Another busy week behind. Most of this week has gone in building the new office. I installed laminate floor which took some time. Also I changed the desk setup to enable more work space. One day went in installing all monitors and computers. Every cable is now tied with zip ties and there’s not a single cable on the floor. It was a huge job to tie everything but well worth it. All and all, I’m very happy with the new office. Lot’s of work space and the floor is awesome. Man, I’ll need to replace those ugly CRT’s with some shiny new LCD panels:

Some progress on CE despite the office project. I added toolbar button for QuickView tab. Those who are updating CE, use the customizer to add that button. It’s under Navigation category. I also made it so that if you have a file selected and you press QuickView button (or Text Editor button), the selected file is opened. Same works in File Search (middle clicks work now too). As Tommy suggested, I’m calling this build 0.90 RC 4. Next week I’ll tweak the icons a bit and then we can release 0.90 final. It’s time to replace that old “stable” release.

Change Log

• Now Ctrl+F4 closes tabs also
• Added support for custom shell icon sizes.
• Updated French translation.
• Fixed bug in video players seek bar when watching long videos.
• Made video players seek bar more precise.
• Made GIF images open in QuickView.
• Files from File Search can now be opened in QuickView and Text Editor.
• Made Alt+Right Click to work in File Search.
• Text Editor action now opens selected file. If there’s no selection, an empty document is opened.
• Added QuickView action.

*UPDATE*
Version 0.90.0.1109 had a bug which made folders and bookmarks have lot of whitespace. It’s fix in 0.90.0.1111. Re-download if needed.

CubicExplorer 0.90 RC 4 (0.90.0.1111)
Installer (2.1MB)
Zip (2.4MB)

It’s been busy week. I’ve been fine tuning some of the time management techniques and done some preparations and planning for an office update, which is scheduled for this weekend. Basically I’m going to rebuild my office from scratch. Also I’ll reinstall Windows in my work system. Here’s few 3D designs (made with SketchUp and Kerkythea) of the new office layout:

About the new CE snapshot, I added QuickView tab. It works just like text editor tab does but for images and videos. Currently loading larger images can be a bit slow but I’ll optimize that next week. Also I’ll have to add an ability to zoom and scroll images. Controls to show next and previous images would be also nice. Middle click or Alt+Left click over image, video or audio opens the file in QuickView tab.

Change Log

• Added main menu popup action.
• Added main menu popup in status bar.
• Added visibility option for Main Menu.
• Added visibility option for tab bar.
• Added “Close tabs on left” and “Close tabs on right” actions.
• Added QuickView tab page.
• Added Korean translation.
• Changed shortcuts for panels to Ctrl+1, Ctrl+2, Ctrl+3…etc.

CubicExplorer 0.90.0.1105 (SVN Snapshot)
Installer (2.1MB)
Zip (2.4MB)

Just a short note this week. Haven’t had much time to work with CE this week nor last week. Next week should be better and there should be more progress. However, I did manage to add a right click popup menu for tabs. I still need to add lock and protect options there. Also rename and change color will come at some point.

Oh and, CE is not using UPX compression anymore.

CubicExplorer 0.90.0.1103 (SVN Snapshot)
Installer (2.1MB)
Zip (2.4MB)

Slowly moving ahead. There’s not much progress yet. I’ve been rebuilding the programming environment which crashed during my break. Also I’m getting used to few new routines to manage my time usage. In this weeks snapshot, there is one new option that makes CE work like WE in list view style (resize cells by largest file name). Also horizontal view styles (list and filmstrip) now snap to next column when scrolling. Other than that, there’s only some changes to make CE work with fresh code for some of the components used.

There are now compiling instructions and a separate development board on the forum for those who want to play around with CE.

CubicExplorer 0.90.0.1098 (SVN Snapshot)
Installer (2.1MB)
Zip (2.0MB)

Well, not yet at work. It seems that the recovery is taking longer than I thought. I’ve been updating my working environment and introduced some new things like the project server which is pretty much hosting my entire life thanks to eGroupWare. These changes hopefully will balance the work load and prevent meltdowns in the future. The server is up and running. Reusing materials and parts resulted total cost to be 0€ .

Initially I was planning to host CE’s code in my own server, but after thinking it some more, there’s not really any reason to do so. There are many free hosting options out there so why not let professionals handle those servers. After reviewing different hosts, I ended up choosing Google Code Hosting. They have fast servers/connections and proper backups in many geolocations.

I have uploaded all code to the server and it’s now available. There’s still a lot’s of cleaning to do in the code and folder structures. Also building instructions should be added. I chose Mozilla Public License (MPL) as the license. Anyway, from now on CE’s code will live here:

CubicExplorer on Google Code
http://code.google.com/p/cubicexplorer/

As many of you regular readers/users know, I’ve been away for a while. Reason for that is my major fatigue. Having no “real” break in over 10 years has it’s toll. But, I’m recovering and will continue to work with CE and other projects in 2009. Rest of this year I’m going to repose. There are many topics not answered in the forum, I apologize for that. Hopefully I’ll be able to revisit them once I’ll get back to work.

About work and CE, there are some changes coming. I’m slowly building a new server which will host CE and other projects in the future. CE will become open source along with that change.

Anyway, I thank all people for your concern. A special thanks to Steinsk for keeping an eye on the board. I’m not going to write notes until January 2009, same goes for the forum. So until then, take care and have a good Christmas and happy New Year.

I haven’t been able to do any work with CE for the past 2 weeks. There’s some higher priority things I need to take care of before continuing with CE. There’s not going to be any progress next week either but after that things should go back to normal.

Sorry for the lack of answers in the forum. I’ll go through all the new posts early next week.

Still no final release, instead yet another snapshot. This week wasn’t very productive but there was some progress. I made all folders work in the "Open new tab as" custom setting. Now you can use My Computer etc. in it. Also now when CE is in "Single Instance Only" mode, it becomes visible (and restored if minimized) when you try to launch another instance of CE.

Change log

• Updated German translation.
• Changed #217, Made all type of folders work as a custom start folder for new tabs.
• Changed #220, Make CE visible when launched.
• Fixed #210, Green menu items.
• Fixed #216, Clone tab issue.
• Fixed #218, Doesn’t remember view settings.
• Fixed #219, "Reuse already open tabs" bug

CubicExplorer 0.90.0.1084 (SVN Snapshot)
Installer (2.1MB)
Zip (2.0MB)

Another week, another snapshot. I’ve fixed few bugs and added few items in Edit and View menu. Also I changed the tab behavior so that when you close last tab, CE will open the "home" folder. Also when drive or media (CD etc.) is removed, all tabs that were browsing those locations are now closed automatically. I didn’t have time to do much testing with that feature so please let me know how it works.

On other notes, I switched to Ubuntu in my laptop. I did do a dual boot install but haven’t used Windows at all after the switch. Or well, I have used it but it’s been inside Ubuntu with VirtualBox. All in all, I’ve enjoyed every minute of using Ubuntu instead of Windows. Only issue I noticed was the fact that the file manager isn’t very good. However I have a plan to fix that. The plan is called CubicExplorer Lite. It will  be a simple cross-platform file manager. Nothing special, just tabs and bookmarks. The plan is that CubicExplorer 2.0 will be cross-platform app, and as it looks like I need to switch to another programming language to make that happen, CubicExplorer Lite will be a perfect learning project.

Anyway, CE Lite is not top priority project at the moment so can’t say when there’s going to be something to show. I’m still choosing the programming language (suggestions are welcome) so it might take a while.

Change Log

• Added #204, Auto select first item.
• Added "New" and "New Folder" items in Edit menu.
• Added "Arrange By" and "Group By" items in View menu.
• Updated Chinese Simplified translation.
• Changed #211, Now closes unavailable tabs when drive/media is removed.
• Changed #212, Now opens "Home" folder when last tab is closed.
• Fixed #198, FolderTree shouldn’t show "Network Connections" items.
• Fixed #199, EAccessViolation
• Fixed #200, EAssertionFailed
• Fixed #207, Drive bar doesn’t respect the "Open in new tab by default" option.

CubicExplorer 0.90.0.1081 (SVN Snapshot)
Installer (2.1MB)
Zip (2.0MB)

Yet another "release candidate". I’m hoping this will be last one and next release is 0.90 final. To this release I added an option to make CE select previous folder when you go back in history or folder up. Other changes are bug fixes (or fix attempts). The "wrong icon bug" should be hopefully fixed now.

Change Log

• Added option to make CE select previous folder.
• Not using kernel notifications for remote drives anymore.
• Fixed #7, Wrong file/folder icons.
• Fixed #191, Doesn’t change folder.
• Fixed #197, EAccessViolation (needs testing).
• Fixed #196, Exception in text editor.
• Fixed #188, Bug with "Open in new tab by default"

CubicExplorer 0.90 RC 3 (0.90.0.1079)
Installer (2.1MB)
Zip (2.0MB)