Comic Utility Belt / Blog: Recent posts

Comic Utility Belt 1.4.0.74 is now available.

Dont get excited - its just a minor release and there are no functional changes.
This replaces the 1.4.0.73 version which was being incorrectly reported as malware by the 360 Total Security scanner due to the way that the main program was compressed to make it faster for downloading.

Comic Utility Belt is free and contains only comic loving goodness., It does not contain any malware, spyware, nagware or ads... read more

Comic Utility Belt 1.4 "Argonaughts" has been released and is available for download

https://sourceforge.net/projects/comicutility/files/?source=navbar

Thank you to everyone that provided ideas and testing for this version

MAJOR CHANGES

• Fixed - various problems with accented characters in directory and file names such as MyComic_·ÈÌÛ˙-¡…Õ”⁄-‰ˆ‹÷Î-‡ËŸ“-„Ò—’-‚Ù Œ.CBR
• Added - command line support (use the new GENERATE COMMAND LINE button to generate command line files)
• Improved - Scans are now faster than before
• Improved - occasionally get error message about "failed to delete files in working directory". this has been greatly reduced in this this version.
• fixed - fixed 200 file limit bug. You can now extract any number of files... read more

Comic Utility Belt 1.4 is ready for release, but SourceForge is having problems with accepting file uploads. Im going to give it a bit more time before considering other options.

Sorry for the delay

The new version of Comic Utility Belt will be out within one week

Key changes
● Emby comic reader thumbnail support <-- UPDATE this feature didnt make it
● Remove the 200 file limit bug
● Various other minor changes

If you have any enhancement requests or bugs please let me know as I am working on the next release

I was emailed a few questions by Neal D Funkytown. I suspect that may not be his real name. Its nice to get some feedback and questions and I thought I would post the responses here

Q) What software language was CUB developed in ?
A) CUB was developed using Delphi. Delphi is a Pascal based language and is freaking awesome to use. I have used a lot of languages and IDEs and Delphi is by far my favorite. The latest release of Delphi allows you to develop programs for Windows, Apple OSX, Apple iOS (iPhone and iPad) and Android.... read more

I have been asked to provide the MD5 for Comic Utility Belt.
The MD5 code can be used to verify that the program has not been modified by spyware, malware, viruses and other nasties.

I will add it to the release notes for each future version.

In the meantime, this is the MD5 for the latest release

Comic Utility Belt 1.3.0.53

• ComicUtilityBelt_1.3.0.53.zip MD5: 7c8c0c8ba8c4a290c39855a8d20ccd61
• ComicUtilityBelt.exe MD5: d81d44dbee58889dae0d582a8ae60f84... read more

Comic Utility Belt 1.3.0.53 pre-release is now available

This fixes the problem with "midas.dll" error on startup on some Windows 7 PCs

There are no new features or significant changes

This is in "pre-release" for the next week to allow time for major issues to be reported.
If all goes well I will change the status to "stable" release

CUB 1.1 crashes on Windows 7 32 bit ! Oh Oh. Im on it

I have been on holidays for the last 6 weeks and now Im back in action and working on this critical bug. I will put out a new release shortly to fix this. Stay tuned

• CUB crashes on startup on Windows 7 32 bit
  "Exception in module ComicUtilityBelt.exe at 008F6AFE. error loading MIDAS.DLL."

Thanks to Anil P for reporting this

My screen saver has become a hit at work.

I go out to lunch and when I get back the screen saver has kicked in and a bunch of co-workers are hanging around waiting to see which comic cover will pop up next

Im brainstorming ideas for the next major release

My major idea is to add a torrent and file comparison tool.
This will let you compare the contents of a torrent / torrent file to files in an actual directory. It would highlight the differences to show files that are unique or larger.
The comparison would be based on the comic issue number and would find a match even if the file name is different so long as the issue number is in the file name... read more

The new 1.1 release is now available

Bon apetite

Due to being overloaded at work this week, I am delaying the release of the minor update until early next week

Cat

A minor update will be released in a few days (21 or 22-Jan-2013)

Major changes

1) Page Browser
* pages are now full quality so you can zoom into a full page view (this might change depending on performance)
* Export any page from the page browser
* Fixed scroll bars

2) Send a report to support (AKA me) with info about incorrect comic covers

You see, CUB occasionally gets it wrong and selects the wrong page as the comic cover. I know that sounds crazy because it should be a very easy thing to do right ? Surely its just a matter of grabbing the first page as that should be the cover. But ohhhh noooo, the first few pages are often tag pages or acknowledgements and pages are often out of sequence. As a result, I have to use some strange rules to determine which page is the cover page and sometimes it gets it wrong.... read more

Comic covers look great as desktop background images and screen saver images, especially if you configure them to rotate the images every few minutes

Microsoft Windows and Apple OSX allow you to select a directory that has images for desktop backgrounds and screen savers, but they will not automatically get images from subdirectories. So, try exporting your comic covers to a single directory to work around this.... read more

Good news !

Comic Utility Belt was listed on Softpedia today.
This will help to spread the word about CUB, so Yay Us !

http://www.softpedia.com/get/Multimedia/Graphic/Graphic-Others/Comic-Utility-Belt.shtml

Softpedia also gave us a "100% Clean Award" for having absolutely no nasties like spyware, viruses, trojans, backdoors or anything other than Pure Comic Goodness, coz that how we roll, yeah.

Info about Softpedias product's certification and award here:... read more

I have uploaded the first beta version 1.0.0.39

The user interface needs work, but all features should work correctly

The logic to determine which page is the cover is very complex.
Unfortunately its not just a case of grabbing the first page.
The pages are often out of order or in subdirectories and tag pages often appear before the cover.

So, it wont get the cover right every time but I improve it over time. Getting feedback from users will help this process. In the next release (or two) Ill include a way for you to send me info about any comic files that it does not handle correctly.... read more

I am working on the sourceforge site and will get the software up and ready for downloading as soon as possible

The first release supports CBR, CBZ and PDF files