Ubercode blog
Welcome to the Ubercode news blog. In this blog I unashamedly promote the ease-of-use and power of Ubercode and talk about the many improvements. Sometimes
I blog about website updates and I may even wander off for a rant on unrelated topics. The most recent entries are at the top and I update this monthly,
personal life permitting. If you're after my review of the European Shareware Conference 2007 take a look at news in 2007.
30th April 2008
- Added syntax highlighting for Ubercode , Basic VBA and VBS, Batch files, RC files, T-SQL and Inno Setup Scripts (ISS). Here's a picture of a standard Basic
program being highlighted:
- Fixed a bug in the code that created the Learning To Program PDF file. The file previously had some confusing text in it (macros that had not been
expanded).
- Added a new Program - Add Dialog Window command to the Developer Environment. This makes it possible to import individual dialogs from RC (Resource
Compiler) files and helps re-engineer older style C/C++ applications.
- If a pushbutton had the default status, and disabled itself and other pushbuttons in the same dialog, the default status would sometimes be incorrectly
applied to one of the other disabled pushbuttons. What happened was the original pushbutton disabled itself, the default status was correctly applied to the
next usable pushbutton, but when this next button was disabled, the default status was not then re-applied to another eligible button. This has now been
fixed.
- Fixed a minor bug in the dialog handling code that caused static controls with the SS_SIMPLE style to be incorrectly interpreted as icons. Note the bug was
very unlikely to occur, as the SS_SIMPLE style is obscure and seldom used.
- The Developer Environment command Tools-Test Dialog had a usability problem when testing dialogs with off-screen X,Y coordinates. Although the
Developer Environment was working properly, it seemed to be non-responsive because the dialog was not visible. To fix this, the Tools-Test Dialog
command automatically centers any dialogs that are off the edge of the screen, and shows a warning message.
- Fixed a minor bug that happened with external resource files that had icons using the old-style memory options (PRELOAD, LOADONCALL, FIXED, MOVEABLE,
DISCARDABLE, PURE, IMPURE). These memory options are obsolete and are now ignored.
- Tidied up the names of some undocumented library functions (StrRemoveEol should be StrRtrimCrLf etc). These functions will eventually be included in the
library and the documentation.
26th March 2008
- I have redone the Ubercode Installer from the ground up using Inno Setup instead of Installshield express. It now looks a whole lot better:
- Also it runs much faster - although I have not done an accurate benckmark, a full installation on an average laptop takes 18 seconds. And that includes the
time it takes to click the "Next" button to skip through the dialogs!
- The Inno Setup installer has much better compression than Installshield, so the setup file is 32% smaller. In practical terms that means the latest
download is 14MB instead of 20MB. So don't delay, install the Trial Pack now - what are you waiting for!
- There is a safely feature that stops you uninstalling or re-installing while the program is running. This is done with an appplication mutex (the
AppMutex command in Inno Setup).
- The logic that handles installs and uninstalls of multiple versions is greatly improved and covers these situations:
If you repeat the same installation of Ubercode, the installer always puts the repeat installation in the same folder. This has several advantages -
you can now repair an installation by reinstalling it, the installations share a single Add/Remove program entry, and you can't install the same version into
different folders. This makes sure the uninstall does not leave partial installations on the computer.
If you install different versions of Ubercode the installer makes sure the different versions go into different folders and have different Add/Remove
program entries. This makes sure the uninstall of one version does not remove files belonging to another version, stopping it from working. It also means you
can test different versions on the same computer.
If you want to upgrade to a later version of Ubercode, you can uninstall the existing version (leaving behind any files you created), then install
the new version into the same folder.
The net result of the installer improvements is that it saves time, looks better, and it's now very quick to install and uninstall the Ubercode package.
- Other changes include...
- There was a bug in the debugger where if you specified CHM files as the preferred help type, it would still try to display a HLP file. This has now been
fixed.
- Removed ERR_LIST_EMPTY. This error is no longer required as there is no problem in deleting from an empty list.
- Added extra context identifiers to the main help file allowing the CHM file to be called from the command line. The context identifiers are in the same
order as the topics are listed in the project file starting from 1.
8th February 2008
- Fixed up LMAKE (command line tool) so it shows an error message if incorrect command line parameters are used.
- Fixed a compiler bug that occurred if too many list types had the same component type and an iterator function was used.
- Increased the default maximum number of symbols to 2500, and increased the number that may be inherited from a compiled class to 1000. The compiler has
also been changed so the maximum number of symbols may be increased to 5000.
- There is a new download - this includes all the fixes above.
- I have also been experimenting with the Microsoft Dot Net framework with a view to eventually producing a dot net code generator for Ubercode. As a first
step I have prepared some sample utility code which can be reached here.
Earlier News
During 2007 Ubercode finally got a help system based on HTML Help (CHM files). Also I gave a presentation on Ubercode at the
European Shareware Conference (ESWC), and you will see a detailed write-up of the 2007 Conference in Cologne. Read the 2007 news for more details.
During 2006 Ubercode was written up in the International Developer Magazine, also the Ubercode website was reviewed at the
European Shareware Conference (ESWC). Read the 2006 news for full details.
During 2005 a historic moment occurred - version 1.0 of Ubercode was finally released!
During 2004 a beta version of Ubercode was released.
During 2003 the Ubercode website was completely rebuilt (I'm too ashamed to put up a link to the earlier website!). Also a
pre-release version of Ubercode was prepared.
News from 2002 and before is here - this news is from the very early version of the Ubercode website.
Pre-website news 1999 and earlier is here, including an early picture of Ubercode.
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