Wyatt Says...
Archive for the ‘wyBuild’ Category
Windows 7 will be available for download to MSDN and Technet subscriber in less than 2 weeks. I thought I’d introduce a few controls to make Windows 7 development easier for C# and .NET programmers. The controls will be written for .NET 2.0 & Windows Forms, but will obviously be compatible with .NET 2.0, 3.0, 3.5 and the upcoming 4.0.
The first control I want to give you is a way to use the new progress bar in your app’s taskbar icon. This is what the new taskbar progress bar looks like when Internet Explorer downloads a file:
Of course, what good is integrating this shiny new behavior into your apps if isn’t backward compatible with Windows 2000, XP and Vista? None at all. And since this taskbar behavior is included in wyUpdate & wyBuild 2.2+, backwards compatibility is a must. Here’s our Windows 7 Progress Bar running on Windows 2000 – Windows 7:
Don’t use the Taskbar Progress Bar
Like any new shiny piece of technology everyone wants to add it to their program. The flip side is that most of the times you shouldn’t use it. Let me quote the Windows UX guide directly:
Is the progress feedback useful and relevant while using other programs? That is, are users likely to monitor the progress while using other programs, and change their behavior as a result? Such useful and relevant status is usually displayed using a modeless progress dialog box or a dedicated progress page, but not with a busy pointer, activity indicator, or progress bar on a status bar. If the status isn’t useful when using other programs, just display the progress feedback directly in the program itself.
Correct:
Incorrect:
In the incorrect examples, the taskbar button progress bars aren’t very useful.
Is the task continuous? If the task never completes, there’s no need to show its progress. Examples of continuous tasks include antivirus scans and file indexing.
Incorrect:
In this example, a continuous task doesn’t need to show progress.
By the way, the Windows User Experience Interaction Guidelines is a must read for all Windows Developers. It’s a shit name (why not Windows Usability Guide?), but it has quite a few good tips. All I can ask is that you skim it once.
How we use the Taskbar progress bar in wyUpdate & wyBuild
We’ve integrated the Windows 7 Taskbar progress bar in both wyBuild & wyUpdate. Here’s wyBuild creating updates for Nero Burning ROM:
Here’s wyUpdate installing an update:
Further Reading
- Progress Bars from the WUXIG (Windows User Experience Interaction Guidelines): All you ever wanted to know about progress bars
- Windows 7 taskbar design guidelines from the WUXIG: Everything you’ve ever wanted to know about designing for the Widows 7 taskbar.
- Introducing the Taskbar APIs: C++ code for integrating your app with Windows 7
Get Windows 7 Progress Bar Now
The latest version of the Windows 7 Progress Bar C# source code, example projects in VB.NET and C#, and binaries are available on the open source component page.
If you have any questions, or find any bugs you can report them in the comments or in the wyDay forum.
Both wyBuild and wyUpdate 2.2 are now out. They are both fully compatible with Windows 98, 2000, XP, Vista, and now Windows 7.
wyUpdate & wyBuild 2.0 are now out. This new version has several improvements, most notable is the speed increases in both wyBuild and wyUpdate.
Now you can build update patches and release them to your users faster than before.
Version Management
Managing past and future versions of your software is simple. Just drag the files into wyBuild. Adding registry modifications is just a simple and intuitive. You won’t even need to visit the help documents or the forum (but they’re there just in case you get stuck).
New in wyBuild 2.0 is an improved tab bar for version management. Not bullshit market-speak improved either. Really improved.
What happens when your version tabs exceed the width of the tab bar? Popular browsers like Internet Explorer & Google Chrome squish down the text to unreadable widths:
“The” “w” and “Sou” are some of my favorite sites. Clearly IE’s and Google Chrome’s tab management approaches are flawed. We took the Firefox approach and kept the tabs at readable widths so can actually tell the difference between “1.0.3” and “1.0.4” (or as IE would show it “1.0…” and “1.0…”).
Plus, in wyBuild you can just hover your mouse over the version tabs and scroll your mouse to see all of the versions.
We’re thinking about releasing the C# source code to this. Tell me your thoughts in the comments.
Include Multiple Languages with wyUpdate
wyUpdate now comes with full multi-lingual support. You can add, edit, or select any of the many languages in wyBuild and include them with wyUpdate. The correct language is then used when wyUpdate automatically detects the language of Windows and applies that language.
wyUpdate on Google Code
The wyUpdate source code is now hosted over at Google Code. You can now checkout the source code using subversion:
svn checkout http://wyupdate.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ wyupdate-read-only
Or, if you prefer the zip of the source, just head over to our wyUpdate page.
Update Patches
wyBuild 2.0 solves a few major problems with patch creation. The biggest fix is that wyBuild now properly support patching files with Unicode filenames. This fix will be especially noticeable for our non-English speaking users.
The patches created by wyBuild are much smaller than just zipping files. And much much smaller than releasing a new installer for every update to your program.
An example to illustrate my point is Nero Burning ROM. Nero Burning ROM is CD/DVD writing software that has been popular for many years, and Nero is updated frequently. One big problem, though, is their lack of a good update creation and distribution method. Instead of using a program like wyUpdate, they release full installers as their updates. That’s over 300 megabytes for very small changes to Nero.
The graph below shows how enormous just the bare minimum installation of Nero Burning ROM program is. Notice the tiny size of the update when created with wyBuild (just over a megabyte!):
Free licenses for Open Source Programs
We’re now offering free licenses to people developing open source programs. See the details of the offer. This offer also applies to educational institutions.
$20 until July 20th
Celebrating the 2.0 release, wyBuild costs only $20 until July 20th. Buy it now.