29 January 2008

Hide Language Bar from UAC Secure Desktop

Off-Topic: This post isn't about Directory Opus, but we thought it might be useful to some of you anyway. Remember that you can use the on-topic label and on-topic RSS feed if you only want to see Opus news.

Hide the Language Bar from UAC Prompts on the Secure Desktop

Update: See the comments for an alternative method which is probably much better!

Some time after I installed Vista the Language Bar started to appear on the secure desktop. The secure desktop is the darkened screen where UAC prompts appear, unless you've disabled the secure desktop or disabled UAC completely. I only ever use one keyboard language so this extra thing on the screen isn't useful to me and is slightly distracting/annoying.

A quick Google found several other people trying to remove the Language Bar but no answers. I hunted through the registry and discovered how to do it and figured I'd post the information here (and on my web site, because weblogs are rubbish for finding non-recent things) so that others can find it.

  • Run RegEdit.exe (as an administrator)
  • Go to HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Software\Microsoft\CTF\LangBar
  • Change the ShowStatus value from 0 (zero) to 3 (three).

RegEdit screenshot
(Click image for full-size version.)

That's it! Easy when you know how. It looks like the secure desktop inherits its settings from the .DEFAULT user profile.

Important Note: If anyone using your computer might need to type an administrator password into a UAC credentials prompt using a different keyboard layout then you should leave the Language Bar alone, else they may find it difficult or impossible to type their password.

25 January 2008

Directory Opus version 9.1.0.1

An update for Directory Opus is now available for download from the GP Software website.

Directory Opus 9.1.0.1 25th January 2008

Bugs fixed:

  • Several x64-related problems fixed:

    • Occasional crash during drag & drop.

    • Crash when using tray icon context menu.

  • Fixed occasional crash when pasting text into the lister as Clipboard Text.txt.

  • Fixed problem with RAR plugin where progress indicators were sometimes not shown when extracting via drag and drop.

  • Fixed lockup when attempting to drag a file into a breadcrumbs path field popup menu.

  • Fixed several problems to do with disk change and removal:

    • Listers should no longer incorrectly jump to the root folder when a disk is inserted or removed.

    • Fixed a crash that could occur when a device is removed from the system.

    • Improved handling for Safely Remove Devices to allow Opus to release any locks it has on the device and make it possible to safely remove a device while Opus is running.

    • Improved handling for Format – Opus should now allow a disk to be formatted even if it is currently open in the Lister.

  • Fixed problem setting target file timestamps on FAT32 devices when one or more timestamp is set to earlier than 1980.

  • Several problems fixed in the image viewer:

    • Selection no longer lost if image is resized or rotated (unless image is tiled).

    • Selection no longer lost if Frame option is toggled.

    • Selection is now cleared if you Undo a Crop.

    • Selection rect now positioned correctly when image zoomed and window resized.

    • Zooming in/out when tiled now takes you to 75%/150% instead of 25%/50%.

    • Fixed slightly odd behaviour if you rotated or zoomed (via the keyboard) while dragging a selection rectangle.

    • Fixed rare, minor problem that occurred if another program captured the mouse while dragging in the viewer.

    • Fixed Select-All and then Ctrl-C adding a blank row and column to the bottom-right of the clipboard image.

    • Crop option now disabled for tiled images. Was never intended to work with them and could crash if attempted.

    • Improved handling of BMP files using BI_BITFIELDS and/or colour palettes on true colour images. In particular, this fixes a bug where BI_BITFIELDS images -- often PrtScn grabs -- which were rotated in the viewer would have their pixels shifted if saved back to disk.

    • Opus now saves "packed bitmaps" when writing true colour images that have no (optimizing) colour palette, instead of leaving an unused RGBQUAD in the header. In particular, this fixes the problem with some images turning purple when setting desktop wallpaper on Vista or viewing them using other programs which assume a "packed bitmap" structure and ignore the pixel offset in the BMP file header.

  • Opus now uses the %ComSpec% environment variable instead of hard-coding to cmd.exe when opening a DOS prompt

  • Fixed a crash that could occur (rarely) whenever a toolbar was opened.

  • Renaming a file and only changing the case of the filename no longer loses any file description assigned to that file.

  • Setting the default Lister from a Lister that is zoomed to the title bar no longer saves the zoom state as the default.

  • The command Toolbar CLOSE NAME=*this now works reliably with both local and global toolbars.

  • Inline rename no longer allows colons and other invalid filename characters to be pasted.

  • Fixed cosmetic issue in Folder Formats Columns list when the page is disabled.

  • Fixed crash with sub-folder wildcard rename when wildcard pattern did not match anything.

  • Fixed double tooltip problem in inner close buttons (e.g. file display border).

  • Fixed behaviour of Recent path list dropdown when the global Recent list is disabled.

  • Fixed problem with hex viewer displaying garbage if file less than 8 bytes in size.

  • Fixed problem with hex viewer crashing if resized to more than 512 columns.

  • Fixed several List Mode issues:

    • Fixed rendering issue that caused the top line of pixels to be cut off.

    • The shift-select starting position would get confused when using the back button.

    • The wrong item could be selected/launched if scrolled to the right in some cases.

  • The folder tree no longer loses focus when moving to the parent folder using the up or left cursor key.

  • Files beginning with a . (dot) character no longer confuse Opus when double-clicked.

  • ImageShack upload web/forum/custom links now work correctly.

  • The rename function now strips leading/trailing spaces from EXIF fields like {cameramodel}.

  • Copying multiple folders containing sub-folders to a collection as sub-collections no longer mixes up folder contents.

  • Minor change for FTP recognition of Microsoft FTP server with misconfigured SYS response.

  • Change to fix FTP issue with parsing of links which had extra space.

12 January 2008

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This page has been created to give you a convenient way to receive news about Directory Opus.

Most of what you will find here will also be posted at the Directory Opus Resource Centre forums, but those forums are very active and not everyone has the time or interest level to read them.

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