Review of Digeus Snapit 3.7

Ive been asked to review another Digeus product - "Snapit".

What is Snapit
Snapit is a light weight tool to quickly capture both full screen and sections of the screen.

Market
The product is marketed at Designers, Office Workers, Business People, Analysts and Technical Writers who have to describe interfaces, menus, buttons, etc.

Install
The product is a small download that can be quickly downloaded and installed.

Configuration
After configuring the product files are save automatically to a specified directory. You can also set the button that begins the screen capture.

Using the program
After configuring it properly, simply press the hot key (Print Screen by Default) and then select the area of the screen to capture. After you select the area it is save automatically to the configured directory.

What do I think?
The functionality in this product is covered in many image editing applications. I use paintshop pro which has this functionality. Capturing images in paintshop pro is a lengthier process but gives you the option to resize and manipulate the image.

Conculsion
If you dont have this functionality already then at $17.99 this is cheaper than buying an application like paintshop pro which costs £80. So if all you need is a screen capture image this represents good value for money.

We would like to see a function to resize captured images in a later version.



You can buy Snapit here


Screen Capture Software

Review of Digeus System Optimizer 8.2.2195

Hello
Ive been asked to review a new product called System Optimizer by Digeus.
The program is a collection of features that aim to help improve the performance of your computer. The software runs on all versions of windows, but since I currently run XP the comments relate to tests I did on my own system.

I will comment on each feature of the program.

Optimise

1. Clean your registry
This feature dectects redundant and incorrect entries from the registry. The program finds
Invalid Uninstalls, Invalid active X, Invalid Paths etc.
On my system the program found over 1000 entries. I was quite careful to check that these entries were invalid as otherwise it could damage my system. I successfully fixed all these problems and so far haven't noticed any problems as a result.
I think this is quite a useful feature.

2. Clean your disk
This feature removes invalid start menu entries, invalid shortcuts, empty folders, empty files, temporary files etc
This is quite a useful feature, especially if you are low on disk space. My only comment is that by default the program searches for blank folders and empty files. Some software requires these so it is indivisible to remove them unless you are completely sure they are not needed - therefore this option is not for novice users.

3. disk space analyser
a good feature to find out where your space is taken up if your low on space. Features a
useful pie chart to show usage graphically.

4. process manager
A useful tool that shows all processes and their children. Don't rely on killing red processes (un signed) as on my system all of them were legit. This ones not for the novice.

5. Duplicate File finder
we were unable to test duplicate file finder due to time restrictions - however there is a concern that backup files could be accidentally deleted - - should be alright if your careful

6. Protect your privacy
This options is to clean up web browsers history and cache. The delete history and cached files option is useful but already part of most browsers. When tested it didn't remove history properly from IE 6 also doesn't work with FireFox or chrome.

7. the service manager
alot of this information is built into windows already. optimise services may help speed up startup - you need to be sure of what your doing.-This feature crashed on my system

8.startup
useful tools to see all programs that run on startup. Need to know what your doing to disable programs. The task scheduler is a good feature - as far as i know the only other way to find this out is with the task scheduler at on the command line. However it only shows tasks that are already scheduled - you cant schedule your own program

9. Clean Memory
The memory optimiser made no difference on my system which has 3GB. Free memory remained constant at 23%. However maybe a more useful function on computers with less memory.

10. smart unistaller
windows already has an unistaller built in. However sometimes programs fail to unistall properly. If this tool cleans up a botched uninstall then it could be useful. We were unable to test this feature as we didnt have any problems with uninstalled software.

11. Unnecessary Files cleaner
reported i had 420mb backup files and 326 backup dll files. Was a bit scared of using this as i didn't know what the backup files were.
As for desktop wallpaper the feature to remove wall papers isn't part of XP. So this could be a useful function. You wont save much space with this so as the file sizes are tiny.
Screen saver - the facility to remove a screen save could be useful to people that vary this alot


12. defrag your registry
This could well be the most important feature in the package. However as i am testing this software on my production system I'm not prepared to risk damage if it doesn't work properly.

Tweak
1. System Information
A useful tool that shows all information on your system. This information is available elsewhere but this puts it all together in a nice easy to use format. The System Folder details crashed on our system.

2. IE Manager
Alot of these features are available under options in internet explorer. However this shows features in an easy to understand manner in one place. There are plenty of options that are normally hidden to the user such as repair.
We really liked the hosts file options which let you add a host with ip address to your local system, as we use this for development testing.
We think this is a very useful feature.

3. Multimedia settings
Some useful options. Not normally available is media player options.

4. System customisation
Lots of useful customisation settings that are not normally available to the user.

5. Customise icons
Lets you change icons of standard windows applications. Useful if you want to create a theme for your system.

6. System Speed Optimiser
This looks like it could be a big help in increasing performance. However we didn't really understand the options. This is not for novice users. Not much help available.

7. Systems Settings Repair
An option to fix known windows problems. Didn't really understand the options on this. There is a file type settings option. However it didn't show all registered file types.

8. Drives and programs
Lets you manage your drives. Lets you manage which programs will run on the system.
Couldn't really see any main benefit in this option.

Security Settings

We were a bit concerned about some of these features .
We liked the security Tweaker although again not for the novice user.
We were a bit scared of running the Encryption option as we didn't know what it would do.
Also we were concerned about the schredder because it asks for a decision about files and folders. We think this will destroy files so they cant be recovered but were not certain of this.


Conclusion
Overall we found a lot of useful features in the package. Its not really clear whether this package is marketed at the novice or professional user. We found a distressing lack of help available in the program. All help is just referred to the features page on the website. We think the program would be best used as a tool installed on a novice users system but supported by a professional.
We didn't really see any increase in performance as a result of using the optimiser but then the system we used was all ready running quickly. In fairness it needs to be tested on a system that has problems.

We don't think this package should be bought by inexperienced users as there is little help and the potential do do a lot of damage to your system if you don't understand the options.


At $40 we think that there are enough good features to justify buying the package, if some of the bugs in it are ironed out.

You can buy the package here.

Enabling DOM XML in PHP4

The following function will not work unless XML support is enabled in php

$xmldoc=domxml_new_doc();

In order to enable support edit php.ini and remove ; from

;php_domxml.dll

You must insure that the dlls directory c:\php4\dlls in in the system PATH variable.
Do change this : right click on my computer and choose properties
in properties click on advanced and at the bottom of the window click on
Enviroment variables

under system variables choose the path variable. and add the path to your dlls directory
with a ;
ie

;c:\php4\dlls

Your DOM functions should now work

Installing CRUL for nusoap

If you install the soap api nusoap, you will need to install phps curl support.

To do this edit your php.ini file and uncomment

;extension=php_curl.dll

by removing the semi colon.

You must then copy the dlls

libeay32.dll.old
ssleay32.dll.old

from directory c:\php4\dlls

to
c:\windows\system32

Stop and restart your webserver using
net stop apache
net start apache

phpinfo() should now report that cURL is istalled

<?= ?> not working in PHP

If you have just installed PHP 5 you may note that php shorthand is not enabled.

To fix this problem edit you php.ini file and change the following

short_open_tag = off

to

short_open_tag = on

Restart the server - or restart your machine

Your code should now work.

MSVCR71.dll missing when installing camtasia

When installing camatisa i got the following error:

This appliation failed to start because msvcr71.dll was not found. Re-installing the application may fix the problem.

To fix:
download msvcr71.dll from

http://www.dll-files.com/dllindex/dll-files.shtml?msvcr71

This is a zip file. Extract the file from the zip and copy it to
c:/windows/system32

Retry the install . It should work now.

How to retrieve text content from a div

In the following HTML

<div id='mydiv'>Some Text </div>

To retrieve the text using javascript - this is one method there may be others

var mydiv=document.getElementById('mydiv');

if (mydiv.textContent)
alert(mydiv.textContent); // for IE
else
alert(mydiv.innerText); // everyone else

Handling click and double click on the same object

There is a problem if you want to handle both click and double click events on an html element.
Basically both the click and double click events get fired when the user double clicks when really you want one event or another.

At first I tried handling the double click by counting single click and not setting a double click event. This worked on firefox but not internet explorer(because only one click was triggered for a double click).

I solved the problem by handling both the double click and click events. Basically When the mouse is clicked a timer is set up to insure that double click was not fired. If double click is fired then single click is canceled, otherwise the click function fires.

Heres the code
function mousefunctions(){
}

mousefunctions.singleclick=function(){
clickcount=0;
alert('single click');
}

mousefunctions.doubleclick=function(){
clickcount=0;
alert('doublelick');
}
var clickcount=0;


mousefunctions.endtimer=function(){
if(clickcount==1){
mousefunctions.singleclick();
}
}

mousefunctions.handledbclick=function(){
mousefunctions.doubleclick();
}


mousefunctions.handleclick=function(){
if(clickcount==0)
setTimeout(mousefunctions.endtimer,300);
clickcount++;

}

And the HTML is
<div onclick="mousefunctions.handleclick();"ondblclick="mousefunctions.handledblclick();" >Some Text</div>