Technical Talk Section

OK, this space is for me to talk technically. lol. Mostly talk about programming and stuff. ... So far I have no idea what I'm going to put here... but if I want to upload this site... I better come up with something. lol =P

Known Issues

OK, I'll put up a new release once these "issues" pile up... 'cause I don't want to make a release that consists of only 1 change... who would? =P So, here goes

"Don't Scale images that are going to be stretched otherwise" option not working

I just found this out... hmmmm it seems that the Center Tiling code messed up more things than I had anticipated... I'll look at it... once these issues pile up since it's only 1 change... and I don't use this option very much anyways... unless I get many requests to fix it right away... then I will... but... making a new release consisting of only 1 change/fix... I think that's like a waste of time... oh well.

Why a generic name such as "Background"?

... well... I never really gave it a name... This program started as a VBScript. lol. It was named Background.VBS. Since it was changing the background, background.vbs didn't seem such a bad idea for a name, besides, it's just a VBScript, not a MFC app... but then... things got bigger, and then went to become a JScript script... THEN one day, I decided to add an Options Dialog box! lol. I think my ignore script for mIRC had a lot to do with it. lol. =P Coding a dialog box in mIRC was... cool... so I thought that it was time for the background changing script to get its own dialog box as well... and... the name just... got stuck... lol =P Oh, I was using an OCX file that I had made using VB5CCE to actually set the wallpaper and stuff. lol WSH is not THAT powerful to be setting wallpapers and stuff. lol =P

What's up with Background-ASCII.exe, Background-MBCS.exe, and Background-UNICODE.exe?

... how did this become a FAQ? ..... oh well... who knows? =P OK, on to the question... err... answer. Well, my main audience (Erick) was complaining that Background V2 didn't work for him... So I changed things around a bit... and still didn't work, SO, I thought that maybe it was a character set thing. Since the Unicode version won't work in Win98... I thought that maybe my MBCS version wasn't working in his computers... so I decided to compile it for each character set (ASCII(SBCS), MBCS, and Unicode). Hey, it works in my Win98 and I don't use the Win98 to make programs and stuff... Hopefully now it will work... at least some version. ^_^

FormatMessage() not working well in Win98

For some reason, my FormatMessage() won't work well in Windows'98. It doesn't give any errors, it just returns an empty string... Here's the code

// Returns the description of the error code returned by GetLastError() // // GetLastError() only returns the error code, and not the text // description, and this function goes and gets that text description // and returns it. CString GetLastErrorMessage(DWORD dwError) { LPTSTR pszBuffer = _T(""); DWORD dwLength = 0; // Gets the text description of the error code dwLength = FormatMessage(FORMAT_MESSAGE_ALLOCATE_BUFFER | FORMAT_MESSAGE_IGNORE_INSERTS | FORMAT_MESSAGE_FROM_SYSTEM, NULL, dwError, 0, (LPTSTR)&pszBuffer, 0, NULL); CString sOut = _T(""), sFormat = _T(""); // Formats the return text sFormat.LoadString(IDS_ERRORMSG_REASON); sOut.Format(sFormat, dwError); if (dwLength > 0) sOut.Append(pszBuffer, dwLength); else { sFormat.LoadString(IDS_ERROR_ERRORMSG); sOut += sFormat; } // return the error description return sOut; }

Now for some reason, FormatMessage returns 0 to dwLength and I'd like to know why... It works fine in WinXP... Well, I haven't looked up in Google about it yet since I get online about once a week and for about an hour or so. Well... I guess this is just 1 more thing to "fix" for the next release. ^_^

Shell_NotifyIcon() fails during startup

OK... The previous sniplet of code is now correct and works as it's supposed to... before though... it wasn't working very well... See, since I have all my strings in a string table, I was using oString.LoadString(IDS_STRINGID), but the LoadString() member SETS the last error to 0 if it succeeds, and for the longest time, I've been getting errors with error code of 0. lol. Well, now that's fixed. ^_^ OK, on to this problem. It doesn't happen often... actually, it happens once in a blue moon, but it happens. It's nothing serious, really. It fails to create the tray icon, then since it failed, the main program object fails to create, thus the program exits. If you restart the program, then it works fine, but I'd still like to know why it doesn't work from time to time. Here's the code that I'm using to add the tray icon.

*** In the class constructor ***

// Just in case... hopefully it will stop the // Unable to add tray icon // error messages that I've been getting from // time to time... hopefully... ZeroMemory(&m_nidIconData, sizeof(NOTIFYICONDATA)); m_nIconShellVersion = 0; // Tray Icon Initialization #if (_WIN32_IE >= 0x0500) m_nidIconData.uVersion = 5; #endif m_nidIconData.cbSize = sizeof(NOTIFYICONDATA); m_nidIconData.hWnd = 0; m_nidIconData.uID = 1; m_nidIconData.uCallbackMessage = WM_TRAYICON_NOTIFY; m_nidIconData.hIcon = m_hIcon; _tcscpy(m_nidIconData.szTip, sMsg); m_nidIconData.uFlags = NIF_MESSAGE | NIF_ICON | NIF_TIP; m_bTrayIconVisible = false;

*** In OnInitDialog() ***

// Add the Tray Icon to the System Tray m_nidIconData.hWnd = this->GetSafeHwnd(); BOOL bSuccess = Shell_NotifyIcon(NIM_ADD, &m_nidIconData); m_bTrayIconVisible = (bSuccess ? true : false); if (!m_bTrayIconVisible) { DWORD dwError = GetLastError(); sMsg.LoadString(IDS_ERROR_FAILADDTRAYICON); AfxMessageBox(sMsg + GetLastErrorMessage(dwError)); DestroyWindow(); }

Needless to say, but that ZeroMemory() code did NOT stop that error message from appearing... *sigh* This works and all... but it's that sometimes it fails and... it kills me not knowing why. lol. I've looked around Google Groups a bit...(1 hour), but the closest thing I found was that maybe it's not my program failing, but Explorer... if so... then there's nothing I can do..., but if it isn't?

The "bug"

Oh wow, a bug! lol. Well, here's how it is. In Windows'98, if you have the screen set to be 16-bits color mode, then the "bug" will appear. It only happens if you have the program to scale the image. The first time that it scales the image, it works fine. THEN, the 2nd time, it won't work. It scales it, and saves it fine... BUT Windows CAN'T set the saved bitmap as the wallpaper!!!... I don't know why that happens... I'm assuming it has something to do with the SaveBitmapFile() that I got off the web... but ... it does work... half the time... but it still works, and it works flawlessly in WinXP... I'd like to know why and fix it. This "bug" has been with me ever since Version 1.4. I'm thinking that it's either that SaveBitmapFile() function or the stdole version of Win98... who knows?

Things I want to do

Well, there's 2 things I'd like to be able to do to make this program better... one is to change the mode of the list control in the FileOpen dialog box to Thumbnailed view, instead of the default List view that it comes up with. The 2nd thing is to add a check box to the BrowseForFolder dialog, just like in Winamp. That way I could move that Manually Select Location option from the Options Dialog and put it where it should be. I once almost got it using a code I downloaded from the web. This guy had subclassed it very thoroughly, and I was actually able to add the check box... but... the checkbox didn't work as expected... See, whenever I put the mouse over the check box, the check in the checkbox would dissapear, and appear if I moved the mouse away from it(assuming that the check box is in a BS_CHECKED state)... So, I just gave up on it for now...

That's it for this section... I'll add more or remove some items as time passes and as things change. Well, have fun and enjoy the program! ^_^