Author: Arnor

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This year has been a bit challenging for me so far.

In early January I went through an allergy test that showed that I was dairy intolerant. I spent a good chunk of January on liquid diet, which was challenging to say the least, but ultimately good for me:)

In the second weekend in February we spent a day in Seattle and on the way home we were rear-ended. To make things even worse, the person that hit us left the scene in a big hurry! It wasn't a big impact, but enough to rattle my already bad back and caused a problem in my right shoulder - yep, my mouse arm;)

With the help of a good chiropractor my back is getting better every day, but unfortunately my shoulder is not. I'm scheduled for a MRI of the shoulder tomorrow and hopefully it will show what is going on. This has really affected my productivity and the darn shoulder gets really sore and stiff when working on the computer.

Despite this I have made progress on product releases, just not as much as I had planned so I'm a bit behind schedule. I have spent some time on cleaning up several products and worked on demos and documentation. I have also added some articles to the Tips and Tricks section on our Zendesk forum

I'm not going to promise anything about releases, but if nothing else happens (knock on wood:) releases will start to pop out in the next couple of weeks.

Arnor Baldvinsson

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One of the forums on our Zendesk portal is "Tips and Tricks"

I have posted two short posts there about hiding DOS/console program windows when using ITRun, ITRunFile and ITRunWait from the Shell Class and one about getting table information from MSSQL database.

I will be posting more short tips and tricks there so check it out from time to time:)

Arnor Baldvinsson

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Support to my customers is one of the things that I have always wanted to make sure that I did to my best ability.

As our customer base has grown over the years this task has become more difficult. Since the support team is just I, myself and me it sometimes becomes a daunting task to keep track of emails and requests. Interestingly, customer support comes in waves. I may not get a single email for a week and then I get 10 in one day for as many products.

Having a good system in place has become one of my highest priorities in the past few months. Many developers feel that they have to design and write such systems themselves to make sure they work. I definitely used to be one of them, but I have started to learn that sometimes it's easier - and a whole lot cheaper - to use one of the many services out there rather than do it yourself.

Couple of months ago I mentioned this to Sue and she happened to have been reading some posts on her forums about options in customer support. One of them was Zendesk and after taking a good look at it I decided to try to use their service. But I got sidetracked by school and didn't get back to it until this week. I expect to have it completely set up sometime next week and once I'm done with that, emails will go out to all my customers about this new service and how to use it. Following that, subscribers will be added to the Zendesk account so they will have direct access. If people who are not my customers want to post question all you need to do is sign up and post. It's completely free and only takes a few seconds.

To access the Icetips portal at Zendesk, please go to http://icetips.zendesk.com I have not completely set up the end user portal yet as I have been working on the administration setup. Over the next week or so this page will change, but the support is fully functional by now. Over the next week I will send out emails to my customers with instructions and information about how to submit support requests.

I hope that with this new system in place I can keep a much better track of support requests and my customers can keep better track of what is going on.

Arnor Baldvinsson

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Since System Restore was introduced in Windows XP it has saved my behind on a number of occasions. But it has also messed things up for me because .app files are part of the restore cycle and apparently - at least in Windows 7 - so are .CLW files!

It doesn't happen often that I have to use System Restore to restore to an earlier restore point, but it has happened. Last time it happened on a virtual machine that had a Blue Screen of Death all of a sudden in the middle of a development project. It wouldn't come back up and I was in a hurry and used the "System check - recover" option or whatever it is called on the windows startup screen. It didn't indicate system restore so I let it run. Once it was done and Win7 was back up and running there was a message stating something to the effect that the computer had been rolled back to the last restore point - which was from the night before.

I checked my apps and lo and behold, they were all from the night before. So were a couple of external .clw files. Fortunately I had just placed the project into version control and even later, uploaded it to my client's FTP server so I had a copy from about an hour before the BSoD happened.

I decided to take a good look at how to prevent this from ever happening again. I have all my projects backed up and also in version control (which is also backed up) so I'm not at much risk of losing work (I HATE losing work, so I do my best never to have that happen to me!) After snooping around on the web I found several references and they all pointed in the same direction.

In the registry there are two keys that control the System Restore:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\BackupRestore\FilesNotToBackup
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\BackupRestore\FilesNotToSnapshot

The first one affects backup and the second one affects the Volume Shadow Services (VSS), which is the technology that System Restore uses to create the snapshots, i.e. the restore points. To be on the safe side, I have modified both of them to exclude my development folders and also specifically the .app and .clw files.

Here is what I use right now:

C:\dev\* /s
C:\*.app /s
C:\*.clw /s
C:\Clarion\* /s

I create a multi-string value in those two keys, call the value "Clarion" and put those lines into the value data text box. If you want to include a folder you use the path and then \* If you want it to be recursive and contain sub-folders you add the /s switch to it. You can exclude files and folders and groom this as you like. Basically this works like the good old DIR command in DOS, for those of you old enough to remember DOS;) For those of you who don't, run cmd.exe and try dir /? in the root of your C drive and then play with it. I think the only switch available to the exclusions is the /s switch.

All my current development is in the C:\dev folder. But I also have a lot of older apps and stuff in my C:\Clarion folder so I want to exclude both of those. I also set the *.app and *.clw to be excluded anywhere on the C: drive.

If you have a second drive for your development you can simply turn System Restore off for the drive, but if you have it on the C: drive, then you need to prevent System Restore from messing with your files! I'm always running out of drives - I have 5 drives currently hooked up to my development machine, with a total of 6 Terabytes of storage! If you are like me and you use virtual machines a lot for development, remember that they also have system restore active and you need to take care of those machines as well, just like any other physical machine.

There is nothing like having to use System Restore to recover from a botched Windows update (has happened to me 2 or 3 times in the past) and then realize weeks later that bugs you had fixed have crept back in! Backups and rigorous version control are the only things that can save you from things like that! And make sure that your version control folders and files are not included in system restore backup on the version control server or you may be in for a nasty surprise if System Restore decides to restore it to what it was 6 months ago!!!

Hopefully this will help some of you to avoid disasters. If you have additional information, please comment or let me know directly:)

Arnor Baldvinsson

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We have made Icetips Utilities build 1.2.2408 available for download This Utilties build includes quite a bit of documentation (about 50 pages total). The Page of Pages class has been documented and we added a control template to the Utilities so it is easy to add to your applications. Both the class and the template are fully documented. We also added a global template that allows the Utilities to be used in Legacy applications. I made some modifications to the String Class that affects the SplitString method. Note that our online (HTML) documentation for our products contains comment options using Facebook. This allows you to comment on any page in the documentation if you want to add examples or comments about specific methods or templates. We will be adding this to our HTML pages as we release new builds. Both the Utilities help and the PowerToolbar help now have Facebook comments at the bottom of every single page. For more detailed information about the updates and fixes please see the online documentation at http://www.icetips.com/manuals/utilities/version_history_2012.htm Documentation was completed for:

  • List procedures with Windows without HLP attribute.
  • Limit Program Instance template.
  • All Utilities templates.
  • Write Version info to INI file template.
  • Add Header Sort to Queue template.
  • Bind/Unbind local variables template.
  • Icetips Browse Checkbox update template.
  • Icetips ShowFileRecord wizard.
  • All Code templates.
  • Documentation reorganized so work better with both printed (PDF) and online (HTML) formats.
  • Every page in the online (HTML) documentation now has Facebook like and comment option at the bottom of the page.

Fixes:

  • ShowProgress in Progress class applied "vista fix" on XP also which could cause weird jumping in the progress bar.
  • SplitString could fail with last item in the item array.
  • Limit Program Instance template didn't preserve variables for entries (i.e. !Glo:VarName)
  • GetThemePanelFEQ returned the wrong FEQ.
  • ThemeAPanel didn't work in C8 and required XPTheme.

To download the latest build please go to http://www.icetips.com/downloadfile.php?FileID=192 You need to be logged on to download. Note that the installation keycode is displayed on the page and is also sent to you via email once you start the download. You can review the updates in the documentation at http://www.icetips.com/manuals/utilities/version_history_2012.htm

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Today is the last chance to use the icetips discount for the ISV Conference 2012 in Reno on July 13-15.

Use:

icetips2012

to register with 10% discount.

Today is also the last day to register for the conference for lower prices.

Today is also the last chance to reserve rooms at the hotel at about 50% discount from current rates!!!

Arnor Baldvinsson

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The Icetips Utilities build that was supposed to go out last Tuesday will not go out until tomorrow. I got on a really good roll with the documentation and decided to keep going while it lasts:)

While you wait, you may want to check out this link to Free Books at Microsoft press. They are all available as PDFs and some are also available as XPS, .mobi (Kindle) and .epub.

If you have a Kindle or Kindle Fire and you would like to convert the PDFs to .mobi for your Kindle, then download the MobiPocket Creator Publisher Edition from MobiPocket.com It will convert your PDF files to .mobi and in my experience they work much better than the free Kindle conversion at amazon.com. The MobiPocket Creator Publisher Edition is free and simply installs on your PC.

Arnor Baldvinsson

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I have made a quick update to PowerToolbar by releasing build 2.0.165. I got a report this morning that a message window was showing up when selecting an item from a DropButton. I checked and indeed there was a Message() statment in a method there that I had used for temporary debugging and not removed when I was done:( I very rarely use Message() but rather use OutputDebugString, which I use in a method that's called ODS in all my classes. So I routinely do a search for any uncommented ODS statements but I missed that Message() statement!

Arnor Baldvinsson

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I am very pleased to be able to give you a 10% discount coupon to the Independent Software Vendor Conference (ISVCon - http://www.isvcon.org) 2012 in Reno, Nevada. The conference will be held on July 13 - July 15 at the Atlantis Casino Resort. No time to waste, register now at http://www.isvcon.org/register.php

Don't miss out on this fantastic opportunity to learn about marketing and new exciting things for software vendors. Mix and mingle with the people in the industry and create new relationships for your business.

When registering please use the following coupon code:

icetips2012

Don't wait - register now at http://www.isvcon.org/register.php The coupon code is valid thru June 30.

My wife, Susan Pichotta, is the event manager for this conference and she is doing a terrific job at securing high profile speakers to come to the ISVCon. This includes people from Microsoft, MyCommerce (Digital River), BitsDuJour, Help+Manual, Avangate and several more. To review the sessions please check out the ISVCon Sessions at http://www.isvcon.org/sessions.php

The conference is held at the 4 star, newly renovated, Atlantis Casino Resort in Reno, Nevada.

The full conference with post conference "Monday meetup" session with other ISVs is only $475 until the end of June, then it goes up to $699, so register as soon as you can. There are two other options for the full conference without the "Monday meetup" for $425 and also just the weekend (Saturday and Sunday) for $375. Remember that you get 10% discount from those prices.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me or contact Sue directly

"I go to a lot of conferences and I have to say that the ISVCon (old SIC) really is my favorite. I look forward to it every year and it's hands-down the friendliest and most productive conference that I attend... I really got so much from the first SIC that I can't begin to list the ways that it helped my business."
-- Nico Westerdale - BitsDuJour