NTWind News

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WinSnap v2.0.2 released

A new minor version of WinSnap has been released today:

Portable Edition (to run WinSnap from a USB stick).
Restoring main window size and position now work correctly.
Some issues on multi-monitor setup were fixed.
Conflict with CursorXP (Multi-Object capture mode) was resolved.
Unnecessary watermarks in trial mode were removed.
Some other small bugfixes and improvements.

Since version 2.0 WinSnap is a shareware program and you must purchase a license if you wish to continue using it. Though, if you do not need new features, you may still use old version 1.1 which is completely free for personal use.

Posted by Alexander Avdonin on 18-Feb-07 05:38

WinSnap v2.0 Ultimate

Well, three weeks of hard development and it is going to be released. Of course, I have not implemented all features I wanted from the beginning. But there are really major improvements in this version.

WinSnap v2.0 Ultimate is the first release with full Windows Vista support. It was especially designed to capture the new Aero theme and can handle all possible issues with rounded corners and shadows.

WinSnap can draw a drop shadow effect which is very similar to the new Windows Vista UI. There is no need to place certain windows over a white background and then crop a fullscreen image.

I have rewritten all image processing algorithms to provide full alpha-channel support. Now you can save your screenshots as transparent PNG or TIFF. It allows really easy image compositing, and it is very useful when placing your screenshots on multi-colour backgrounds.

The third "big feature" is the Multi-Object capture mode which allows you to select multiple windows (and controls) on the screen and easy combine them into one screenshot image. Use Ctrl + left-click or mouse middle-click to do it.

WinSnap v2.0 contains a configurable External Tools menu, Fixed-Size Region capture mode, and many other small improvements and core optimization.

You may find some tutorials and examples of usage here:

WinSnap v2.0 makes screenshots even better!

Posted by Alexander Avdonin on 13-Feb-07 10:26

Windows Developer Power Tools

"Windows Developer Power Tools" is a book by James Avery and Jim Holmes. It describes the growing number of free and open source software for developers who work on Windows platform.

23.11. Managing and Switching Tasks with TaskSwitchXP

«It's amazing how dependent we become on the simple Alt-Tab or Alt-Shift-Tab keystrokes in our daily workflow. Task switching is a critical part of getting around in the Windows multitasking environment. Unfortunately, Alt-Tab task switching isn't very helpful when you've got a lot of applications open, because the list of icons gets muddled and confusing. And what if you have several instances of the same application running - how do you tell which application icon refers to the instance you're looking for?»

Annotation: http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/9780596527549/

Posted by Alexander Avdonin on 09-Feb-07 00:04

Hstart v1.1 released

Hstart is a little utility which allows you to run console applications and batch files without any windows. There is an updated version of Hstart with new /WAIT and /HELP flags.

When using this /WAIT flag with multiple command lines (e.g. hstart /WAIT "command1" "command2"), Hstart starts command1 and command2 continuously and returns an unsuccessful code (non-NULL) if one of these processes return it.

Discussion at: http://www.ntwind.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=129

Posted by Alexander Avdonin on 01-Feb-07 22:25