NirSoft Freeware (2008)
nirsoft.net
nirsoft.net
The early 2000s were a different time. While as modern day electron apps are regularly 100+ MB.
How would that work if all the application developers decided that native sucks and all should use Electron?
I created a proof-of-concept called Electrino that uses the platform native libraries to cut down on app size: https://medium.com/dailyjs/put-your-electron-app-on-a-diet-w...
Unfortunately I haven't had the time to work on Electrino due to family, etc. — I wish I did because the need is clearly there.
Electron-like "web" apps (that follow W3C standards) seem to be the future, and I'd love to help out however I can.
I can understand the inconsistencies and lack of feature support that could emerge from using a different browser engine for each OS (Webkit/Edge), but there should at least be away for Electron apps to share Chromium/Node runtimes between them.
Rather than Spotify, Slack, Discord, ... all coming with their own Electron bundle they can be packaged up as a PWA and use the browser as the runtime environment along with all the nice offline stuff, safe OS integration for notifications, sandboxed file system access, ability to still do some work in S0i3 (aka Modern Standy on Windows), etc.
Or am I totally wrong about this? I am not a web developer so I could be :)
Bonus question: how would this work for things like Atom and VS Code that are electron based. Could they become a PWA?
But some UI issues, like the lack of a proper menu, browser's chrome and address bar will still be a turn off. Besides, having unrestriced access to the user's drive is not something a web page should be able to do and is a must for something like a text editor.
It’s going to want access to all files in that directory, not only the ones you are editing.
Not sure how menus are handled. A standard menu API would seem to make the most sense to me?
Adobe AIR was an effort to create a common runtime for similar things... wouldn't mind seeing a few OS vendors coming together to support something similar, but on the flip side, I don't want to be stuck with Node 4.0's API in 2024.
I'd hesitate to make this generalization. I need to use slack on a macbook for work and it crashes regularly. I tried out VS code and it also would crash on occasion. Worse than that, coworkers of mine have rolled bug-ridden electron apps that we're required to use. There are plenty of non-electron apps that are stable.
I don't like that slack consumes some many resources. I love vscode so I don't care.
> coworkers of mine have rolled bug-ridden electron apps that we're required to use
This is quickly becoming one of those things I can't stand, especially when there are open source/free options out there. No, I don't want to use your homegrown application unless there really isn't a good option out there. And if that's the case, make it a good tool and release it OSS and try to get some traction behind it.
Most 'home grown' corporate apps I've used are dependent on internal resources, processes and requirements. They'd be useless to anybody else, there are no alternatives anywhere at any money and in many cases you can't do big chunks of your job without them.
Electron is just outsourcing cross platform development to the Chromium project.
So my 32GB RAM, high specs system, is able to run only up to ~ 30 instances of Discord, not counting even the OS.
Wtf. It feels like malware.
"No JavaScript on the desktop"
And suddenly 8GBs of ram is at least 4x too much(Linux) even when I'm using "bloated" Java apps...
https://suckless.org/sucks/web/:
Millions of jobs are based on outputting HTML in an inefficient way.The fact that no such competitor exists is evidence that the user's preferences aren't what you stated, but is in fact consistent with reality, namely they prefer free and bloated.
It's not so easy for a competitor to show up, because they have to work against heavy first-mover advantage and network effects in software. Those who do a crap job get first to the market and set the trend (and the expectations). Moreover, there's a heavy component of tragedy of the commons here, with commons being users' computing resources - the software is often designed with implicit belief that it's the only thing running on user's machine. It's enough to make a sale, and you don't get a reward for making it so that your users can run many other stuff simultaneously with your application.
... and ultimately to the consumer, who pays for higher spec'd hardware and more electricity.
Yeah, and that's a good thing. Furthermore, there are toolkits that don't, and they are still more efficient than Electron.
That's the point. Why download another framework when you have one on your computer already that's tailored to your platform?
...but really. ImageOptim is super awesome and zero-effort.
But really, why isn't ImageOptim itself available in command-line form?
> Automates ImageOptim, ImageAlpha, and JPEGmini for Mac to make batch optimisation of images part of your automated build process.
> Mac
Why would anyone run a CI server on a Mac?
Looking at the output directory, I saw that the fonts I'm using make up about 45% of the whole app!
I also remember circa 2000 when the CS meta was, "who cares about optimization when you're riding the perpetual tailcoat of Moore's law"...then homogeneous parallel architectures became a thing overnight and much of the software development community was caught with their pants down.
Flash forward over a decade later with low-power embedded being the dominant end user platform and heterogenous compute already at the competitive forefront. Perhaps it's personal bias, but when I read net-smaller apps, my hardware design instincts immediately kick and scream net-complacency.
[0] I would be very happy with Qt/QML and would grudgingly accept GTK, but others apparently are not that complacent
These days, I do* have a couple of Electron-things installed, because I occasionally need them, but they are ugly hacks which bring me no joy.
No JRE either, by the way, if I can help it. Same reasoning.
The electronisms I occasionally have to use are glorified chat-apps like Signal. Hardly complex UI cases.
I personally find it a bloated mess, and like to stick with my Komodo and my Geany - two neat examples of portable UIs done right.
Anyway, I'm sure there are ways of embedding runtime web macinery in somewhat less than 100Mb. Twenty years ago I did so in a megabyte or two, admittedly without the js.
>>> A settlement was eventually reached, with Rowe granting ownership of the domain to Microsoft in exchange for an Xbox and additional compensation.
Now you know!
My parents have been shortening my name to "Code" pretty much since I was born. My friends and coworkers tend get a kick out of it when they realize my name can be shortened that way.
This guy is a personal hero of mine, and I'm proud to say I sent him a few bucks a few years ago to say thanks. I don't know how many others think to do so, but I hope it's a lot of us!
Just like a good cli tool should. There is currently a disturbing trend of tools coming from certain communities that are extremely noisy with garbage in various colours and even emojis (the community is the Mac community). I can't wait for it to end.
Still comes in handy to track down some specific types of bugs.
By keeping them out-of-band, that support requirement doesn't apply, allowing the tools to be much more aggressively updated and released without the same degree of oversight. There's a reason they're licensed separately and effectively with no support or warranty. Doing so enables their rapid development without/less-of the usual bureaucracy.
MS sucked in the tools/pages onto its domain. Navigation to/of their pages and versions became somewhat shittier (per the... "canonical" MS web experience, I guess). I seem to recall a bit of public pushback on this point, and things improved somewhat. Maybe I mis-recollect; I've been mostly away from Windows for quite a number of years, now.
In his spare time he's also managed to write three novels.
If you want nicer formatting you can use WordPad. Beyond that, there are a million alternatives (including the MS office suite)
The reality is that Windows isn't a text-based operating system, so a text editor with features isn't a vital component.
With the diverse and enormous install base that Notepad has, do you really think it would be that simple? There must be all kinds of localization concerns, legal concerns, trademark issues, patent concerns, design and Windows brand concerns, that must go into a core OS application update.
I agree that Notepad should be updated. But updating a text editor preinstalled on Windows should be no easy feat for one person over just a few days. The repercussions of each change are potentially huge, and going in especially with a cavalier attitude of "it would only be a few days work to substantially improve" a piece of software used by hundreds of millions of people daily, definitely sounds like it wouldn't work out as easily as you'd expect.
I certainly do not agree with that!
For example, Notepad has been one of the buggiest and weirdest pieces of software I used on stock Windows. It does weird things when saving files, like moving your cursor to another location, so if you are typing and saving and typing and saving you will end up with text misplaced all over and a bizarre file that has a weird back/undo history. With its large host of weird bugs I would not expect the current codebase to be simple to update, and surely you'd agree a rewrite of Notepad is more than a few days.
I in no way think that improving Notepad would be one of the easiest changes to make to Windows. Sure, there would be harder things to improve I'm sure, but I don't see why it's a contest at all. Updating Notepad sounds like the opposite of easy to me.
Improving Notepad for everyone who uses it, while not receiving millions of death threats for errors or bugs or unexpected, unwelcome changes in behaviour sounds nearly impossible to me, personally. Perhaps this is part of the reason it is so stagnant - MS sees little upside to making large improvements while seeing enormous risk. Just a guess.
I've written entire websites in Notepad, not to mention it being my go-to writing tool for anything that doesn't need to be visually impressive or which I can add formatting tags to. I prewrite emails, cover letters, and long forum posts in Notepad. Heck, if I need a DOS batch file, I turn to either Notepad or Edit.
On the other hand, Notepad++ takes much longer to load, has more UI elements, and generally makes it harder to do the one very simple thing I want it to do - allow me to create and edit plaintext. Notepad2 was better on the UI last time I used it, but still took longer to load.
Maybe that's why I use vim for everything now. It's like notepad but with much more efficient keybindings :-)
P.S. I do use Intellij for java now when I'm writing Java code, mostly because I have to. That said, the feature set is amazing and for doing Java I'd probably use it even if I didn't have to because I'm spoiled. Still use vim for everything else tho.
* Multi-window editing * Restoring workspace on load * Background, font, and default spacing options * Source formatting by source type
These were just some basic things I used in the few times I used Notepad++ after hearing people talk highly of it; there are probably a ton more along with plug-ins but my usage was basic. It definitely made serious-ish development on Windows easier for me to do.
1. Only understands Windows line endings.
2. Always saves UTF-8 with a BOM.
Only the first one is really a significant issue, but the second one can be a pain in the ass sometimes. Granted, yes, it's a pain in the ass primarily because *nix applications often treat a BOM as data, but it's still a pain in the ass.
> Heck, if I need a DOS batch file, I turn to either Notepad or Edit.
Edit? You've been gone awhile. Edit has never been released on any x64 platform of Windows, AFAIK. Why? Because it's a 16-bit application! NTVDM, the 16/32-bit DOS and 16 bit Windows emulator only runs on 32-bit Windows. WoW64, the 32-bit Windows emulator for x64 Windows, does not run 16 bit applications.
I only use a 32-bit OS and a 32-bit processor for Win7. If it doesn't work in x64, you've just given me a reason to never "upgrade". Then again, if my computer didn't throw a hissy fit over it, I'd be using FreeDOS as my primary OS. Either that or just get an old MS-DOS 6.2 installed.
I don't do programming and never have, the closest I ever came was a brief scrape with BASIC back in the days before Windows. I do some web design, but not too much anymore because I don't do Javascript and I don't like off-page CSS (I sometimes use inline, but that's about it).
- Line endings. It mauls anything not "windows line endings" format
- Crappy undo (it will occasionally eat 5 lines of text instead of one word)
- No redo
- Barfs on large files (on a modern machine) If by accident you double click on a 1GB file you better kill it.
Please note I did not mention anything which could be argued as "rather belonging in a professional editor". No syntax highlighting, brackets matching, collapsing code / paragraphs, diff'ing 2 documents, tabs, macros, etc etc.
The only things that i'd like is support for Unix line endings and perhaps autoindentation. But considering that Notepad is really just the `EDIT` window wrapped up in a toplevel window frame and i doubt Microsoft is going to touch `EDIT` anymore (which is sad but that is beyond the point and FWIW much harder than just improving Notepad itself) i'm fine with that.
Like many of you who commented I used the nirsoft tools without knowing they were created by one man. Kind of impressive there was a time when you only found niersoft tools when searching for password recovery tools
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I have a HTPC hooked up to a projector that I use to play movies, and the projector has native support for 24 FPS, so I use this:
http://nircmd.nirsoft.net/setdisplay.html
to quickly set framerate. Make batch files for 24 Hz, 60 Hz, etc. bind them to keys, and then you don't have to bother going into a display settings GUI.
Edit: nope, but https://soundswitch.aaflalo.me/ will do it - never used it though.
https://github.com/sirWest/AudioSwitch
I think there was another that was some variation on "audio" and "switch"/"switcher".
You can also create a shortcut to nircmd with the setdefaultsounddevice value set and assign a hotkey for the shortcut.
Now I use EarTrumpet, which lists devices in the right click menu.
C:\Windows\system32\rundll32.exe shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL mmsys.cpl,,playbackIt's definitely a nice tool, but it's far from instantaneous loading!
Known Limitations - CSVFileView cannot load extremely large csv files.
The tool I used the most was RunAsDate: https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/run_as_date.html
It used to work really well in bypassing software trials. I'm not recommending its use for that(if it even still works).
I wonder if I used his tool back in the mid 90s... Ah, can't have been - he says he first put utilities on the web in 2001
Nir Sofer -- publish a Bitcoin address and ill send you something as a thank you!
I wonder if there is a defamation/libel type of lawsuit here. Anti virus vendors are making false accusations.
Some (many? most?) will report these applications as 'potentially unwanted applications' (PUAs) and sidestep the issue of blame or malicious intent, often asking the user if they want to proceed rather than just denying access.
Source: former Sophos employee.
If that would ever fly, I want to take action against mail servers that tell me my mail is "spam" when it clearly isn't and was double opted-in by their users :-D
Or at least i have seen some complaints bouncing around certain mailing lists in that regard.
https://blog.nirsoft.net/2018/04/04/result-of-nirsoft-easter...
Also note the comment of "newusertoday" here.
How odd...that's literally what the registry is for. One company putting all their sht in one place in a standardized efficient format.
Speak from command line: https://www.nirsoft.net/articles/speak_from_command_line.htm...
> Anonymous Information Collected on this Website: Anonymous data is recorded on this Web site. Most of the information collected from this website is anonymous information, such as the pages you visit. Other anonymous data I may collect might include the name of your internet service provider, the website that you used to link to my site, the websites that you visit from our site, and your IP address. The data is only used for statistical purposes, but you, as the individual user, remain anonymous.
IP address is not anonymous!
I occasionally use it on a multi TB windows fileserver at work and after it does the initial index (which is really pretty fast because it uses the NTFS journals) searches are pretty much instantaneous. (I also use it at home, it's just less impressive after using it on that many files at work.)
AV back in the days were mainly all blacklists of known actors and a few tricks (eg: when the executable was obfuscated with a compressor like UPX or using some more advanced techniques)
Open sourcing the entire thing with both a decent license would be great.
I thought Chrome encrypts all the saved passwords. How is another program so easily able to read the passwords?
https://www.reddit.com/r/vivaldibrowser/comments/65qrlb/impo...
I look at HTML for 2 seconds to find a link to Google Analytics...