thinking about CE’s future whole week. There are two important areas that need to be fixed:
 
1. The layout scheme (panels, toolbars, dual/multi-view etc.). It’s almost ready, only some finishing touches are needed.

2. The file system handler. This is a big one to do. At the moment I’m using Jim’s Delphi components to handle most interaction with Windows file system. However, while it’s a fine component package, it’s not quite optimized for CE’s use. So, I’ve been playing around with an idea of creating my own tools. This would make it possible to add some interesting features (virtual folders/files, ftp and other network protocol support, instant search/filtering, offline access etc.). The new handler would be database driven so it should be pretty fast.

However, the top priority goes to online update feature. That’s a feature i think everyone (including me) will enjoy. Also it allows me to release daily snapshots for testing purposes. I’ll start working with this feature next week. Once it’s done I’ll try to fix as many bugs as possible and release official 0.91 version.

Anyway, here’s the snapshot…

Change Log

• Added “Clear Filters” button
• Enter key now starts search
• Fixed crash on Search end (fix try)
• Updated Spanish translation
• Updated Italian translation
• Polished Info Bar

CubicExplorer 0.91.0.1223 (SVN Snapshot)
Installer (1.9MB)
Zip (2.2MB)

Getting back to work this week. Little slow start as always after longer break. However, I did make some nice progress. I fixed few bugs that have been bugging me since the last snapshot. The enhanced tooltip introduced in last snapshot turned out to be quite nasty when browsing network drives. So I removed it for now.

Biggest change in this snapshot is the Info Bar. I’ve been using Windows7 quite a lot lately and it has similar thing which I like a lot. CE’s implementation of the bar is little different and there’s still work to do until it’s done. The finished solution will be customizable and there will be some editable fields (file name for example). For some reason the thumbnail does not have proper aspect ratio in Windows7. I didn’t have time to fix it for this build but I’ll do it next week.

Change Log

• Added Info Bar.
• Added Romanian translation.
• Updated Greek translation.
• Updated Russian translation.
• Enhanced file search.
• Removed InfoQuery hints.

CubicExplorer 0.91.0.1214 (SVN Snapshot)
Installer (2.2MB)
Zip (2.5MB)

So, I’ve been resting for the past few months. Reason for that is a burnout I had some years ago which still effects my ability to work. It gets worse at this time every year due to "Seasonal affective disorder". Anyway, this break has had some positive side-effects. I’ve had much time to think about the future of CE and other projects related to CubicReality.

The current state of CE is pretty awful. It’s filled with bugs and unfinished features. Also my motivation level to code it has gone down quite a bit lately. To solve those issues, I’ve decided to do some major changes in my life. The only way to ensure CubicExplorer’s future and quality is to make it my full-time job and run it like a business. CE will however stay free so no worries. In some distant future there might be an optional registration, not sure yet.

I’ve already built a nice office and I’m looking forward to start work next week.

Happy New Year everyone! – Marko

So, I took little break which happens every fall. I’ve had some other stuff I needed to take care of and also I needed some time to rest. This week I started to work with CE again. I rewrote the search feature from scratch. It now has a new more powerful engine and lot’s of advanced search options including content search. I haven’t done much testing yet so there might be some bugs left.

Next I will finish the DualView implementation. I haven’t yet checked the forum but I’ll go through all posts next week.

*UPDATED 18.11.2009*

CubicExplorer 0.91.0.1209 (SVN Snapshot)
Installer (2.2MB)
Zip (2.5MB)

Very little progress on CE this week. I started the change to separate tabs from pages which means tearing down some old code and writing some new. Most of the week however has gone in helping my sister to move. We painted her new apartment and the actual move was yesterday. A lot of stuff was moved and the biggest one was piano which we had to carry from 3. floor down. I guess I still have some muscles since pretty much every place is hurting now.

Anyway, next weeks schedule is almost clear and I have the opportunity to work with CE. I’ll check out the forum tomorrow. It seems there has been some spam posts lately. To all forum users, if you see spam, hit the Report to moderator link.

Nice progress this week, however DualView is not yet available in this build. I made some changes to the layout system which took quite a lot of time. Yesterday I started to work with DualView but got stuck because I didn’t have clear vision on how I should make it happen. So far all pages (FileView, TextEditor, FileSearch and QuickView) have been “living” in tabs. That made things difficult when you need to access 2 pages at the same time. So I went to sleep thinking about it and in the morning woke up with an idea on how to solve that problem.

Basically I will be (actually I already wrote most of it today) creating a generic way to control pages. This should be quite flexible system which means it won’t be limited to just DualView. With it, there can be unlimited number of panes and other elements grouped into one view. It’ll be available next week.

About today’s snapshot, I added options to control what get’s saved with different tab types. Until now, everything was saved which made it annoying to customize the UI because you would have to do the same changes to all tab types. I’ve also added options to enable/disable some threaded functions in the FileView. All these can be found in Option dialog’s Advanced page. Also there is a new theme shipping called Shine thanks to badloginname from the forum.

Change Log

• Added RememberInnerToolbarLayout, RememberOuterToolbarLayout, RememberPanelLayout  Options.
• Added ThreadedDetails, ThreadedEnumeration, ThreadedImages options.
• Added theme Shine.
• Updated 3rd party components code.

CubicExplorer 0.91.0.1186 (SVN Snapshot)
Installer (2.2MB)
Zip (2.5MB)

So, I had my much needed vacation. Nothing special, just chilling. Taking a break helped a lot and there has been some nice progress this week. I finished the changes to the layout system which came out quite nice. I still might add one extra option in it but nothing major. So next week I can start working with the DualView and finish the job.

Anyway, I was thinking of releasing a snapshot today but I’m not going to do that because the current CE build is just too buggy and there aren’t any noticeable changes. Next week there definitely will be a snapshot release.

So, this week was a disaster and I’m starting to get that same feeling as I had last year before the meltdown. I decided to take few weeks off to build up strength. I’m still checking the forum and email but there wont be any progress on CE until august.

Until then, have a nice summer

It’s been quite unproductive week. The DualView is pretty much a mess at the moment and I’ll have to take few steps backwards and rewrite some code. The problem lies in the layout system which is designed to handle only one pane and a single active tab. So I’ll need to do some changes on how layouts are saved and loaded. As a side product to those changes, I will be adding options to lock toolbars and panels.

Another problem I’ve been having is my motivation level which was pretty much zero this week. Due to my programming style, pretty much all ideas and how things should work exist only in my head. If the motivation level is high, that vision is clear. This week however, it’s been just a blur. To boost up motivation, I started to play around with QuickView related stuff. Here’s the result:

Basically, I coded a framework for plugins that can be used to add more viewers in QuickView. It works very nicely and I’m looking forward to implement it in CE. This has indeed boosted my motivation level so I’m hoping to finish the work with DualView by the end of next week.

First I’d like to thanks everyone who left a comment or sent me an email regarding of Mr.Cat. Much appreciated .

This week I’ve worked in implementing the DualView host into CE. As I feared, it’s quite a big and messy job. Because CE was developed to have only single file view, there are a lot of core functions I need to change to make everything work. That makes things quite difficult because changing some of the core functions might have side effects for many different features. But slowly things are moving forward.

At the moment CE is pretty much useless and filled with bugs so I won’t be releasing snapshot this week. Hopefully by the end of next week I have tied all the loose ends.