Various Mysteries

[admin]

I forgive you. But don't worry: I have a talent for things like this. Trust me, I know what I'm doing. And, last not least: I need XYplorer working more than you do. It feeds me.

[TheQwerty]

This transformation (or metamorphosis from Caterpillar to Butterfly) must be the worst nightmare for the competition. The guy who wrote something like XYplorer with a language like Visual Basic turns to a modern language. Oh my god. I almost pity them...

I think they're more worried about the fact that such a transformation will take time and cause a halt to the introduction of new features. Wouldn't be surprised if during that time their change logs look a little sparse.

[admin]

Yep, now there is lots of reasons for them to worry.

[mwb1100]

With .NET the initial myth was that a language based on .NET cannot be strong.

What if I moved XY to .NET?

I would worry about XY not being as quick and nimble if it was ported to the .NET Framework.

I'd be happy to be proven wrong, but I'll worry until I see evidence that it will be just as fluid and quick as it is now. I don't want XY to feel 'heavy'.

[admin]

I would not like that either, but I don't think it will happen. The start up time will probably suffer a bit, but once it's up it will probably be even faster than now.

[Enternal]

.NET got to the point where I can no longer feel that an application is written in .NET. Especially for applications on the older frameworks like 2 and up to 3.5, they all feel native and I would not know that it's written in .NET unless specifically specified. It's easier to tell for 4 and above mainly not because of performance but because they tend to use the new graphics library like WPF and the likes so it definitely looks different.

Although to be exact, Process Hacker was written in C# on the .NET platform but performance suffered for that program considering the things it was used for the complexity of it so when it was rewritten in C and C++, you can definitely feel the heavily increased performance. XYplorer is a file manager and therefore I think it won't suffer because of the way it works. Of course, this is just what I think.

[mwb1100]

I would not like that either, but I don't think it will happen...

.NET got to the point where I can no longer feel that an application is written in .NET.

OK - I'll put aside my worries about nimbleness.

But another thing I vaguely remember about .NET worries me now - integrating shell extension DLLs into the process. It seems that MS does not support extensions written in .NET:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/arc ... 96079.aspx

Are there possibly problems going the other way (a .NET process using native extensions)? It seems to me that the reasons MS doesn't support shell extensions being written in .NET don't apply when going the other way - ie., it should be fine for a .NET process to host a native extension. If my logic here is sound then there's no problem. However, I really don't know enough about this stuff to really know if my logic there is sound.

[admin]

You are correct, there is no problem the other way round.

[autocart]

another word about the website:
maybe I forgot over the holidays how it looked before, but I think on the homepage the comments on the left side are now moved outwards a little.
I had to actually look at it 3 or 4 times and play around with the zoom factor to see that this is actually on purpose and not broken.
this is just some feedback, nothing more and nothing less.
keep up the good work

[Borut]

True. On my Opera the zoom factor of 120% is the last one for which it is still OK. However, taking the notes into account, the whole page is not centered on the screen anymore.

[admin]

That was done on purpose, I wanted the centering of the main block to be the same on all pages. The quotes should be visible without scrolling for most users. Or are you using a tablet or mobile? That might need extra care. Currently the page is not really mobile-ready.

[Borut]

No Tablet here. In my view, a good page should not expect any particular zoom factor (ok, up to the point, naturally). Anyway, 130% is not much, if one thinks about sight impaired persons.

The problem here is that your page triggers the scrollbar in a browser only after the left margin of the central area moves to the left over the left screen border. Moreover, this scrollbar can not be moved to the left (only to the right), so that quotes are simply not visible then and there is no way in making them visible (apart from lowering the zoom factor). I have tested this both in MSIE and Opera under WinXP.

Steps to reproduce:
1. Ctrl-Wheel in your browser, in order to zoom in enough, so that the quotes left margin goes out of the screen
-> no horizontal scrollbar in sight
2. Ctrl-Wheel in your browser, in order to zoom in further, so that the main text left margin goes out of the screen
-> horizontal scrollbar appears, but is not scrollable to the left

[admin]

Yes, I'm aware of this. But I still think now it's better than before.

[admin]

PS: I learned some new CSS techniques. Now it should work better. (tested only with firefox)

[Borut]

Opera: Much better... perfect, I would say.
MSIE8: Actually not better, as far as I can judge. Most probably the MSIE is CSS challenged. I am not using it anyway.