I’m pleased to announce the first stage of my roadmap to fully open Default Programs Editor with the release of Aero.Wizard and Aero.Controls.
What are Aero.Wizard and Aero.Controls?
Aero.Wizard is an WinForms implementation of an Aero Wizard Dialog. Aero.Controls is a package of a half dozen WinForms controls, intended for use with an Aero Wizard Dialog. These are some of the components I wrote for the creation of Default Programs Editor 2.0 with the revised user interface, and I’m now freely releasing them to the public.
Aero.Wizard:
Aero.Wizard Info Screenshot
Aero.Wizard Features:
- History/Navigation handled automatically
- Page contents are children of separate container controls, which can be created in design time like a regular Windows form
- Glass title area degrades gracefully when running a theme without glass, or on XP
- Blank Wizard Page template included
- Use with Aero.Controls pack to make Windows UX Guidelines compatible user interfaces
Aero.Controls:
Aero.Controls Info Screenshot
Aero.Controls Includes:
Both of these projects strive to adhere to the Windows User Experience Guidelines, freely available documentation from Microsoft which provided the basis for the DPE 2.0 restructuring.
Licensing
I debated for some time on this issue, trying to figure out a permissive license where I could retain some amount of ownership without being overbearing. I settled on BSD, which in my opinion is very permissive and seems to be low-friction for other developers to use this code in their projects.
Downloading
Both projects are hosted on Bitbucket (Mercurial) and you can either clone the repositories, or download the latest revision as a zip file. I encourage anyone to contribute bug fixes or report issues on each project’s public issue ticketing system.
Aero.Wizard on Bitbucket
Aero.Controls on Bitbucket
What’s next?
With the release of this code pack, my plan for fully releasing Default Programs Editor is underway. It is now possible to fully replicate the UI with this release. The next step is for me to continue refining and documenting the base file association library the project is built on, then release that as well as the UI logic for the program itself. Be looking for that in the next few months.
This is a bugfix release, and it fixes one of top reported errors in the program. Pretty much each release knocks at least one of the top reported errors. Feedback has been crucial for this project, and the best way to give feedback is to put your thoughts on Default Programs Editor’s UserVoice feedback page.
Version 2.4.1299.1247 (October 6, 2009)
Bugs Fixed:
- On the Delete Extension page, pressing the enter key on the selected item or in the search box, or double clicking the item now performs the primary action as it does on other similar pages.
Crashes Fixed:
- Fixed a crash resulting from not properly detecting the selection when trying to delete an extension.
Download
Leave some feedback on UserVoice
Also, Default Programs Editor was recently featured on both MakeUseOf and The How To Geek. Spread the word!
Version 2.3.1269.2247 (September 15, 2009)
New Features:
+ Option added to view (only) context menu shell extensions, restoring similar functionality that was present in 1.3.
Bugs Fixed:
- Fixed not being able to add autoplay options to media in some situations.
- It was not possible to click “Next” on the Extension Selection page when multiple extensions were selected using the shift key.
- With multiple extensions selected, the context menu page would not show all common verbs.
Crashes Fixed:
- Selecting multiple extensions caused a crash in some cases.
Download now from the main site
Leave feedback and vote on issues at the UserVoice page
Change log for Version 2.2.1238.46 (September 3rd, 2009)
New Features:
+ An option was added on the ‘Add Context Menu Item’ page to add a command to all file types.
+ Startup time has been modestly improved.
Bugs Fixed:
- Fixed some program names and descriptions not loading properly (such as PowerShell).
- In some cases a message would appear instructing the user to install .Net 3.5 when it was already installed.
- The “Disable ‘Search web for unknown extension’ Dialog Box” button initially displayed the opposite status of the setting.
- The help button for adding or editing a context menu misreported what page the program was on.
Crashes Fixed:
- Fixed a crash when switching to the Context Menu page for some extensions
Download Now!
Don’t forget, you can comment on the program, leave feedback, and brainstorm on new ideas on the Default Programs Editor UserVoice page.
Change log for Version 2.1.1157.2113 (August 25th, 2009)
New Features:
+ Multiple instances of the program should now safely coincide, but this is not particularly recommended.
+ Program options are now stored in the registry.
+ Added an option to toggle whether extremely helpful internal (anonymous) tracing information is reported when the program detects malformed registry values.
+ For registry links, the delay between navigation messages to regedit was extended a bit for users on slower systems
Bugs Fixed:
- Saved .reg file for Default Programs associations incorrectly included unchanged extensions.
- Fixed a condition where non-visible would show in the context menu editor, such as an extra “Print” item.
Crashes Fixed:
- Toggling the “Show ‘Jump to registry key’ links” when more than one instance of the program was open is fixed.
- Internally, malformed resource identifier strings are now traced and reported instead of crashing during conversion to numeric id.
- If Default Programs associations cannot be changed, the program will now display a message.
- It is now possible to set a newly created context menu item as default successfully as expected.
Download now!
If you’ve ever clicked on some file in Windows and seen this dialog box, you know what I’m talking about:
The web service is completely useless, and most of the time you already know what program you want to use to open the file. Luckily, it is easy to disable this dialog box with Default Programs Editor (download). Simply launch the program, and click on the Options button:
Options button
Then, click the button that says
Disable 'Search web for unknown extension' Dialog Box
Disable 'Search web for unknown extension' Dialog Box
And that’s it!
Now, when you try to open a file with an unknown extension, Windows will skip the unknown extension dialog and display the “Open With…” window to choose a program.
Here’s a quick userstyle for the Gmail loading screen. You and apply it via Stylish. Edit: And a Chrome/Chromium extension!
It’s takes you from boring…
Gmail Loading Screen (Before)
…to moderately less boring!
Gmail Loading Screen (After)
It’s cool how just centering the info and adding a logo spruces things up. Take the hint, Google!
Here’s the code:
@namespace url(http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml);
@-moz-document domain("mail.google.com") {
#loading {
position: absolute;
left: 50%;
width: 400px;
margin-left: -200px;
}
#loading .cmsg:first-child {
background-image: url(https://mail.google.com/mail/images/2/5/logo1.png);
background-position: left top;
background-repeat: no-repeat;
padding-top: 70px;
}
#stb {
left:0px;
}
}
Ideas to make it cooler? Leave a comment!
For some reason, the download page of defaultprogramseditor.com isn’t working. Until this issue is resolved, you can download the file directly from:
http://defaultprogramseditor.com/files/DefaultProgramsEditor.zip
…with source control!
This music artist loves source control so much she sang songs about it
Previously in my programming experience, I “branched” the code by making a copy of the directory. And my loss paranoia nearing the 2.0 release of Default Programs Editor was so great that I zipped up the Solution folder every day and uploaded it to Dropbox (referral link = symmetric space bonus!). Needless to say, this is pretty ridiculous. I had tried to set up svn on my webhost, but since it’s a shared account, that wasn’t going to be possible for a public repository. After awhile, I gave up on it. But then came BitBucket. I first discovered BitBucket when I contributed a bit of code to SkyBot, and I’ve totally fallen in love. A free account gets you 150MB of public repositories and 1 private repository… there’s no reason not to sign up!
Mercurial Logo
So now I’m in the process of moving my projects into source control. Everything new I’m writing gets a repository straight away. So far this has only been a couple of quick utilities (background and Desktop Peak Tweak), but my current in-progress project is SimpleSnap, a better screenshot program (it’s my private repo). Once that reaches an acceptable place, I’ll make that public as well. I’m looking forward to publicly moving everything I’ve release to BitBucket, including Default Programs Editor, the file association library I created along with it, and the Aero styled WinForms controls I wrote to build the new interface. However before that happens, I’m going to have to spend some time documenting my public methods with a little more than code comments to better facilitate a knowledge transfer from me to whoever wants to look at or use my code in the future. But it’s coming, I promise!
Follow me on BitBucket!
Just over a year since the very first release, I’m pleased to announce the second major release of Default Programs Editor. In case you forgot, Default Programs Editor is a powerful but simple freeware context menu editor, autoplay editor, and default programs association editor: basically everything in the “Default Programs” control panel page:
Control Panel: Default Programs
So what exactly can it do?
- File Type Settings:
- Add, Edit, and Delete context menu items
- Edit file type information (such as icon and description)
- Change an extension’s associated file type
- Autoplay Settings:
- Add, Edit, and Delete autoplay handler programs
- Change which autoplay options are available for any media type
- Change the default autoplay handler
- Default Programs Settings:
- Add or Remove default associations (possible to check, but not un-check, in Windows)
- Additional Features:
- Disable the “Search web for unknown extension” dialog
- Standalone utility, or install as a Control Panel applet
- Make direct changes to the system registry, or export edits as .reg files
- Designed for Vista and Windows 7 with UAC support
But that’s all boring compared to the HUGE UI MAKEOVER FACELIFT! With the 1.x versions, what we had on our hands was something along these lines:
Simplicity in Design
And so, I completely rewrote the UI to reduce the number of control surfaces at any given point to reduce information overload, and provide the user with only the necessary parts at for any given task. This has come together as an implementation of the Aero Wizard interface. Additionally, I have unified the interface for each section of the program; where before, File Type settings, Autoplay settings, and Default Programs settings all had their own little UI scheme, with 2.0 the same principles apply across all areas of functionality:
Context Menu Page
Autoplay Media Options Page
And about user documentation: There is some now! Each page has a help button, which links to per-page online documentation. For most pages, this means explaining valid inputs for the controls. I’m using UserVoice for feedback, as they provide a great (free) feedback forum which allows for voting and discussion on new features. You can get to it at http://defaultprogramseditor.uservoice.com or clicking the Feedback tab on any page of the new site. Which brings me to the last point: A new site! Default Programs Editor can now be found at http://defaultprogramseditor.com.
Download now!
