News Archives 2023 Q1

2023-03-30

• A major update for ProgressBar.exe: it now accepts both positive and negative values, and features an optional alternative color for "sub zero" values.

• YoulessBar.bat reads power consumption or feed-in from a Youless LS120 device and displays the result in a horizontal bar (requires ProgressBar.exe).

• A minor update for Hardware.hta: Steve Robertson reported that the default theme was not changed to Black-and-White despite being mentioned in the change log, and found some "non-fatal" coding inconsistencies.

Thanks Steve

2023-03-28

• Hardware.hta had a major update: see its Change Log for details.
Many thanks for Steve Robertson, who spent a lot of time and effort in testing and debugging!

2023-03-25

• Youless.bat is a batch alternative to Youless.exe.

2023-03-24

• Youless.exe is my first attempt at parsing log data from the Youless LS120 Energy Monitor device.
Note that I am in no way associated with its manufacturer, just an enthusiastic user of the device.
I also started a new page Exploring the Youless LS120 Energy Monitor.

2023-03-13

• And yet another update for GetDefaultBrowser.bat: it will now return the default browser name as well as its executable path.

• HostName.cmd has been updated: its optional command line switches filter the output to hostname only (/HOST), IPv4 address only (/IPv4), IPv6 address only (/IPv6) or MAC address only (/MAC).

2023-03-12

• And another update for GetDefaultBrowser.bat: it will now return the true user's choice for the default browser.

Thanks to Joe Caverly and Steve Robertson for providing the registry value locations

2023-03-11

• GetDefaultBrowser.bat had a very minor update, I corrected the spelling of its output.

2023-03-10

• GetDefaultBrowser.bat is an attempt at reading the default browser from the registry in Windows 10.
Not as easy as it used to be in Windows XP 😕

2023-03-04

• HostName.cmd Version 3 is a completely rewritten script to return the host name and IPv4, IPv6 and MAC addresses for the specified computer (specfied by name or IP address).

2023-02-25

• WMIGen had a minor update again:

The "MS Help" button caption was changed to "Help online".
The associated search query is now limited to learn.microsoft.com and wutils.com.

2023-02-20

• Another bug in CheckVarsVBS.exe has been fixed:

it would find unused subroutines and functions, but not count them

• WMIGen had a minor update:

The "MSDN Help" button caption was changed to "MS Help".
The associated search query is now limited to learn.microsoft.com instead of msdn.microsoft.com.

2023-02-19

• Two bugs in CheckVarsVBS.exe have been fixed:

it now correctly detects unused functions
no more false positives about casing of window_onload and window_onunload event handling routines in HTAs

2023-02-13

• ClCalc.exe had another update:

Start it without expression (/DEBUG still allowed) to open an interactive console, where you can enter as many expressions as you like.
When in the interactive console, you can toggle debug mode, and list available operators, constants and functions.
Functions are no longer case sensitive, and can now be used with or without the Math. prefix.
Constants remain case sensitive, so use either e or Math.E and either pi or Math.PI.

2023-02-11

• ClCalc.exe has been almost completely rewritten:

the .NET Math class is used to evaluate Math.* functions (the .NET Math class has more functions than JScript Math)
the JSCript evaluator is used for "ordinary" numeric calculations
the help text has been rewritten to show an example for every available Math.* function
the downloadable version is compiled for .NET Framework 4.5, you can recompile it for higher versions to get access to even more Math functions
splitting the input expression into chunks that can be evaluated by either .NET Math or JScript required many regular exprerssions and a lot of debugging; though ClCalc has been tested rigorously wit nested Math functions (e.g. pi / Math.Acos( Math.Pow( 0.5, 0.5 ) )), not all possible combinations could be tested, and some might still fail
in case of failed calculations, add a /DEBUG switch to the expression on the command line (location irrelevant) to check intermediate calculations, and see where a calculation error occurs

2023-02-09

• Another update for ClCalc.exe:

A bug was found: when Math.pi (with lower case pi) was used instead of Math.PI, it would be translated to Math.Math.PI, resulting in errors.
The same for Math.e.
This has been fixed, with the added advantage that Math is no longer case sensitive — though its functions still are!
I added a Random function:
- Random (not case sensitive) without parameters returns a floating point number between 0 and 1
- Random( min, max ) returns an integer between min (inclusive) and max (exclusive) — provided min and max are both integers and min is less than max, otherwise an error message is returned

2023-02-08

• ClCalc.exe has been updated:

pi and e may now be used instead of (or besides) Math.PI and Math.E
a list of available functions has been added to the help text
as this list is a subset of the one from .NET's Math class, a link to .NET's Math functions is included in the help text

2023-02-07

• ClCalc.exe has been updated: no change of functionality, but its command line handling has been simplified, it has been recompiled for any processor, and last-but-not-least several examples have been added to its help text.

2023-02-06

• Several bugs were fixed and some new features added in Hardware.hta 8.04!
Steve Robertson reported more bugs and typos in 8.03, and he suggested to look for multiple video controllers instead of assuming just one; and I used his VBScript code to get the correct amount of video RAM for internal video controllers.

Thank Steve

2023-01-30

• ProgressBarGUI.exe is a new batch tool to present customizable GUI style progress bar dialogs in batch files.
Because its usage is far from intuitive, and the help text may not be enough to get you started, the program can write 2 demo batch files to the current directory when run with its optional /Samples switch.

2023-01-27

• I'm just recovering from a serious flu attack, so there is quite a backlog to clear...
Please have patience.

• More bugs in Hardware.hta 8.02, reported by Steve Robertson, have been fixed in 8.03.
See the HTA's changes list for details.

Thank Steve

2023-01-03

• Several bugs in Hardware.hta 8.00, reported by Steve Robertson, have been fixed in 8.01; these bugs were caused by "On Error Resume Next" lines that were "commented out" (I do that during development, as I don't want to miss any error message while debugging, but last time I forgot to restore them before releasing the update).

Thank Steve

• One more bug in Hardware.hta 8.01, also reported by Steve Robertson, has been fixed in 8.02: very long property names will no longer be truncated in the Details windows.

Thank Steve

2023-01-01

• I wish you all a happy 2023.