I redesigned the way Stack works internally. The old way had pretty bad performance issues when having lot’s of items in the Stack. The current way seems to be very fast. I tested to save a Stack with 10000 items in it. It took about 100ms to load that Stack compared to several minutes it would have taken in the old Stack. I am going to do the same treatment to Bookmarks.

The Stack rewrite took most of the week. I did however do some random tweaks and fixes here and there. The Text Filter item now has a Clear button in it. Also I added “Clear Filters” button in the Customizer.

Change Log

• Added "Clear Filters" button to Customizer.
• Added Clear button to "Text Filter" toolbar item.
• Added translation and theme support to "Create Symbolic Link" dialog.
• Renaming file/folder now renames Stack item
• Redesigned Stack for better performance.
• Fixed translation issues.
• Fixed column header popup bug in multi screen environment.
• Fixed Size column bug when using Text format.
• Fixed Junction jumping to target folder.
• Updated French translation.
• Updated German translation.

CubicExplorer 0.94.0.1342 (SVN Snapshot)
Installer (2.4MB)
Zip (2.7MB)

I finished adding Load/Save support to Stack. It’s using files that have .stk extension. These files are stored in Stacks folder. In the Stack panel, I added a toolbar for easy access. There’s still some work to do (delete won’t remove items from stack etc.) but it’s starting to look nice. I also added a Text Filter items in Customizer and Filters popup menu.

NOTICE: I had to rename the Filters popup menu so it will disappear if you have added it in your toolbars. Please add it again.

I changed the version number to better reflect the progress. I think we can soon release official 0.94 version to replace the current 0.90 version which is pretty buggy compared to current snapshot.

Change Log

• Added Open/Save to Stack
• Added File Size Format option to FileView (Options->Display->Fileview).
• Added Text Filter toolbar item to Customizer.
• Added "Remove from Stack" item to Stack’s right click menu.
• Added "Allow Move" button to Stack toolbar.
• Fixed translation issues.
• Updated German translation
• Updated French translation.
• Changed version number to 0.94

CubicExplorer 0.94.0.1336 (SVN Snapshot)
Installer (2.4MB)
Zip (2.7MB)

On Sunday I happened to google cubicexplorer. I noticed that the result I got for this site had spam in it. After quick research it turned out that this site was infected by “Pharma Hack”. I’ve been using old WordPress version for quite a long time (yes, I know it’s a big NO NO). Since this is quite customized WP install, I have been too lazy to update as it’s not very fast job. Well, now everything is updated and it “only” took 3 days to do so. Future updates should be simpler, I hope. Unfortunately the comment drop down isn’t working anymore, I see if I make it work again at some point.

Despite the unexpected work load, I managed to do little work with CE, mainly some bug fixes here and there. I was planning to finish the Stack job this week but had to move it for next week. I did however add "Safe Operations Only" setting (in right click menu) and made it so that items are removed after Move operation. All these things are still at experimental level and I haven’t done much testing so play safe.

Another small thing I added was a toolbar button for quick access to filters (you can find it in Customizer –> Buttons –> Filters –> Filters). I’ll be adding an item for text filter also.

Change Log

• Added Filters toolbar item (Customizer –> Buttons –> Filters –> Filters).
• Added Safe Operations Only setting to Stacks (right click on Stack panel background).
• Items are now removed from stack after Move operation.
• Fixed separator bugs.
• Fixed usability bug in Advanced Options.
• Fixed crash caused by empty session.xml file.
• Fixed crash in Folder tree when renaming folder.
• Fixed translation issues.
• Updated French translation
• Updated Norwegian translation

CubicExplorer 0.91.0.1327 (SVN Snapshot)
Installer (2.3MB)
Zip (2.6MB)

Most of this week has gone into rewriting the Drop Stack panel. It’s still a work in progress so use it carefully. I changed it’s name to just Stack because eventually you can add items to it in other ways also. I also wrote some code to save/load stacks but couldn’t finish it in time, I’ll continue the work next week. At the moment only files/folders are supported in Stack but I was thinking of adding support for other drag/clipboard formats (for example, you could drag images/text from browser to Stack).

I also added a way to add session items to bookmarks.

PS. I haven’t tested the Stack in XP at all so there might be some issues, not sure. I’ll try to remember to run some tests (and fix the “Entry Point Not Found” bug) next week.

Change Log

• Rewrote Drop Stack panel (renamed it to Stack).
• Rewrote SingleClickBrowse support.
• Added Session item to Bookmarks.
• Added Advanced option "ShowOpenAllAtTop" to bookmarks menu.
• Added SingleClickExecute setting (Options –> Advanced –> FileView –> SingleClickExecute).
• Added icon for Stack panel.
• Fixed double click issue with Dynamic Spacers in TabBar.
• Fixed translation bug.
• Updated German translation.

CubicExplorer 0.91.0.1320 (SVN Snapshot)
Installer (2.3MB)
Zip (2.6MB)

In this week’s snapshot I’ve added spacers (dynamic and fixed). They work in TabBar and toolbars. Fixed spacer is just a space (12 pixels width). Dynamic spacer resizes automatically to fill rest of the toolbar. You can use dynamic spacers to pin buttons in right side of the toolbar. Also you can center items/tabs by adding dynamic spacers in both sides.

I also added an option to close CE when last tab is closed. And an option to open folders with single click.

Change Log

• Added [Dynamic Spacer] and [Fixed Spacer] items to button Customizer.
• Added "Exit program when last tab is closed" option to Options->Tabs.
• Added "Single click browsing" to Options->Display->Fileview.
• Enabled Drag and Drop in File Search.
• Tab scroll arrows are now same color as button text.
• Search result’s info tip now shows item path.
• Changed Column Settings popup and dialog to support themes and languages.
• Fixed translation issues
• Fixed crash when breadcrumb’s width was resized to zero.
• Updated French translation

CubicExplorer 0.91.0.1318 (SVN Snapshot)
Installer (2.3MB)
Zip (2.6MB)

Please use the forum to report bugs or feature requests

Finally I managed to finish the tab bar task. I still don’t know what caused those crashes but I found a way to go around that bug, unfortunately that “fix” may slow down session load time a bit. In this build I’ve added a way to scroll tabs if there are too many to fit the screen. The way the scrolling is done might not be perfect and I probably will have to do some changes to it, but for now it will do. It’s also now possible to add buttons to tab bar. I added Right Align separator to the customizer but at the moment it only works properly in tab bar.

I also added an option to close tabs by double clicking over them and fixed few bugs. Oh, and dragging files to program bookmarks now launches them.

***EDIT***
Looks like the tab AutoFit doesn’t work properly in this build. I’ll fix it for next snapshot.

Change Log

• Added "Right Align" item to buttons Customizer
• Added scroll arrows to TabBar
• Added customization support to TabBar
• Added "Close tab on double click" option
• Added Czech translation.
• Dragging files to bookmarks of programs will now launch them.
• Enabled Draw Selection in bookmark tree
• Fixed crashing when opening sessions.
• Fixed header clipping bug in List view mode
• Fixed scrollbar size issue when adding bookmarks.
• Fixed "Session.xml" crash on exit

CubicExplorer 0.91.0.1308 (SVN Snapshot)
Installer (2.3MB)
Zip (2.6MB)

Well this is annoying, still no snapshot this week. I’ve been fighting with the tab bar for 2 weeks now. This week mainly went in a bug hunt. After I moved the tab bar code from a prototype to CE, I noticed that there is a severe bug causing crashes. I still don’t know exactly what the problem is but yesterday I finally managed to narrow it down in to a single function. I really hope that the problem is indeed in that function (even though it means quite a lot of extra work). The nature of the bug is such that it’s pretty much impossible to track down by normal debugging means.

Here’s how you should be able to reproduce the crash in the previous CE snapshot:

1. Add a button in to the TabBar using Customizer.
2. Open a Session that has more that 2 tabs in it.
3. Select some tab.
4. Close CE
5. –> Crash

Feeling much better now. The pain started to ease on Monday and it’s pretty much gone now. I only got back to work yesterday so there isn’t too much progress, few bug fix and some small things added. I made the breadcrumb in address bar work similar to Windows Explorer (click on background switches to edit mode). Also it’s now possible to re-order sessions and hotkeys by dragging them.

Sorry about the delay on some of the translation updates. They came when I was taking the break and got buried in my email archives.

Change Log

• Added "Change order by dragging" to Session Manager
• Added "Change order by dragging" to Hotkey list.
• Added "Reset to default" button for hotkeys.
• Added “Switch to Next Tab”, “Switch to Previous Tab” and “Set focus to address bar” actions.
• Added option for InfoTips.
• Now clicking the background of Breadcrumb in AddressBar switches to editing mode.
• Fixed bug in toolbar positioning.
• Fixed Breadcrumb popup bug.
• Fixed "Delete dialog goes behind CE" bug in XP.
• Fixed column remembering bugs.
• Added Ukrainian translation
• Updated Spanish translation
• Updated Turkish translation
• Updated Russian translation
• Updated Chinese Simplified translation

CubicExplorer 0.91.0.1290 (SVN Snapshot)
Installer (2.3MB)
Zip (2.6MB)

Well this week wasn’t too great. I’ve had pretty nasty abdominal pain the whole week, couldn’t do almost any work. Not sure what’s causing the pain but I don’t think it’s anything serious (no other symptoms). I suspect that there’s some issue in the diaphragm, probably caused by the walk I took on last Sunday, the pain started after that.

I tried to do some work but sitting in the office chair is one of the most painful positions so there wasn’t much progress. I did however managed to add a list of closed tabs by sitting in a couch . Also I added buttons for it in the Customizer and in the File menu.

Change Log

• Added list of closed tabs
• Added icon to "Undo Tab Close"
• Added "UndoCount" setting to Advanced->Tabs options.
• Fixed bug in Filters when using ThreadedEnumeration.

CubicExplorer 0.91.0.1282 (SVN Snapshot)
Installer (2.3MB)
Zip (2.6MB)

I started the development of MultiView. I’ve got a working prototype ready for the base framework. There’s still quite a lot of work left but things are moving nicely. Due to the fact that CE wasn’t designed to have  multiple views, the MultiView solution will be little hackish. I’m not happy with that but it’ll do for now.

In this weeks snapshot I’ve done some work with tabs. I added tab selection history so that when you close a tab, previously selected tab will become active. Also I added “Undo Close Tab”. It still needs some work (undo does not restore all settings, icon missing) but the basic functionality is done. You can disable this feature from the Advanced options (Advanced->Tabs->ClosedTabHistory). There are now also options to “Open new tab next to current” and “Auto fit tabs”.

Change Log

• Added Selected Tab History
• Added “Open new tab next to current” option to tabs.
• Added “Auto fit tabs” setting to Options Dialog.
• Added “Undo Close Tab”
• Fixed crash in Info Bar.

CubicExplorer 0.91.0.1279 (SVN Snapshot)
Installer (2.3MB)
Zip (2.6MB)