This is something I discovered by accident a while ago, maybe you already know about it…

Use the mouse to move a window around and then, while you still have the left mouse button held down, press the escape key. The window will be returned to its original position!

Ok, so it isn’t very useful but it was new to me

Textpad, a great general purpose editor – http://www.textpad.com/download/index.html

I have just started using this and so far it looks really good and appears to still be in active dev – http://ditto-cp.sourceforge.net/

Yay!

The good news though is that I have since found a much nicer program for assigning your own icons:

Types

“Types” is a free and lightweight utility for Windows that allows you to edit program associations, icons, context menus and other properties of various file types displayed in Explorer.

http://types.sourceforge.net/

When I first tried it out way back in the beginning of last year I had a few difficulties but when I recently setup a new development VM and had a need once again to customize my clarion file associations I gave it another go. This time round they have made great improvements in stability and it performed beautifully and did what it said it would. No more, no less.

Hopefully someone will find this useful too.

There are a few ways to do this but essentially they all seem to revolve around the CreateProcess api Function.

1. Write a helper DLL that wraps the CreateProcess function and can be easily called by the templates.
2. Find something that already does this so I don’t have to.

If you want to go for option 1 in clarion you might like to look into PowerRun from Berthume Software which is available for free download. And of course you can dig right in and make the function call directly. However, if there is something suitable around I much prefer to use that.

After a quick search I found these two options:

• CHP.EXE (Create Hidden Process) – http://www.commandline.co.uk/chp/
• hidden Start (hstart.exe) – http://www.ntwind.com/software/utilities/hstart.html

I tried CHP first and it certainly does what it says it will but I found I wanted the option to wait until the spawned task was finished. In comes hstart. Hstart is pretty awesome. Lots of options and it also, funnily enough, does what it says it will…

For anyone interested, this is the template code I ended up with for calling hidden commands in a clarion template:

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#GROUP(%RunCommandHidden, %Command, %TestMode=%FALSE),AUTO
#!
#DECLARE(%BatchFileName)
#! We need to write the command out to a batch file for execution because
#! the #RUN command seems to have issues with the length of the command!
#SET(%BatchFileName, 'run.bat')
#SET(%BatchFileName, FullName(%BatchFileName, 2))
#CREATE(%BatchFileName)
%Command
#CLOSE(%BatchFileName)
#! Now we call the batch file for execution
#! using cph.exe for "Create Hidden Process"
#IF(%TestMode=%FALSE)
  #RUN('hstart.exe /NOCONSOLE /WAIT ' & %BatchFileName),WAIT
#ELSE
  #RUN('hstart.exe /WAIT ' & %BatchFileName),WAIT
#ENDIF
#REMOVE(%BatchFileName)
#RETURN

With the move to 64bit the poor old Clarion IDE, which is still a 16bit application (!), was obviously not going to be running directly from the desktop. This is fine, I had long since moved all my development into virtual machine for just this reason. I figured this was a good time as any to try out the UAC and see if it really was as annoying as people have been saying.

Anyway, being that most of my development was going in inside virtual machines (Vista 32bit, UAC off) I really found very little issue with UAC. Occasionally I would trigger it off when adjusting various parts of the system but with a little ping and a flash (that bit sucks…) I am on my way again.

However, every so often I would find that the application I attempted to launch would simply freeze completly just before the expect UAC prompt would appear. Very annoying, and utterly un-fixable. Even from the Task-Manager it was imposible to kill the task!

I am still not sure what was the cause of this. It didn’t happen when I first installed the system and it has not happened in a while now so I suspect either a bug fix has been applied from Microsoft or a program I had installed was somehow interfering.

There is a workaround though… if you ever find yourself with the above symptoms try this: Hit Ctrl+Alt+Delete and then immediately press the Escape key. It seems that consent.exe (the one responsible for UAC) fails to gain focus occasionally. Those actions will bring it back to the foreground and you can continue along your way.

I originally found this helpful hint in the comments of this article.

I have been using this great utility for some time now. It has become such a part of my day to day use that I often forget about it. Simple, unobtrusive and gets the job done.

Well worth a closer look: Remote Desktop Manager

By doing this I can have specific icon and type description for the file extension making it much easier to see these files in amongst all the other junk. Once these are setup and with windows explorer in detail view sorted by type the clarion app and dct files would be nice and visible at the top of the list.

Just like this:

But hang on, how the heck do you do that in Vista?

Prompted today by a comment on CW-Talk I looked into this again and finally found a solution.

In Vista they have changed the GUI for working with file association. The word I would apply here would be “obfuscated”. Most functionality is still there just in a few different places with a few special quirks.

“Associate a file type or protocol with a program”

Control panel –> Default Programs –>  Associate a file type or protocol with a program

Sounds like just the thing right? Wrong. You can muck around with associations a little but only if they are already available. No way to add a new one here, sorry!
Creating a new file association with Vista

You can do this by clicking on a not-yet-associated file which will launch the “Windows cannot open this file” dialog box.
Once you do that you will be asked:

If you select the “Select a program” options you then you then get something like this:
Whats missing?

* Although you can “Type a description…” here there is no easy way to edit that description later.
* There is no way to set the icon for this file association.
* It is not possible to remove an association once created.

But it is possible with a little hunting.

There are two methods I have found and each have their merits and drawbacks:
1. Edit the registry.

This KB article seems like it would still apply to vista – “Changes in File Types and File Association Features in Windows 2000 and Windows Server 2003″

You can also specify icons and type desriptions via the registry manually if you really want.
2. Find a program to do the registry hacks for you.

Unfotunatly there does not seem to be many around. One I found is “File Type Doctor” in Creative Element Power Tools.

Its a 45 day trial and has a few odd quirks but seems to do the trick. Just watch out, the list of extensions in the File Type Doctor seems to have a display problem. If you navigate the list with the up/down keys it seems to work OK. Also, be aware that changes you make are real time. There is no Save/Cancel for this editor!

I have been doing some mucking around recently with graphics and things in Clarion (more samples coming soon!) and have been having a hard time wading through the MSDN documentation. I kept wishing I had the windows header files so I could just search for structures and things directly (its so sad we cannot just include them directly into clarion).

Well duh, just dawned on me that it is possible to download the Windows SDK which have all these header files included… oh man, no idea why I didn’t do this before.

The SDK for Vista is around a Gig download but no worries, fun shall ensue!

Well, for a start it works on vista which the last program I was using didn’t (SnIco). I kinda liked SnIco, it was simple and did the job but unfortunately it had a few quirks and lost my interest. It also seems to have been not updated for some time.

So far it looks like IcoFX is going to fill this void very nicely. Lots of features it seem but they don’t get in your way.

And most importantly, its free!

Note: We are not affiliated with this program, just thought it was cool.

Update (24-12-2007) – It seems that the IcoFX site is down at the moment for whatever reason. If you have a look on your favourite search engine you should be able to find a link to a download elsewhere. Try google for example.