^_^

Yes yes .. it's been years since I last posted.. Can't be helped, have been super busy with lotsa work since the last post. The project's been ramped up and there's lots of things to be done as we're making a release every week.

Even had to cater to a custom order during the CNY period. They wanted to demo our app to the HP dudes @ USA and the Vista laptop the VP was bringing didn't have the proper audio interfaces. Therefore there was a snap decision to create a WMP plugin to interface with the app, just like how the OSX's one is handled.

And of course who has to do it?

Yours truly of course, since the OSX's one is mine .. heh.

Windows COM programming totally sucks. For some reason the constructor and destructor (FinalConstruct and FinalRelease) were being called more than once, even though the template's tooltips said it was a one time initialisation. Damn COM objects! Damn C++! Anyways finally managed to whip out in record time a WMP plugin .. from 0 COM knowledge. Not too bad huh /flex

During that period, I learnt how sucky Vista is.

First was WMP11. To install a plugin in WMP9 and 10, you could just go to Options and go to the plugins tab and click add. But for WMP11? No..... even though the plugin page says you can add plugins, there's no add button. The help file's stupid too. Just says you need to be an admin to add plugins, but doesn't tell you how.

After some research, managed to find out how to install a BLOODY plugin. It's back to the usual "regsvr32" crap. Way to go for a "GUI" based OS. But that's not all... When I tried to register my plugin, it gave me an obscure error 0x008..something or other. Some googling told me that it was a permissions problem, that I needed to be admin to do the operation.

So I peeked at my User account. Sure thing, I was admin. OK, so I realised I needed sudo. Well.. okay, that's fair. *nix + OSX work that way too, even if you are logged as admin, you'll still have to sudo if you need to do some special stuff. The problem now was... how the heck do I sudo in Vista? Naturally "sudo" didn't work. -_-

Finally managed to get it to work. How? Open Explorer, go to Windows\system32, look for cmd, right click and choose run as admin. WTF? That's so stupid. In any *nix system, all you need to do is type "sudo". In OSX, all you need to do is type "sudo". Why isn't there a way to easily switch to super user mode in Vista? Why must I navigate all the way to system32, right click and choose run as admin? The entire session is now admin. If I forgot and left it and went to the toilet, some malicious dude could do evil stuff to the OS. Vista is so.. freaking.. dumb.

Oh .. WMP11 is dumb too. How do you add plugins to iTunes? Simply copy the file to the plugins directory and restart. Voila! How do you add plugins to Winamp? Simply copy the files to the directory and restart (could be wrong there.. rusty!). Why in the 9 freaking hells do I have to be SUPER USER and run a COMMAND LINE PROMPT to add in a simple plugin? WMP9 > WMP11 there. And at least update your UI and your freaking help files to reflect that.

Pbbt.

Also, whoever who thought up the stupid user authentication thing ought to be shot. Twice. No. Fitty billion times. This ad from Apple most accurately sums it all up.

To copy a file (that is, my dll plugin) to a "protected" place like C:\program files\windows media player, I have to authenticate. Again, fair enough. I have to do that on a *nix/OSX box too. However, the BIG BIG BIG problem is that it's modal.

Process: Click file -> Drag file to explorer pointing to protected folder -> Dialogue box appears telling me I have to yada yada yada give confirmation -> Click ok -> Screen flashes (the first time it happened I went oO? Comp crash?) -> Annoying modal box appears asking me to confirm. During this period I can do NOTHING until I continue/cancel.

Problem? Yeah. Totally. For OSX, which I use the most often besides XP, a (ONE) dialogue box appears, and I just enter my password and I'm done. If I'm doing other stuff or another application wants my attention, I can just leave that dialogue box there until I want to deal with it.

Vista is so super secure. I can't copy a file from a network drive to a protected place. When I do that action, a dialogue box appears telling me that I have to give confirmation, which I click ok (or continue. w/e), then this box appears telling me that I can't do that .. blah blah. Look. If I want to copy a file. COPY it! Or just say no on the outset. What's the point of popping up that dumb dialogue box if you're going to stop me later anyways? 1 more click for me.

Replacing a file in protected folders.

To replace a file, I have to go through 3 dialogues. 1: Do you want to replace? Copy? Cancel? Copy and rename the original file? (At least I think that's what it is. Kinda remember that there was a 4th option). THEN it pops up the dialogue again, then tat modal thing.

-_-

The worse part here (what? You mean there's worse parts to all that clicking on continue?) is the copy/replace/cancel option. In OSX, it's a simple Continue or Cancel. This one has an ultra big dialog box with pretty icons and lotsa text telling you what will happen if you Replace, what will happen if you copy .. etc etc. Dude. I don't need that information. Provide a ? or tooltips if you want. Don't make it appear all the time.

Odd.

When you cancel a delete on a file, you'd expect it to be a no-op right? The OS just stays silent if you click cancel. However, for some gay mysterious reason, that's not the case for Vista.

Deleting a file in a protected folder.

Click delete -> Click continue -> Click cancel on annoying modal box -> A file progress window appears (for you XP users, it's somewhat like that window that appears when you copy many files, a little icon and a progress bar with a cancel button). The first time it happened, I was going wtf? Didn't I click cancel? Well yeah apparently it's a "cancel" action. Apparently, the file is ... sent to the recycle bin when I clicked on delete (or something like that), so when I click cancel at the last step, it needs to restore it.

It's not extremely stable too. The business edition test machine I was using died 2 times while I was testing. The first time it died silently. I just left it to idle while I did stuff on my Mac. Turned back, and it was dead. Not the normal kind of dead, it was massive graphics corruption kind of dead. Think of copying the picture of 1 window and pasting it everywhere on the screen. (Actually kinda worse but it's the closest I can think of). And it was doing NOTHING.

Bah.

Vista is so gay. Of course, one may argue that I was doing "power user" stuff, copying files from protected places, etc. But it's just showing how annoying it is. I've done this on XP, done this on OSX, nothing at all. I don't need an OS to keep asking me dumb questions on annoyingly big dialogue boxes.

Pretty sure I'm not going to get a Vista. If I were to get one, it's purely for games. WTB more OSX games! Thinking of switching to the OSX platform. Would be great if I could get it running on Resurrection though, seems to be alot of hoops to jump through though. Shimatta!