EEShell / News: Recent posts

It's been a very long time since I worked on EEShell. Very long... as in, Windows 7 was current.

EEShell2 was never meant for modern Windows. I wrote it for Windows 2000, and it worked (mostly) under Windows XP, but Vista and later, well... let's just say it's... suboptimal.

Now, the Explorer shell under Windows 7 and 10 is pretty decent, as long as you're running a decent computer. (Under 8, it's... well, it's Windows 8.) But Windows 11? It's an absolute disaster. As I'm sure you can imagine, I hate it.... read more

So, I finally got around to uploading v0.9.0. It hasn't been very thoroughly tested, so the release is marked "beta" (but you won't see it called beta anywhere in the docs), but it should work just fine.

If something *doesn't* work, PLEASE submit some bug reports. Please? Someone? Anyone?

I've been working on EEShell2 v0.9 for several days now. My to-do list is pretty damn big for this release, and might even justify skipping 0.9 and bumping up to 1.0 (maybe).

I've already made a few not-so-minor changes:
- Fixed a few outstanding bugs (some of which have literally been there for years).
- Changed the options dialog layout.
- Nearly finished EEShell2/16 (the 16-bit version of EEShell2).
- Translated the DLL code back to VB. This was for EEShell2/16, and for VB programmers who don't have access to PowerBASIC; the DLL is going to stay in PB for the foreseeable future, until and unless I get good enough with C or C++ to rewrite the DLL *there*. (More on that in the noDLL folder in the archive.)... read more

Okay, so, for those very very few of you who look at this project, I've uploaded EEShell2 v0.8.0, the first working new version in over 2 years. It has a few new features, most notably the new "File Manager" button (for launching your file manager of choice, duh -- defaults to Explorer), and some misfeatures have been removed (like the plugin system from 0.7 -- gone).

I still haven't gotten around to getting the PNG code working, and honestly, I might *never* get around to it. (I'd like to, but again, I never got around to it.)... read more

A year and a half ago, I marked EEShell as being "no longer under development", and at that time, it was true. Since then, however, I've done some work on it, including:
- improved background image selection
- an attempted rewrite in PowerBasic
- an attempt to move parts to C
- a 16-bit version started
- a DOS version started (and even mostly finished!)

Sometime next week -- probably Monday but no guarantees -- I will add the contents of my EEShell directory to the download section.... read more

I have posted what I intend to be the final version of EEShell2 (and likely the last EEShell, period). Called EEShell2e, it's really just EEShell2 v0.6.4 modified to compile under Visual Basic 5. You can grab it from the files page.

I'm marking EEShell inactive. I've pretty much lost interest in continuing this project. Also, the poll I posted on the EEShell page says that I should, at the very least, stop working on EEShell. ("stop working on this junk completely" got 2 votes, and "work on something else entirely" got 1, while "work on EEShell3" and "work on both" each got 1 - so 3 to 2 that people think I should quit EEShell.)... read more

Since I've made QuickRun a stand-alone application, and not just a plugin (or whatever) for EEShell, I decided that it would be better to split it off from this project. The project name is quickrun (duh) and can be found at:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/quickrun

I don't have a web page set up for it yet, but will in the indeterminate future.

Note that if I keep the plugin system, the QuickRun plugin will probably remain here.

I've released a new version of QuickRunTB. This one's somewhat influenced by the default KDE toolbar. It's got some new features like customizable icons and hiding (sort of).

This might sound like a bit of a joke, but I've gone back to the original EEShell - the one I call semi-functional (for a reason) - and rewritten it from scratch (of course) in PowerBasic 8. I did it mostly to see how hard it is to program forms in PB (I don't think it's much harder than Visual Basic is), and also to correct the numerous screw-ups.

Anyway, to a large degree I've replicated EEShell 0.0.7, but I also made some changes. The shutdown and restart buttons work under NT systems. The useless "force" and "poweroff" buttons are gone, replaced by the new "Standby" button (which is unique amongst all version of EEShell - none other allows standby). I swapped the positions of the run button and the exit/shutdown column. The window is now movable and minimizable, and is much smaller than before.... read more

I'm uncertain of what to do. 8 months ago, I "announced" that I was canning EEShell2 and commencing EEShell3, intended as a from-the-ground-up rewrite. 4 months after that - a little over 4 months ago - I announced that I was taking a break from all things EEShell-related.

Now I'm ready to take on EEShell again. The problem is, I no longer really care to do a complete rewrite; I think I'd rather just get back to work on EEShell2 and abandon EEShell3 (not too hard, I never released anything regarding EEShell3 except 2 news posts and an updated web page). However, as unlikely as it may seem, there might be people who have an opinion about what I should do with my time.... read more

For those of you who are paying attention, it was 4 months ago that I decided to can EEShell2 and start work on EEShell3. Unfortunately, the Real World(tm) kind of intruded, and since then I've been hopping from one crisis to the next. Of course, this means that EEShell3 hasn't been touched. I've given it some thought, and, while I'm not going to abandon EEShell, I'm not really able to devote much time to devote to it. (QuickRunTB was an exception; I've never done drag-n-drop before and QuickRunTB was the result of what I've learned so far.) ..... Anyway, I'm still alive, and so is EEShell3. I still plan on doing a complete rewrite, but I've decided that the main interface will probably remain in VB, and I'm also probably not going to use C *at all*. (Well, maybe BCX, but that's still mostly BASIC...)

I've created a toolbar version of QuickRun, called QuickRunTB. Right now it's Windows-only, and will remain so until I figure out how to extract icons in MacOS and Linux (at which point I'll move them from VB to REALbasic). Note that QuickRun and QuickRunTB can't use each others' .lst files or .ini files.

I've ended development on EEShell2. I'm tired of it, no longer interested in fixing it, etc. Instead, I've started work on EEShell3, which I hope will be totally written in PowerBasic and C. So far I've only written one little tiny part of it, but things are moving along nicely.

[sigh] Once again, something has gone wrong; this time it's the Run function in the DLL. This means that the Run button is broken, as are both Quck Run plugins. grr...

It's about time!

I should have a good, working version of v0.7.1 ready by the end of the week. Check back on Sunday 9 January for the release.

I'm looking into changing from VB to something that works better. I'll probably be changing to PowerBasic, or at the very least building DLLs in PB (or maybe C) and then calling those routines from VB. This means that instead of working on new features or fixing bugs, my time will be spent trying to get EEShell2 to work in the new language. Stayed tuned...