Chris Szurgot's Blog

This is something that should've been built into the game into the first place:

http://www.fileplanet.com/files/140000/143993.shtml

Under the crazy presumption that a roll of duct tape has to exist somewhere on the Mars facility, the Duct Tape mod sticks flashlights to your machinegun and shotgun.

As someone else has noted, No wonder everybody in Delta comples was going crazy, it's dark in there. I'm going to actually finish the game without it, but as I'm sure I'll replay it at some point, this might be a useful mod to have.

For those who are interested start with Part 1 and Part 2

After working with a program for 4 years (even if I didn't invest *that* much time in it) I didn't want to walk away from it altogether, but the reality is, Mozilla's "Open In Tabs" function, suffices for my daily browsing needs. But I still needed a program to help with perusing archival sites, and editing of bookmarks was not an easy task. And after working on this program, I wanted to do this. (Even if there is something else out there, I don't know, never looked)

If only the HtmlControl, or the WebBrowser Control would let me use Service Pack 2's popup blocker. All my issues would be solved... Then it hit me, there is. You can actuall create a new instance of Internet Explorer itself, and control itas a real IE Window, not as an Active X control. That's it! That's the solution! Back to the lab, fire up VS.NET 2003 (I used 2003 so I could release it sooner rather than later) and I finally got a fully functional "Site Bookmarker". It uses some pretty basic concepts for maintenance (List View, for display, drag a book mark in, hit delete to delete a book mark, edit the label in place, and that's about it) But it works,and I'm pretty pleased. I've already been able to go through two archives in 2 days, pretty quickly.

If only they'd done a popup blocker sooner... If got sites in here I haven't looked at since 2000, when I started  this project. That's a lot of daily/weekly comics to go through. <grin>

(Coming up... An actual release)

(Not really a big deal, just need to test some more, and come up with a name)

I'm impressed. SP2 hasn't even been released to the general public via Automated updates, and I got my first "pop-up". I was perusing a Keenspot archive (www.keenspot.com) and I got a popup over the comic. Looked just like a popup, but it was in the frame. Moved with the IE Window, and had a javascript.close() where the (x) was. I've only seen two, and haven't seen any in a couple of pages, but I'm sure we'll be seeing more of that little trick. A well, it was nice while it lasted.

(Blogged with SauceReader. Trying it out. Nice blogging Inteface)

For those who are interested, start with Part 1

(I suspect that this part might have been easier had I worked with VB or COM, but I skipped from C to Perl, then to Java, then to .NET.)

Using the Internet Explorer control is relatively easy if all you want to do is display pages. Just add it to the toolbox, setup the Navigate function, and away you go. It's even pretty easy to use a lot of the events. Progress events, status changes, and the like are pretty easy to capture, even download starts. The problem comes in when you try to use some of the more advanced concepts. Capturing download ends is right out. You can get a NewWindow event that tells you the URL, and a NewWindow event that lets you cancel the event or even capture it in your even, but not one that lets you do both at the same time. Ugh. There are ways to turn off Java Script events, but even following the walkthroughs, I could never get them to work.

This is all compounded by the fact that there are several different versions  There's the offical version that comes with VS.NET, there's a small version compiled by someone out there, I've found one compiled by the RSSBandit team that's pretty concise at this point, there's even a nice one in Whidbey (that still doesn't handle the New Window issue)

I can't say I've ever spent a whole lot of time on it, but over the years, I've pulled my hair out over this issue trying to get it right.

However, thanks to XP SP2, I had an Ah-ha moment the other day, about how to gracefully handle at least part of the program, and side-step all of the issues completely...

(Coming up... Build vs Borrow?)

A long time ago (In the days of Beta 1 of .NET 1.0, I beleive) I started working on a program that used the Internet Explorer componenent to do 2 things.

1. Load up a list of sites, and load them in sequential order (through the use of a next/prev buttons), and allow easy perusal of a daily site list. (This was in pre-tabbed browsing/RSS days)
2. Load up a site from historical list, and it would remember the last page viewed at that site, and allow you to read the site like a "book". (Especially good with web comic archives)

The first version worked pretty well, but had a few major problems. 1) It was slow on the next/prev part cause it didn't pre-load the sites, and 2) it let popups through.

At various times since then, I've tried every trick I could to get rid of those popups, and still let real "new windows" through, with little luck, to such that I abandoned both portions of the program for years at a time. I've rescusitated them from time to time, most recently when Whidbey came out....

(Coming up... Failed Attempts)

Well, once again, I am a proud memeber of MSDN Universal. Got my initial Media Kit today, with all my goodies, can't wait to dive in and work with some of this stuff again.

The most ironic thing is that a few weeks back I ordered the DVD for VS.NET 2005 beta, and *it* finally shipped today. Guess I won't be needing that anymore. <grin>

Very fast - very clean install. Took about 10 minutes to install on a 50X CDRom.

Very resource intensive. After twiddling, had to turn off all secondary monitors, and what not just to get it to run ok at 1024x768 with medium detail. Ugh.... On a 2.8 Ghz machine with 2GB ram and a GeForceFX 5200.

Finally, the only way this game will interfere with working hours is from geeks sleeping in tomorrow. It absolutely *must* be played in the dark. Way too dark. Looks like it'll be lots of fun later on tonite though.