Scribbly Thoughts

The first question to answer is: What information about a programme should we keep?

Eventually, of course, I'd like to keep all sorts of information; but initially I thought I'd start with:

1. FileSystem Information: Creation Date, Name, Path, etc.
2. Version Information: Version Number, Product Name, etc
3. Support Information: Webpages, Forums, etc
4. License Information: Type, key, etc

OK, so what's SMashT?

SMashT [pronounced "smashed"] is what I'm dabbling in (programming wise) at the moment.

OK, so it's a software project... what will it do?

General description would include concepts such as "software database" and "Mash up" (which gives a clue to the origins of the name: Software Mash-up Tool).

Aim
The aim is to provide a tool that will both help with the user's software, as well as the user's possible/intended software.

SMashT will provide means to record all the important bits of data associated with the user's software, links to associated sites that related to the software as well as some "mash-up" functionality to display related information/pages about the software.

Some functionality that I hope will be useful (it sounded useful to me) will be to analyse the user's opinion in conjunction with online reviews of the product. For those cronic installer/uninstallers out there, it can often be difficult to remember why you uninstalled a certain programme and installed a different programme.

Anyway, we'll see how it goes: it's not a rush job.

As mentioned in this previous post, I was having issues using Backup4All to backup to my webspace via FTP.

The developers at SoftLand did a lot of investigation and finally, after having the issue manifest whilst they were using the programme backing up to my server, modified their programme to take account of this issue. This modification is included in all future releases of the programme.

What was the issue?

The Backup4All developers say that

the [FTP] server does not respond correctly to "size" command.

I'm not sure what they did to get around the issue (I've got to assume that SyncBack had to do similar things), or why the issue was just showing up now (that has never been explained, and my host would love to know)?

But I'm glad it's fixed

Also note that DonationCoder have a 30% Discount available to members.

DonationCoder will also be offering 7 copies of Backup4All Pro in its monthly give-away for members: ETA Mid-June!

The Situation
I have a personal site hosted by Lunar Pages:

Did a bit of reading and testing (mainly by my favourite Software Gurus):

• Neville (of SurfuLater fame) highly recommended Backup4All
• DonationCoder Highly recommended Backup4All

So I purchased Backup4All Pro after playing with SyncBack, Corban and a few others

The Problem
Backup4All has worked very well with anything I've thrown at it: Local and Network backups. But it has fallen over when backing up to my private FTP area on Lunar Pages.

I've had (very) long discussions with the Developer, who is able to backup to my FTP area successfully, but he hasn't been able to shed any light on the situation. The only thing he's said is that the FTP session is getting interrupted.

I've had (very) long discussions with the Lunar Pages Help Desk.

I've even had long discussions with the Modem manufacturer Help Desk.

Here's the situation:

• Backup4All fails when trying to back up to my Windows hosted FTP site on LunarPages from my computer.
• Backup4All does not fail when backing up to a Linux hosted FTP site on LunarPages from my computer.
• The Developer can back up successfully to my Windows hosted FTP site (from his computer).
• SyncBackSE can backup successfully to my Windows hosted FTP site from my computer.

So how odd is that? At this stage I'm very close to having to ditch Backup4All in preference to something like SyncBackSE... which is a real shame! After paying for software you just want to have it work!

I've encountered an interesting issue with the Picture Box.

When a Bookmark is displayed it will also display a thumbnail of the WebPage that has been previously stored (if present). The problem occurs when thumbnails of different sizes are being displayed.

The thumbnails that are larger need to be scaled down, whereas the thumbnails that are smaller need to be centered. The code is something like this:

If ThumbNail.Size.Width < PictureBox.Size.Width Then
PictureBox.SizeMode = CentreImage
Else
PictureBox.SizeMode = Zoom
End If
PictureBox.ImageLocation = ThumbNail.LocalPath


But that produced disturbing changes to the existing image when the size mode changed.

So I tried using PictureBox.SuspendLayout and PictureBox.ResumeLayout but the disturbing changes remained.

So I tried PictureBox.Visible = False before the changes and True after, but no change I still get a small flash of the old image resized. It's like the PictureBox runs through the changes rather than just displaying the final result??

So how do you get a smooth transition from a SizeMode on one file to a different SizeMode on the second file?