Finishing up v3.82

I'm in the final phase of v3.82 development. Don't worry, I polished several more things since the last beta. Its possible I'll release another beta before final release, but not guaranteed. The changes are minor and 'safe', regression testing has gone well, and testing of all new changes have gone well.

I've also included a CHM help file, for the many users who've requested it. I find it much easier to browse than my online documentation. It does increase the installer size, but it is still under 1MB.

Full change log is coming soon... I am eager to get this new 'more polished' v3.8x released.

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Instant self-elevate (Manage processes of all users)

In the many additions made to v3.80, I neglected to mention the new 'Manage processes of all users' toggle. This 'Main' menu option will cause Process Lasso to toggle its state between 'highest rights' and 'normal rights'. It automatically restarts itself and the core engine. Of course, when transitioning to 'highest rights' a UAC dialog is presented (in Vista and above).

I figured many people probably didn't notice it, especially since I forgot to add it to the change log. Therefore, here's a blog post about it.

Side note
Thanks, as always, to the many fans of Process Lasso. It took years to get the software to where it is today. Without you, loyal users, I'd not have had the impetus to go on. Now we've got version 4 on the drawing board. It will be great, and I look forward to sharing it with everyone. Remember, my email is always open.

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Process Lasso v3.81.1 beta now available

I just released Process Lasso v3.81.1 beta. This will be a VERY short beta series, as the changes are minimal and quite safe. Amongst other minor polishing, I've added the capability to sort by columns in the new Active Processes listview. The last sorted column is also remembered. Of course, this capability already existed in the 'All processes' listview. This omission was often noticed in v3.80, much to my surprise - so here it is. In accordance with my versioning system, v3.82 will be the final build.

Changes so far:

1. Addition.GUI: Sort by column now supported in new 'Active Processes' tab, as was already the case in the 'All Processes' tab
2. Addition.GUI: Last sorted column of new 'Active Processes' tab is remembered
3. Change.GUI: Moved graph visibility setting to the registry, so a config reload and process recheck event won't be triggered every time the graph visibility is toggled by the user. Other GUI settings are also being migrated to the registry in future builds.
4. Change.Core: No longer restore the original priority of a process whose priority was adjusted while it was in a lowered priority class due to a ProBalance event

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A lull in development? No way..

Most of those who know me would have expected another development update by now. Well, Process Lasso v3.82 is coming soon. This new version simply completes polishing of v3.80. I was personally disappointed in v3.80 due to the GUI anomalies in the first few builds. I'm ensuring this one is well tested and fully polished. For me, it is the re-try of the v3.80 launch. One the many improvements include the often requested sort of the Active Processes tab, as a note to all those who've emailed me about that. There will be a v3.81 beta series that will come for a few days, but then v3.82 will be released shortly there-after. Barring unforeseen complications or distractions, I hope to have v3.81 beta available through this week, with v3.82 launching early next week at latest (hopefully).

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Urging people to beware of 'foreground boosters'

I would like to take this opportunity to remind users to stay away from any application that boosts the priority class of the foreground process. These sort of utilities are dangerous, and a cheap hack. There is a reason Process Lasso doesn't take this simple approach to solving the NT responsiveness problem - it doesn't work and is dangerous. Windows already uses a few methods of foreground boosting (i.e. longer time slices), and additional boosting of the foreground process priority is not only unhelpful, but also can be quite harmful.

More information is here.

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v3.80.4 released

On the heels of v3.80.3 is v3.80.4. This build fixes more pane positioning anomalies that were still present in v3.80.3. Yes, I'm quite embarrassed about this. I never saw them during testing because of the particular way I utilize the Process Lasso GUI. A lot of existing users didn't see the anomalies for the same reason. Sadly, I'm sure many new users of the product did see these child window positioning anomalies. This time it really caught me by surprise.. I thought I had it fixed.

Other than these GUI issues, v3.80 has been really solid. I worked extensively on the core functionality, but clearly faltered in a very visible part of the product - the GUI. Now, its up to me to recover from these non-critical, but important mistakes and continue on with development and life. I'm looking into ways to better my QA so that little user interface bugs don't slip through. I have automated tests for much of the core functionality, but the user interface is less able to be tested in an automated way.

In the end, I encourage my users to always report any anomalies they see. Had a user not been brave enough to report the continuing v3.80.3 GUI anomalies, they might still exist. One of the causes of my failure here may have been that I released v3.80.3 while I was sick, so released it and then didn't get back to my PC for a little while. So, perhaps I would have eventually have noticed it a few days later, but still a user report is what got me on the ball. Once I was aware of the problem, it took less than 10 minutes to fix.

I'm feeling better now, and will resume development work. I can tell you though that the new major version of Process Lasso is going to be delayed a bit, as I continue to polish the v3.80 code. There will probably be several more minor updates to v3.80, none of them critical, but all of them continued incremental improvements to the code.

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3.80.2 update

Last night I struggled until 5am to prepare a new update to Process Lasso. It includes some enhancements to the system tray tooltip for English users (other languages coming soon), a fix for certain customized ProBalance settings, indication of hard-coded ProBalance exclusions in the GUI, and a fix for the pane positioning errors (blank/corrupt GUI window).

Regarding the child window positioning errors that could cause a corrupt looking Process Lasso user interface - I finally determined how this was occurring. It was due to the rewrite of the sizing code, and the new ability to hide the graph. Basically, if people tweaked the pane positions around, then changed the main window size .. the result could sometimes be 'out of whack'. It took a specific set of changes to induce this. Typically it would occur if the user maximized the window, reduced the graph size, then restored the window. For some unlucky people, who wanted to tweak the pane positions in a particular way, they'd always encounter this. For the majority of other people, they'd never see this problem. I can tell you that from now on I'll be resizing these panes every which way, and resizing the window in every conceivable fashion during my testing ;o.

For now, I've just forced these pane positions to reset when the main window size changes. Don't worry, for all those who want their pane positions remembered, I will have a proper fix in v3.80.3. I simply had to have a reliable build that didn't have this annoying issue - that was the top priority.

I don't know how many users encountered this, but it doesn't 'sit well' with me to think that people evaluating the product ended up with a corrupt looking user interface. Sure, they could have used the View menu option 'Reset window positions' to fix it, but they didn't know that. This could have ruined the entire Process Lasso 'empire' .. a simple mistake to some window sizing code because I wanted to be sure to preserve relative pane sizes and positions upon main window resize. In other words, I wanted a tweaked user interface to have its tweaked state preserved even when the main window size changes. Previous versions worked like this, and v3.80.3 will again behave this way.

Yes, since I use straight C++, I must do all this painful window resizing code myself. If I used a high level language, or other abstraction layer, it'd all be done for me. However, the GUI would eat up considerably more resources. I hope my users appreciate the slim product in the end, and its worth it.

Did you see this user interface anomaly in v3.80 and v3.80.1? I'd love to know how many people actually saw it. Did you NOT see it? I'd even more love to hear from those who DIDN'T see it, lol.

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