Kinook Software Blog

VC6

Our applications are written primarily in Visual C++. We started with Visual C 6.0 back in 1998 and used it successfully for many years.

VC7

There was quite a bit of disappointment among C developers with the release of Visual Studio .NET (VC7) in 2002 and VS .NET 2003 (VC7.1) the following year because of so much emphasis placed on the new .NET Framework and VB.NET and C# languages. But with some trepidation and a moderate amount of pain, we finally migrated to VC7.1 in mid-2005. Other than some quirks in the resource editor that we managed to work around, that version worked well for us (with the requisite additions of Visual Assist and Fast Solution Build add-ins). It brought much-needed improvements to standards compliance, some library improvements, and was fairly stable, although compilation was a little slower and the executables slightly larger than VC6.

VC8

In early 2007, we experimented with upgrading to Visual Studio 2005 (VC8) but ran into a lot of problems attempting to get everything to compile and link properly. Microsoft also made some changes to how LIB files are handled, and one third-party library we use did not offer a VC8-compatible library at the time, so we shelved the conversion.

With Microsoft readying the release of Visual Studio 2008 (VC9) and the availability of VC8-compatible third-party libraries, we decided it was time to attempt migrating one more time. We thought it would be easier to convert to VC8 first and then try VC9 after that, but boy did that turn out to be a poor assumption.

VC8 didn’t do a great job of converting our project and solution files, requiring manual correction (Build checkboxes in the Configuration Manager and dependencies getting dropped). We also ran into several compilation and linker issues to work through, including:

None of the popular launcher applications, nor Windows itself, do a very good job of integrating launching vs. activating an already-running application. LaunchAssist is a little utility I wrote to improve this situation. It works with most application launchers as well as the Windows Start Menu, Run dialog, Explorer, etc. To install, download it here, extract it somewhere onto your hard drive, then register by double-clicking reg.bat (to uninstall, double-click unreg.bat, restart Windows, and delete the DLL). It works on Windows 2000, XP, and 2003, but unfortunately the hook that is needed for it to work was disabled in Vista (and despite what is stated in that thread, it can’t actually be fully enabled on Vista).

When an executable, document, or shortcut is launched, LaunchAssist is notified, looks for a matching application that is already running (by comparing the application or document filename with the beginning and ending of top-level window captions), and activates the matching window if found. If no match is found or if Shift is held down while launching (Shift+Enter in most launcher apps), LaunchAssist is bypassed and the program is launched normally by Windows.

Bonus feature: when launching URLs, if Shift is held down, LaunchAssist attempts to open the URL in a new browser window (for URLs, if Shift is not held down, LaunchAssist is bypassed). This is useful to me since I still use the venerable IE 6 (since I disdain tabbed browsers), configured to reuse windows when launching shortcuts, but sometimes I do want to open a new window instead. It works by finding the application associated with .html and launching it directly, which should work with most browsers.

Several categories of Windows application launchers have evolved over the past several years. In this post, I’ll look at the best and most popular products in each category. I’m only going to mention products that are either quite stable or that have been updated recently.

Auto-Config

Products in this category typically provide a polished GUI, automatically track the shortcuts on your system (Start Menu, recently launched apps and documents, etc.), and are summoned via a single hotkey. Typing a few characters will filter from the list of installed applications to quickly find the desired the one to launch, and pressing Enter launches it. The idea is to avoid having to configure anything, and (hopefully) the application quickly learns your habits and remembers the best matches for frequently typed abbreviations.

Many applications in this category also provide additional features (for instance, capture of selected text from current app, web search, inline calculator, auto-type from abbreviations, etc.) and support a plug-in architecture for user extensibility.

Single Key Launchers

Launchers in this category provide a more basic interface (typically text-only and no icons) that is more like the Run dialog on steroids. They are also launched with a single hotkey, and filter on the text you type to identify user-defined abbreviations which launch an application, open a web page, etc.

Start Menu Replacements

These applications attempt to provide a better alternative to the Windows Start Menu.

Typing Activated

Applications in this category provide a minimal user interface. Rather than summoning the application with a hotkey, you actually type into whatever application you’re in, and when the application identifies some abbreviation that you’ve defined, it pops up a confirmation prompt. Confirming the prompt erases the typed text from the current application and launches the application (or performs other functionality, such as typing boilerplate text) connected to that abbreviation.

Some products overlap multiple categories. I’ll look more in depth at some of these applications in future posts. Some additional categories that I won’t explore are hotkey programs, full-fledged macro programs, programmable keyboards, toolbar (mouse-centric) applications, and voice-activated launchers.

A few months back, I switched from Yahoo! Mail to Gmail for my personal email account, primarily because of its excellent keyboard accessibility. Yesterday, I encountered the first spam message to erroneously end up in my Inbox. Compare that with Yahoo! Mail, where I averaged a couple of uncaught spam nearly every day. Very impressive filtering.

The built-in Explorer application in Windows is rather wimpy, and every power user soon looks for a decent replacement. I looked at dozens of alternatives before settling on AB Commander, a dual-pane Explorer replacement.

AB Commander’s dual-pane view suits me well, since I often need to deal with two folders at a time, but rarely more than that. In contrast to Explorer, AB Commander is very keyboard friendly, providing shortcuts for almost every activity (although the shortcuts are not customizable). No matter where you are, navigating is very quick:

A new sample has recently been added to Ultra Recall, called Journal.urd. While Ultra Recall can do much more than just managing a journal, it is very good at the task, which this sample highlights. The sample demonstrates using templates and other Ultra Recall features, and contains a pre-configured journal hierarchy. A flash tutorial about managing a journal in Ultra Recall is also available here.

The Journal.urd sample shows one method of creating a journal hierarchy in Ultra Recall, but you are certainly not constrained to this design, the flexibility of Ultra Recall allows limitless configurations. The sample uses three custom templates (Year, Month, and Journal Entry), which makes it very simple to add Journal Entries which are organized by Year and Month, yet be fully searchable. Custom icons were assigned to the different templates which further highlights the different parts of the journal.

There are many reasons why Ultra Recall is a great application for a journal:

Other applications can be used to manage a journal, but Ultra Recall excels at the task, while offering many additional capabilities. Ultra Recall quickly becomes indispensable, by managing your scheduled tasks; archiving your emails, documents, web pages and text together, organized topically, chronologically, etc; then facilitating the recall of everything added with powerful search capabilities.

Give Ultra Recall a try today!

Launching and switching between applications are two very common activities when using Windows. Keyboard aficionados will naturally seek to minimize the work involved in such common tasks. For launching applications, Windows provides the Start Menu (accessed from the keyboard via the Windows key or Ctrl+Esc), the Quick Launch toolbar (Win+Tab, Tab), desktop shortcuts (Win+D), and the Run dialog (Win+R). For managing running programs, Windows provides the Taskbar (Win+Tab) and Alt+Tab window. Other than a few innovations in the Start Menu, such as recent and pinned items and highlighting of recently installed programs, little changed in these features between Windows 95 and Windows 2003. They aren’t the most robust implementations:

One of the great things about Ultra Recall is that it is flexible enough to be used for a variety of purposes (of course, that very flexibility makes it a bit challenging to market, and that’s one of the reasons for this blog).

One use that Ultra Recall excels at is data archiving. Here at Kinook, we file all of our business documents, including emails, invoices, purchases, faxes, tax documents, and more, in an Ultra Recall database. The database is located on the network for easy access by multiple users and so that it gets included in our nightly backup process.

Whenever someone needs to lookup any information, the database can be quickly opened and instantly searched by name, email address, subject, any text in the stored documents, or other attribute (metadata) values. One benefit of archiving this information in one database is that we only have to look in one place, regardless of what type of data we might be looking for. We use both Outlook and Outlook Express for email, but since Ultra Recall can store both types of messages, we can locate any email message (as well as Word, PDF, and other documents) in one step.

Another benefit is that we only have to backup one file to ensure that all of our data can be recovered if and when our server’s hard drive goes south. We don’t have to mess with backing up users’ personal email and document folders, and everyone can easily access the documents.

As an avid keyboarder, one thing that has always slowed me down is having to move my hands to reach for the navigation keys (arrow keys, home, end, page up/down, etc.). Methods to reduce the problem are available (for instance, space bar scrolling in browsers, special navigation modes in editors like vi/vim, etc.), but they are all application-specific. I’ve always wished for a vim-style navigation capability that worked everywhere in Windows.

Rare Pebble Software has created an ingenious solution to this problem: TouchCursor is a simple Windows application that turns your Space bar into another shift-state key, allowing you to combine it with home row keys for navigation and other common keystrokes.

For instance, by default Space+J is bound to left arrow, Space+L to right arrow, Space+K to down, Space+I to up, etc. Regular shift states (Ctrl, Alt, Shift, Win) can be combined with Space to type almost any combination from the home row. It sounds a bit odd, but it works surprisingly well. Note that it does work differently than a separate mode (ala vim).

The key bindings can be customized as desired. I like the defaults that are provided for the right hand, and I’ve also added bindings for other hard-to-reach keys like Esc and the function keys. Now my hands hardly ever need to leave their home positions.

A training mode is provided, and it only takes a few days to get into the habit of using the TouchCursor key combinations. TouchCursor is also a boon for use on laptops, which tend to have funky layouts for the navigation keys.

It even works inside Remote Desktop sessions and guest virtual machines (Virtual PC and VMware) without having to install it on the remote/guest systems!

Once you start using it, you’ll never want to use a computer where it isn’t installed, and TouchCursor can run from a USB drive, making it easy to take it wherever you go. If you want to become more efficient at the keyboard, TouchCursor will be a welcome addition to your system.

Vista adds some neat new behaviors for mouse users, but keyboard users seem to have taken a back seat. Just a few annoyances I noticed after using Vista for a few hours:

#1: Vista adds a new “message box on steroids” called the task dialog. It adds some sorely-needed features, but unfortunately, one handy Windows feature (common to message boxes and dialogs containing only buttons and labels) that it doesn’t implement is the capability to make a selection via a mnemonic letter without using the Alt key. For instance, the UAC dialogs are task dialogs and have choices like Allow or Continue, but you must press Alt+A or Alt+C to select those choices rather than A or C by itself.

#2: Too many tab stops to navigate panes in Windows Explorer (4 in XP vs. 8 in Vista), and the tab order is not intuitive (for instance, the list view precedes the column headers). Dedicated keys to jump directly to each pane are sorely needed.

#3: When launching an application from an Explorer view and a UAC prompt is displayed, when returning to the Explorer view, the keyboard focus is lost and you must tab 6 times to get focus back to the file list view.

#4: More steps to log off. Windows Vista: Windows, Right, Right, Right, L. Windows XP: Windows, L, Enter.