I want to give the users an option to leave their data when the app uninstalls, is there a way to do this?
Both yes and no.
No UI is shown during uninstall, that's why you cannot give users this option.
Yet you can remove these files as described in the answers to the question linked by Morten.
Additionally you can use RemoveFolderEx element from Util extension. This element correctly handles removal of subdirectory structure.
As for UI part, some programs do not display several buttons, like Uninstall, Change, Repair, on the Control Panel rather have one button Uninstall/Change. In the latter case, there's usually UI shown when they are uninstalled.
Related
The new version of VSCode 1.75 contains the new function Profiles, which I was waiting for.
It looks like you can install, activate or deactivate extensions in each profile, without affecting the other profiles.
So far I only managed to install, activate or deactivate extensions via the extension manager, or via the view page of the respective extension.
There is this new view that can be displayed via [Settings-Wheel]-[profiles]-[show contents]
There you can find a checkbox for each extension.
Intuitively, one would assume that the extensions for a profile can be either completely switched on or off (install) or at least activated / deactivated.
For me this checkbox has none of the mentioned effects.
The profiles work nevertheless, as said, with an activated profile extensions can be installed and uninstalled, the profiles can then be switched, and a profiles extension states get properly restored when reselected.
However, the view with these checkboxes seems largely pointless to me at the moment.
So my question is: what is their purpose?
Should their purpose be what I suspected, and the feature just isn't "ready" yet?
The checkboxes are for exporting the profile without including undesired configuration options. For example, the "UI State" option will save the currently open menus and submenus as a part of the profile's configuration, which you likely don't really want in most cases.
Notably, when I created a new blank profile and accessed this menu the only field present was the UI State, which implies that if a field is the same as the default configuration it won't be saved to the file.
When you export, you can name the profile and either save it locally as a ".code-profile" file, or upload it directly to GitHub as a gist. The file uses a syntax that I believe is unique, though it's very possible I just don't know it. It would be nice to have a simple JSON schema, but I'm sure the community is going to automate the hell out of this process within a few weeks/days.
I'm pretty sure the purpose of those checkboxes is to select whether or not each extension gets exported as part of the profile. Presumably they are all activated upon importing the profile and installing those profile extensions.
My wife complains that I have too many icons on the Windows XP-Pro desktop.
I like to be able to quickly drop a file onto the icon for application I want to have open it. And I like to follow a link to open often-used deeply nested folders rather than navigate there. Thus, I have over 100 icons on the desktop.
(We share the same user account because we switch back and forth so often and because we both need to access the same e-mail, so separate accounts isn't the answer.)
I'd like to write a program which would have similar functionality to the Windows desktop. Then I could open that window to do the drag and drop work, but, when minimized, would leave the desktop display sparsely populated for my wife. As an added bonus, I could implement better organization of the icons than the desktop allows.
This is similar to what an Explorer window does, with the key exception that the desktop allows you to do some arrangement of icons. (For instance, program icons on the left (with the most used ones near the top), folders at the top, data files on the right.)
How do I go about getting an icon to display in a Windows Form (or on an appropriate control on the form)? (For instance, if I drop in a link to Notepad or a link to a file folder.)
How do I take the same action that the desktop does if the icon is double clicked? (For instance, if a link to a folder is double clicked.)
How do I take the same action that the desktop does if the icon has something dragged onto it? (For instance, a text file is dragged onto the Notepad icon.)
I'm using Visual Studio and C#.NET for programming.
I know how to do basic drag and drop.
I do not know:
A. what controls to use on the form to display the icons
B. how to find the icon
C. what commands are built by the desktop under various situations (so I can emulate the functionality)
I apologize that this is a multi-part question, but it was hard to break apart without explaining the whole story again.
This is a big question, but I'll give you some quick thoughts to get things moving in the right direction. WinForms exposes the functionality needed to make this happen, it's just a matter of wiring everything up the way you want it.
The key piece that you will want to look into is Drag/Drop, which is very well supported by WinForms. If you implement your icons as ImageBoxes you can set the AllowDrop property on the program icons and then handle the DragDrop event and have it call an overload of System.Diagnostics.Process() to start the application with the dropped filename as an argument.
As far as finding icons, most programs have their icon included as a resource in their .EXE file or in a related .DLL.
Regarding question C, the underlying question is what behaviors of the desktop would you like to have in your program? Explorer.exe is a massive application that does far more than what you need or what you will need or want to implement. Once you decide what functionality you want, play around with the IntelliSense list of events for the form and imagebox controls. You'll find that a lot of behavior is given to you for free in the Windows common controls, and additional behavior is fairly easy to add by handling the appropriate events.
Why dont you just use a Virtual Desktop??
Try http://virtuawin.sourceforge.net/
You will skip a lot of coding.
Right from their page:
"VirtuaWin is a virtual desktop manager for the Windows operating system (Win9x/ME/NT/Win2K/XP/Win2003/Vista). A virtual desktop manager lets you organize applications over several virtual desktops (also called 'workspaces'). Virtual desktops are very common in Unix/Linux, and once you get accustomed to using them, they become an essential part of a productive workflow."
I have been supporting a web application at work for our Call Center unit for about 2 years now. The app is written in ASP.NET 3.5 with SQL server 2005 database. I’ve been asked to expand the call detail section to allow agents to edit the current call note with the ability to revert back to its previous version. Now, that’s all cool but now the manager wants to be able to click on any particular note and see all edits with changes highlighted in yellow (and if something was deleted, he wants to SEE the deleted text crossed out). Actually, what I need is very similar to how Stackoverflow handles edits on their questions. I’ve been thinking about how to go about this and after doing research and Google-ing of course, I am still unsure which route to take. I am fairly new to .NET development. Any ideas on the best technique for highlighting the changes in UI? I am afraid I am going to have to store a copy of the entire note each time they make a change because the manager wants to be able to easily review notes and revert back to ANY version (not just the most recent one) before sending the monthly call report off to our VIP customers. Since this department OFTEN changes their mind on things, I want to make sure the new functionality is scalable and easy to maintain. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. I am really just looking for someone to point me in the right direction; maybe there are some tools out there that can be useful, recommended keywords in Google lookup, etc.
This will be difficult do to.
You'll need a "text editor" control that can not only edit the text, but which can also tell you what changes were made.
You then need to store not only the final text string, but also the list of changes
You'll then need to be able to display the text plus changes, using strike-outs, and different colors for inserts vs. changes
You'll need to do this not only for the changes of a single user, but you'll need to store each users' changes in the database, and will need to be able to display all the changes, all at once.
Your manager should be really sure he needs this.
Some tools for doing the diff for you can be found at Any decent text diff/merge engine for .NET?.
This would entail storing every version like you say. This should allow you to implement it similarly to SO. I seem to recall reading or hearing Jeff mention it, but wasn't able to find it, likely in one of the SO podcasts.
Easiest would be to store the text for each revision, then when the user wants to see the diff use a diff tool to generate the highlighted text.
Here is some Javascript diff code:
http://ejohn.org/projects/javascript-diff-algorithm/
If all the computers have Word installed you may be able to use a Word control to accomplish this. TortoiseSVN has scripts in its program directory which can take two word documents and produce a document with changes highlighted. To see this create c:\aaa.doc and bbb.doc, then install TortoiseSVN and run:
wscript.exe "C:\program files\tortoisesvn\Diff-Scripts\diff-doc.js" c:\aaa.doc c:\bbb.doc //E:javascript
I think you should see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revision_control
I'm trying to integrate our Source Control(SourceAnywhere) with VS and are getting a lot of push back because of this one issue.
Almost every time we open some of our Windows forms using 'View Designer' it edits the file (* appears beside file name). Nothing has yet been changed, I've tried comparing the before and after files and they are exactly the same. If we have the solution bound it will check the file out, but even if its not bound it still 'edits' the file. When you try to check the file back in, it doesn't get a new version or anything.
I've done some searching and haven't been able to find any way to change this behavior.
This is a huge pain point for me as if someone already has the form checked out and someone else tries to open it, they just get told that it can't be checked out, and the form won't open. Or, someone who has no intention to edit the form, will now have the form checked out but hasn't made any changes.
Thoughts?
This usually happens when there are controls within the form that have "Dock" set. If the IDE feels it needs to resize the form, then those controls will also be resized, and all of that information needs to get re-written to the source file. In the case where you're editing a form named "Form1" this source file is not Form1.cs, but rather Form1.Designer.cs - try comparing that file with the version from source control.
Alternatively, move to a source control system that doesn't use locking by default (for example, Subversion) or disable that feature in SourceAnywhere. This will require users to manage merge conflicts, but allows multiple users to work on a single file at the same time.
I'm unfamiliar with Pocket PC development, but I have to make a few minor changes to an VS2005, Pocket PC 2003 Device application. One of the changes (which I thought would be trivial) is changing the text of app's shortcut, but I can't figure out where this text is set. The solution includes a setup project, so I'm looking for it in there, but I can't find it. I know it's got to be in there somewhere because building the setup project generates an AppSetup.inf file that contains the shortcut information.
This can't be that difficult. Surly I'm suffering from what my wife refers to as "male vision" when I can't find the bottle of mustard in the refrigerator that's right in front of my face. Where do I specify this text?
It depends on exactly how the shortcut is generated. There are generally 3 mechanisms that are used.
Via the CEShortcuts section of the INF. For this, it's the text before the first comma
Via copying an LNK file via the CopyFiles section of the INF. With this mechanism, you create a physical LNK file on the desktop that gets rolled into the CAB and it's copied like any other file. The name on the device is again the first string before the comma.
Via a programmatic call (usually to SHCreateShortcut) in a custom CE Setup DLL.
You'll have to figure out which is being used in your deployment scenario to know exactly what needs to be changed.
Thinking more about this, are you trying to simply find where in the Studio UI of the installer project to change the shortcut? If so, this MSDN article may help. What is very non-intuitive is that there are little icons at the top of the Solution Explorer that change the view of the installer, allowing you to see things like files, registry entries, etc. It may be that you simply aren't looking at the right view and you need to select a different icon. There are no menu items that do what these icons do, and they are hard to notice the first time you start using an installer project.
Well, as I suspected, it was right in front of my face. We'll call this project PDAProject. In the solution explorer, under the PDAProjectSetup project is an item labeled Primary output from PDAProject (Active). If I double-click on this item two panes appear in the code editor window. The one on the far left shows a folder tree labeled File System on Target Machine. Under this are three folders labeled Application Folder, Program Files Folder, and Programs Folder. When I click on the Programs Folder, the application shortcut appears in the pane on the right and I can modify its text.
I don't know why I was never compelled to double click on that Primary output from PDAProject (Active) project item even though that's how you open any class or form for editing. I kept right-clicking and opening the Properties. Maybe it's time to give up programming and take up basket weaving.