Hydranode Developer's Diary - Developer's Daily Diary: Working on installer and tray icon

Alo Sarv
lead developer

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Developer's Diary

irc.hydranode.com/#hydranode

Friday, June 09, 2006

Working on installer and tray icon

I've been further experimenting with different ad placements on the website and different configurations. I'm trying to determine the best non-intrusive locations and styles for the ads, so when we start building the new website (expected second half of this month), I have a knowledge base on the subject to work with.

Another thing that was done over the past few days was finally enabling PayPal donations. You can see the button at the right side of this blog as well; first donation arrived just about a hour after enabling the button, thanks for that :)

On the code side, I've been fighting with the tray icon code and re-establishing my development setup. Somehow, newly-compiled GUI versions simply exit after startup (mingw version), or fail to link (vs2005 version). Since gdb doesn't work on windows, I have almost no way to track why the mingw version simply exits, and vs2005 version mysteriously fails to link, so I'm kind of stuck.

Being stuck in one area, I moved to next - the installer. The installer is actually aready existing - WinRAR is pretty powerful. The missing piece of the puzzle is a small app called 'install.exe' which will 1. write few registry keys to register the app in Control Panel, and 2. remove all Hydranode files when -uninstall option is passed to it (e.g. when user clicks 'Remove' in control panel or selects Uninstall in start menu). All in all, it's pretty simple (I've done few of these before), so this should be finished by tomorrow as well.

I don't think there will be a new network plugin developed during this development session; instead, I'll focus on improving existing components (ed2k, bt, gui), which will lead up to 0.3.1 release. The rationale is (as I already mentioned in the pre-vacation blog posts) that we've introduced multiple new big components during last 6 months (bt, gui), and they need further stabilization and improvements before we can move on. If we introduce too much new modules, I'll end up with a ton of half-working modules, which is a Bad Thing.

Madcat.

posted by Madcat # 2:48 PM

Comments:

"I don't think there will be a new network plugin developed during this development session; instead, I'll focus on improving existing components (ed2k, bt, gui), which will lead up to 0.3.1 release. The rationale is that we've introduced multiple new big components during last 6 months, and they need further stabilization and improvements before we can move on. If we introduce too much new modules, I'll end up with a ton of half-working modules, which is a Bad Thing."

Excellent!! Very, very smart decision! I hope this is the way you work also in future :) I always prefer _working_ programs!

I also think hydranode website already deserves 10+ !! Users find very easily all essential information, site isn't too heavy, it has working forum, this blog.. etc.. I have nothing to complain!

One more thing.. Is it somehow better to you if people use paypal instead of moneybookers when donating? Because I have no paypal account.

-saisse

# posted by Anonymous : 7:12 PM

The "finish stuff before moving on to new stuff" is a very nice idea! You are a very smart developer ;)

When I was seen the "make a donation" button, I got confused: it is a button for "moneybrokers" or paypal? Please use more descriptive and visually more showing buttons for sending the donation ;)

Another thing for helping donations could be if you send a donation bigger than X dolars (like 40dollars, for example) the donator will receive something like a Hydranode t-shirt! :)

Best regards,
timofonic

# posted by Anonymous : 7:41 AM

I forgot to say that due to the "finish stuff before moving on to new stuff" idea, Hydranode will not be another multiP2P app full of unfinished/bad P2P network implementations like MLDonkey (donkey runs ok, bt is usable but far from perfect, Direct Connect is unusable...).

Best regards,
timofonic

# posted by Anonymous : 7:44 AM

btw, as mldonkey is mentioned here, just some features whose absense made me search for alternatives in the first place:

- seeding mode
- friend slots
- priorities for file uploading
- grouping of downloads (e.g. exclude the porn stuff from the default view)
- locking to big servers, don't try to connect to the small ones unless you can't connect to a big one
- several bandwidth modes selectable from remote gui (e.g. normal mode, power mode, game mode (limiting upload the most))
- automatic ipfilter updates
- automatic server.met updates
- more powerful search browser (e.g. being able to use regex to find something in the list of search results a server returned for a simlpe query)

and so on :)

# posted by Anonymous : 5:19 PM

anonymous said... "Is it somehow better to you if people use paypal instead of moneybookers when donating? Because I have no paypal account."

I prefer moneybrookers, however Paypal was added to give those who have Paypal account (or only credit card) a chance to send money, since moneybrookers doesn't accept credit card payments and is less widely known.

anonymous said... "When I was seen the "make a donation" button, I got confused: it is a button for "moneybrokers" or paypal? Please use more descriptive and visually more showing buttons for sending the donation ;)"

Noted, will be done.

timofonic said... "Another thing for helping donations could be if you send a donation bigger than X dolars (like 40dollars, for example) the donator will receive something like a Hydranode t-shirt! :)"

Hydranode T-shirts have been in discussion by the project members for a long time, but due to various delays haven't been implemented yet. However, rest assured they are planned for the future, hopefully even this summer.

Madcat.

# posted by Madcat : 7:22 PM

Another thing...

I recommend you to use 7zip instead: Open-source and you can do a custom sfx like with others. Also it has a great compression.

Regards,
timofonic

# posted by Anonymous : 10:41 PM