Dates refer to when the source was changed, so if the build date in the About dialog is after this date, your version should include all changes shown beneath it.
16 Oct 2007
Bugfix: when did search, then 'copy structure' with only 1 file selected, nothing would happen. This now works as expected
27 April 2007
Changed search results panel so can launch user-commands (F2) from the search results. Since there is no 'working directory' for the search panel, the directory of the first selected file (if any selection) is used as the working dir for the user command process.
17 April 2007
Pressing TAB when only one pane visible would cause hang - fixed (thanks to YD for reporting this)
15 December 2006
Added 'Browse zip file' action: attempts to open the current file in a new pane as if it were a zip file. Useful for files that you know are zip files but aren't named .zip (e.g. abc.zip.bkp)
Swapped shortcut keys for 'unsplit current' and 'close current'. Now ctrl+W is 'close current' and ctrl+0 is 'unsplit current'. Should have always been this way, as it matches other apps (ctrl+0 in jedit unsplits current window, ctrl+W in firefox closes current tab/window); but must have assigned them wrongly initially and never noticed.
3 November 2006
Changed 'copy contents of files' (right click or ctrl+shift+alt+c): if multiple files selected copies all their contents to the clipboard, inserting one newline character between each. Previously would complain if >1 file selected.
Copy contents of files now assumes files are UTF8 rather than default encoding
25 October 2006
Altered move, so should be faster and require less memory. Now only allows move to a directory (if you want to move to a file, use 'rename' instead).
20 October 2006
Altered 'soft delete' previously would fail if directory of same already existed (on windows). Now should succeed.
17 October 2006
Added 'change window title' function: lets you edit the current window's title. Useful if you have several commander frames open at once, each layed out differently according to the task you are performing (e.g. working on a project in one, disk housekeeping in another, deploying some files in another) and you want to quickly distinguish between them. Function is available either from file menu or using ctrl+alt+T
Opening 'view' bookmarks changes the window title to the bookmark's name
16 October 2006
When bookmark-tree expansion state file was corrupt was not expanding the tree, in this case it looked like bookmarks had been lost (though they were just not visible). Changed this so that:
If a problem restoring the state, expands the three levels of the tree.
If some node is unreadable, continues processing the rest of the expanded state file.
6 October 2006
Changed delete, so now does a 'soft delete' by default, with a second button to do a hard delete. Soft means move the files to a trash directory (in your temp directory). Hard means obliterate them permanently.
Added preference to change trash directory. Changed 'view' preferences tab to 'general' (since it only had two items on it) and moved to be the first tab.
5 October 2006
Changed file-encoding for searches to UTF8. Previously some files (downloaded from internet) were being missed from searches as the search function assumed all files were in the default encoding. UTF8 seems like the most widely compatible encoding..
Modified search code so should be slightly faster
Changed copy prompt so offers copy(skip) and copy(overwrite) options only:- the former copies only files which exist in the source and have no counterpart files in the destination. The latter attempts to copy all files from source to destination. If any exist already at the destination they are replaced with the source versions.
File search results panel now supports the 'copy' command
Moved 'view bookmark' heart icon to left of text instead of right. Sometimes, the icon wasn't visible because the contents of the panel were too wide to fit in the area, so I clicked on the bookmark thinking it would only affect the current panel, but it blitzed my whole view. Annoying. Now it's on the left should always be obvious what is about to happen.
Added 'copy with structure' command to file search results panel popup. This copies the selected files to the next panel. However, first it finds the 'common ancestor' directory of all the selected files. It then creates the equivalent directory structure in the destination panel.
Useful if you want to extract some files from a directory tree, and need to preserve the directory structure: for example you might want to copy all the files that have changed since yesterday to your backup directory.
Saved search results should also save before and after times if selected (previously these were lost)
17 September 2006
Bugfix: extract zip didn't close the zip file, so sometimes couldn't delete under Windows - fixed.
18 August 2006
Duplicate now duplicates directories as well as files.
Copy revised: no longer prompts whether to overwrite, instead always overwrites existing files
Duplicate and copy both work in 'asynchronous' mode that is, they attempt to copy/duplicate all the suggested files, and report at the end if any failed (rather than aborting as soon as a failure occurs)
Modified duplicate, save and drop file routines to use java.nio where possible giving significant performance improvement
Fixed bug where date entry boxes on Find dialog sometimes weren't editable when recalling a previous search.
11 August 2006
Added 'preserve structure' option when creating zip and tar files. Allows you to select an 'ancestor root' directory. This must be an ancestor of all the files that are included in the archive file. Each file in the archive will have (in the archive) all the parent directories between itself and the ancestor root (in the filesystem).
This is useful if you want to 'patch' a directory.. the steps could be as follows:
Find all the *.txt files under a particular directory
select them, right click to create a zip file
select the directory in step 1 as the 'common ancestor'
Create the zip file
The result will be a zip file with all the files, in their respective directories. You can now transport it elsewhere and unzip it over the top of the new directory. You will have transported just the *.txt files, and no others..
9 August 2006
Added 'extract zip file' option: on double-clicking a zip file offers to extract it (in addition to browse, launch options) which copies all the files in the zip to a directory of your choice
Added 'Create Zip' and 'Create Tar' actions to Search Results panel.
Added date constraints to search: can search for files modified before and/or after a given date and time. Together with the 'create zip from search' feature, this makes it easy to package all the files changed since a particular date into a 'patch' archive for distributing elsewhere.
4 August 2006
Fixed bug where search not working properly under java 1.6rc2 (would abort if some file contained unmappable characters in the default encoding with 'input length=1' message)
Fixed bug: when multiple commander windows open, sometimes the user-command dialog would have a different parent-window to the currently-focussed window, which would look odd
Fixed bug: when editing a command and had empty argument cells, the command window fail to close
29 July 2006
Added warning message if dragging files into zip file causes nothing to be written. This can be confusing, if you are not aware that zip files can't contain empty directories because if you drag an empty directory into a zip nothing happens.
Added build date to the update-check dialogue: the dialogue should include the date when the current version was built.
26 July 2006
Added 'Reload directory after' to user commands configuration. If selected, after the user command finishes, CB refreshes the files in the directory from which it was launched. This is useful in cases where the command creates or deletes files.
25 July 2006
Various refinements to the Command configuration dialogues and Shell launching.
Handling spaces in path names has turned out to be a bit of a thorny issue.. To avoid delimiter issues in the first instance we use separate controls for inputting the command name and each of it's arguments. We then pass these to Java as individual arguments [in an array]. However, on Windows/Java 1.5 and 1.6beta I still encounter error messages like:
'c:\Program' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.
Added Command menu, and configuration dialogue for user commands. These are a way of running other programmes from within CommanderBond, and optionally passing them the selected files and current directory.
For example, a simple command might launch an editor to edit the contents of the selected file(s).
How the commands look depends on the operating system you are running. The selected files are available from an environment variable, and the current directory is the working directory. See the Command menu for how to set these up. F2 launches a popup listing the available commands from which you can type the name of the one you want and press Enter
Commands are stored in an XML file in your .commanderbond directory: to copy your settings between computers you copy the commands.xml file.
13 July 2006
Added 'Shell' command. This executes an OS command, normally one that launches a shell. It sets the working directory to the current view's directory, and populates an environment variable ($FILES) with a list of all the currently selected file names. By default this invokes cmd.exe on Windows, Terminal.app on Mac and xterm on everything else.
What command gets executed, and how, can be configured from the 'Shell' tab of the preferences pane.
Currently it is not possible to configure the name of the variable that holes selected filenames (FILES). This is by design, as scripts are more likely to be portable between computers if they have dependencies on the CommanderBond configuration..
On the other hand, some aspects of shell parsing are quite awkward to work around so it is possible toconfigure the escaping behaviour for spaces and whether the list is space-delimited or newline-character-delimited
Added 'Replace spaces in filenames': renames the selected files, substituting the underscore '_' character for any spaces.
6 Jun 2006
Added 'open in new frame' action to bookmarks menu: If right click (or ctrl+click) and the selected bookmark is a 'View' bookmark (marked with a heart symbol) then the View opens in a separate frame, rather than changing the configuration of the current frame.
Useful if you want to switch to a saved view for the purpose of performing some task, and then switch back again.
26 Apr 2006
Checks if files have been added to or removed from current directory on window activation, so if add a file in some other (GUI) programme, CB should notice the change.
Default views sort files by name column (rather than showing in arbitrary order as before).
Bugfix: if dragged new file into zip then renamed it, would fail to save renamed version (and display 2 files rather than one). Fixed
25 Apr 2006
Modified temp directory name so different users don't share a temp directory. This avoids running into permission problems where more than 1 user is running CommanderBond simultaneously.
Added 'copy file contents' action: Copies the contents of the selected file to the clipboard. Useful if you want to paste one document into another
temp files created by launch commands now handled by filemanager (should prevent lots of OpenInBrowser.. files accumulating in temp directory).
24 Apr 2006
Auto-checks for newer versions at startup. If a newer version exists, a button appears on the status bar to see details..
Added some 'default bookmarks' if none are saved, so the bookmarks pane doesn't look so bald on initial startup.
Changed filename inputdialog for zips, tars, emptyfiles so that it shows full path. Also sets caret between directorypath and suffix, so users less likely to enter a name that doesn't have the recommended suffix (e.g. .zip for zip files).
21 Apr 2006
Bugfix: attempting to open directory for which you didn't have permissions was causing panel to hang in 'opening directory' mode.
Bugfix: dragging from a zip to an external application was sending an empty file.
Initial version of update check. Available from new updates tab on preferences menu. Contacts the server to see if there is a newer version of your distribution of commanderbond.
Currently have to install the new version manually, and run the check manually.. this may be automated in the future.
20 Apr 2006
Can specify wildcard(s) when searching file-contents
19 Apr 2006
Searches are now bookmarkable (drag the search icon to the bookmarks panel)
Can open bookmarks in the current panel whatever the kind of panel. Previously could only open a bookmark if the current panel was a directory listing.
18 Apr 2006
Fixed bug where dragging from one zip file to another wouldn't work.
Fixed zip file drag-selection bug (would always drag the selected files, even if the file at the cursor was not selected).
Made saving a zip cancellable.
12 Apr 2006
Fixed bug in search filecontents (was getting false positives). Also didn't handle multiple wildcard characters in normal search very well..
Scrapped max-files-size limit on search, all files are now searched, regardless of size.
Added directory icon to left of location field. Getting a bit icon-heavy, but is useful if you want to drag the current directory somewhere (e.g. to bookmark it).
Changed some of the colours so looks a bit better with alternative themes.
7 Apr 2006
Changed drag behaviour. Now, when you drag an icon: If the icon is selected, all selected rows get dragged. If the icon is not selected only the row with the icon gets dragged. This seems to be the most intuitive behaviour given that selections are now independent of drag gestures
Noticed that sometimes dragging seems to fail on Mac OS X, added detection that may prevent this..
6 Apr 2006
Fixed bug where wouldn't warn if copy failed for some reason when dropping files/directories. Now save should always either succeed or show an error message.
Made Icons a 'rowheader' so always stay visible even when you scroll to the right.
5 Apr 2006
Added icons. Changed behaviour of drag and drop so can only drag a file if the mouse is over its icon. This reduces the chance of accidental drags, and means you can select contiguous rows by dragging the mouse over file names.
30 Mar 2006
Changed delete message, so lists successes and failures, counts up instead of down (since we don't know how many actually files will be deleted when we start, in the case of recursive deletes).
29 Mar 2006
Made interface non-modal.
That is, instead of blocking the whole frame when performing a long-running task (creating an archive, finding etc.); only the view that is performing the task is blocked: you can carry on working with the other views. How usable the interface remains depends on 1) how much processing the task requires and 2) how good your platform is at multithreading!
28 Mar 2006
Added search file-contents option to search. Can look for some text within a file, ignores (and warns about) files over 10Mb.
24 Mar 2006
'Jump up' and 'Jump down' actions. These are similar to the 'open child directory' and 'open parent directory' actions bound to left and right arrows, except that they skip any intervening 'empty' directories (directories that contain 1 child directory). Available from right-click menu and by using ctrl+Left, ctrl+Right.
Useful for quickly browsing through a directory hierarchy looking for files. Especially if there is a lot of structure (Like with a source package hierarchy).
Can type a relative path in 'Create Directory' popup and will make multiple directories (equalivalent of UNIX mkdir -p command). E.g. abc/def/ghj will create 3 new directories, abc being a child of the current directory, def being its child, and so on.
23 Mar 2006
Added 'paste to file' which pastes the contents of the clipboard (if it is text) into a new file. Useful for storing snippets of data, similar to dragging some text onto the directory view; but works if the source application doesn't support dragging the selection (most apps have clipboard support).
22 Mar 2006
Advanced sorting available on all view types (Directory, Archive, Search results)
Search results includes Size, Date, Ext columns
Marking shown in brighter version of (same colour as selection)
removed vertical column separators from views
Removed 'Harvest data' action: the Filesearch panel now displays the total size of files found, so it's no longer needed.
21 Mar 2006
First row is selected on opening a new directory
17 Mar 2006
Removed 'parent' 'current' directories from directory listing. These are traditional parts of the 'commander' interface, however don't think they are all that useful and can be confusing.
Instead of using ctrl and shift + click for advanced sorting (e.g. multicolumn sorting), right-click on column header to bring up 'Advanced Sorting' dialog.
9 Mar 2006
Added 'up arrow' in directory panel, opens parent directory. Same action as pressing left arrow key. (requested by H)
Changed default theme to 'Bluebell' (H requested change from 'Invaders' theme)
8 Mar 2006
Added Commander actions to right-click menus of views, since it is now possible to hide the commander buttons, needed a mouse-friendly way of accessing these commands.
Added 'Touch' action to File view shortcut menu: updates files' last modified times to now
Preferences to show and hide commander buttons (along the top) and view control buttons (down the right hand side of each view)
view control buttons cannot have focus any more.
double-click on directory sometimes jumped 2 directories: fixed.
6 Mar 2006
Added more feedback to find (updates message, ESC cancels).
Added view control buttons (vertical on right hand side of each view) to split, close etc.
3 Mar 2006
Find.. wasn't working (due to build problem): Fixed
Changed progress display (to glasspanel from glass dialog) seems to paint faster than before
Added right-click action to copy filenames to clipboard
Action to copy full paths to clipboard
1 Mar 2006
Location field (at top of view) is no longer reverse-coloured when has the focus (looks a bit ugly and not necessary now that we don't colour the selection unless have focus).
Search panels support browsing zips, launching files
28 Feb 2006
Amalgamated individual statusbars on each directory view into a single statusbar at the bottom of all the screen, which displays the status of the currently selected view. Did this in order to save space.
Search results now open in a new search results view, splitting the view from which the search was made in two. Searches can be bookmarked and saved, and it is possible to edit the search and re-run it. The usual view commands should be available, e.g. can drag search files around; copy the names of selected files; mark and select files; sort by column etc.
27 Feb 2006
'Case sensitive' search performed case-insensitively and vice versa: fixed.
24 Feb 2006
Fixed bug where displayed file attributes (length, date etc.) were not updated after file was overwritten.
17 Feb 2006
Added Find.. action to directory panel menu. Recursively searches either the current directory, or any selected directories. Supports simple wildcard matching using *. Opted to avoid regular expressions, as in my experience the syntax is hard to remember and over the top for matching filenames. Can always make it an option later.
15 Feb 2006
Added generate SHA, MD5 digest actions to fileview right-click menu
Some rightclick menuitems are disabled if there is no selection.
Not sure about this: on the one hand disabling things is confusing because there is no indication of why they are disabled..
On the other hand, the menu is more readable if all the options that will result in an error message are greyed out..
14 Feb 2006
Added support for tar.bz2 and create tar.bz2 archives
Tar list/extract operations should be abortable
Webstart version should register file associations with zip, jar, tar, tar.gz etc. files
Webstart version should offer to create desktop shortcut and group
Fixed bug where refresh did nothing in Directory view
13 Feb 2006
Added 'Create tar' right-click menu action, creates tars and gzipped tars.
Added option to add selected files to new zip when choose 'Make zip'
Moved 'Make zip', 'Make empty file' to right-click menu on Directory view (was on File menu).
Changed zipfile save mode to a deferred save. Previously, whenver a zipfile was modified in place (e.g. files added, deleted, renamed), CB would attempt to save the newly modified file immediately. This was simple and 'stateless', but inconvenient when dealing with large files, as the save step could take some seconds. Now, there is a save button on the zip view; this becomes active as soon as the zipfile is modified. The changes are held in memory and are not written to the file until the save button is pressed. Unsaved changes are shown in italics in the meantime.
Added 'make empty file' action to File menu. Needed this to avoid using editor's default 'save as..' dialog Old process:
create new file in text editor
'Save'
navigate to where I want to save it, type name.
New process:
Use CB to navigate where I want to save it
'create empty file'
drag newly created file onto text editor and edit it
Fixed bug: drag onto filepane was failing
10 Feb 2006
Added .tar, .tar.gz, .tgz support. Apparently tar is a solid compression format, which means it isn't convenient for random access. So instead of browsing it in situ as with a zip, we offer to extract all the files to the current directory.. Used [com.ice.tar][6] for the tar reading, and GZIPInputStream if it's zipped up. Does exactly what it says on the tin.
Ctrl+ENTER splits the view horizontally and opens the selected directory in the new view. Only works in Directory views (for now).
Fixed focusfighting bug: commandules were sometimes squabbling over the focus
9 Feb 2006
Current view is saved in prefs on closing the window (and restored on launch). If exits abormally (e.g. kill) then state is not saved..
8 Feb 2006
Moved Refresh button from top row to next to Filename window on directories.
Fixed bug so cannot drop on panel from which you dragged.
Added prompt before saving dropped data.
7 Feb 2006
Archive files (zip,jar etc.) now support Duplicate, Rename, Move, Mkdir, Delete operations.
6 Feb 2006
Can create Zip file from File menu. New file is empty (except for empty placeholder file).
Added ability to edit archive files (.zip .jar). Can now drag files and/or directories onto zip files and they will be copied into the zip (replacing any files with the same path) and the zip saved. Can also drag files from other zips.
When double-click (or press enter on) an archive file stored inside a zip file (a nested zip, such as you find in .war, .ear files), CB offers to browse it. This works in the same manner as if you had clicked on an ordinary zip file, and works to any depth (can have zips nested in zips nested in zips, and traverse them in the usual way.
CB recognises .ear .war .sxw .odt files as archive files and treats them like .zip
Now shows empty directories in archive files (previously if a directory contained no files it was ignored)
27 Jan 2006
On dropping text onto view, CB offers to create a file containing the dragged text. Got the idea because wanted to save all the docs relevant to a project in a directory on the file system. Realized there was no convenient way to save an email to a single file. The alternatives were
use the email client for organisation (it has a built in system of folders), and put non-email documents somewhere else (or attach them to emails)
Copy the email text into a text editor and save as a file in a directory with everything else.
25 Jan 2006
added icons for splitting, and heart icon for 'super bookmarks' (where the config of all the views is saved as a bookmark)
Fixed rendering bug when adding bookmark (bookmark name not painted).
Only highlights selected/marked file if the view is currently selected.
No longer stores 2 most recently visited locations. Instead always starts with 2 panes each displaying home directory (unless provide filenames as arguments).
24 Jan 2006
Restored 'bookmark current view'. Now stores all visible panes and their locations. Including archive files (and paths within archive files).
23 Jan 2006
If open bookmark fails (e.g. current view is an archive view) shows warning dialog
Added close current view ctrl+4
20 Jan 2006
Shift+tab navigates backwards through views
tidied up menu and shortcut text to remove references to 'left' and 'right' pane. New terminology is current and previous view
added zip image, zip name field and zip location field.
'Reset to default view' action. Returns CB to default state (2 panes split vertically)
19 Jan 2006
Added multi-pane view: Instead of just having right and left directory views, you can now use ctrl+0 - ctrl+3 to split the current view like emacs or jedit. The current view splits into 2 identical sub-views, either horizontally or vertically.
Hopefully this will provide a more flexible interface for the power user - and help avoid needing multiple windows visible at once - which is often awkward with window managers.
(Initially tried this with tabs before deciding that splitpanes are more usable.)
If open jar or zip file in commanderbond, the current view is horizontally split, and the jar file opens in the new sub-view
Removed 'bookmark current view'
18 Jan 2006
Divider locations (on bookmarks panel, main view panels) are remembered
17 Jan 2006
Bookmark tree remembers previous expanded/collapsed state
13 Jan 2006
Reverted bookmarks panel to a JTree rather than commandertree. Think this is a better control for the purpose, since bookmark trees are generally quite shallow and it is useful to see things at different levels at the same time. Also, want fine control over the ordering of things, rather than lots of sort options..
added + button to create a bookmarks directory, drag and drop to re-order bookmarks, right-click menu for other operations (delete, duplicate, rename etc.)
v1.1 is the last version compiled for JREs earlier than 1.5. RetroWeaver works well for back-compiling the source, however I don't have time to check that library calls were present in the older JREs. This is bad news for Mac OS users, who have to upgrade to at least 10.4 to get java 1.5, but good news for Linux/Windows users since I only use (regularly) 1.5 and therefore it is less likely that they will encounter bugs.
Version 1.1
ClearCase support abandoned. Was using the sourceforge.net clearcase code to implement it. Unfortunately the API only allows one method call per property per file. This adds up to lots of method calls, even with only a few files visible - and cleartool (which is used behind the scenes) is not speedy in the first place. Result is slower (even) than ClearCase Explorer. Not that happy with the 'URL' system as it stands either.
30 Nov 2005
Changed autocomplete (type a character and it jumps to that row type again and it jumps to the next row starting with that char) to isearch (type a few letters and it jumps to the row that starts with those letters as you type, memory resets after 2seconds or on pressing up, down, escape, enter)
Added autojump to bookmarks list
29 Nov 2005
added tmp shortcut button on bookmarks bar (goes to temp directory)
added hiearchical browse for zip files
can launch (F4 or ENTER) entries in zipfile. Entry is uncrompressed to file in tmpdir and launched from there
left arrow when at root of zipfile opens zipfile's parent directory
28 Nov 2005
zipfile support (ENTER on zipfile opens in CB)
Can drag zipfile entries (file is uncompressed to tmpdir on the fly)
directory-pane location field is highlighted in same colour as border
25 Nov 2005
Major refactoring: Main file views now use FileTreePlugin with CommanderTree for display; should pave the way for adding different kinds of 'filesystem' in the future.
Enter key/double-click now launches file (currently does same thing as F4, but only if 1 file is selected; in future F4 will probably 'edit' the file - e.g. open it in some editor programme).
21 Nov 2005
Made bookmarks into a tree (e.g. can store directories with further bookmarks instead of a flat list)
Bookmark panel is now a commander-tree (supports the usual F7, F8 etc. actions and navigation)
revised TAB/focus code
ctrl+B selects the bookmark pane (TAB to leave it)
Version 1 is labelled at this point, as it is necessary to make large changes to support different kinds of data, e.g. Jar files, ClearCase filesystems
Version 1
25 Oct 2005
Changed edit bookmark dialog
Bookmarks are now saved to:
${HOME}/.commanderbond/bookmarks.xml
Instead of with other user preferences (stored in an OS-specific location such as ~/Library/.. or the registry).
The idea is to make it easier to swap bookmarks between machines and easier to edit them outside of CB
20 Oct 2005
Filtering.
Splitpane retains 50/50 size
minor internal changes with filter,sort, selection listeners