I made a replacement history viewer

[Big-O Ryan]

idejsecrofkrad: I thought I'd share some of my reactions to your History Viewer.

- I appreciate your inclusion of "About AIM+" under the Help menu. Your about boxes look quite nice.

- Help | Topics never shows up for me

- The actual protection provided by the password is quite flimsy - I'm sure you know this. It may be enough for some people, for others it may give them a false sense of security that could leave them very angry later. Either way, I don't know what the right answer is for you. Telling a user that the p/w protection is weak also informs the person who is trying to get around it.

- Some items on the Edit/Context menu are available even when they can't do anything (Merge Logs, Parse File). They should probably be greyed out when they aren't valid options at the time.

- The idea of "parsing" the HTML file is seems like something that should be entirely transparent to the user. It took me a few moments to figure out what you meant, so you can rest assured that most people will have no idea. The wording is also inconsistent (Save 'unchanged'm Save 'fixed' -- this could, ideally, just be a checkbox within the Save As... dialog)

- The addition of password-protection doesn't necessitate the end of your distributing source code. It seems you're worried that with the source, people could reverse-engineer another's password. It's very easy to make this impossible, by using a one-way algorithm to generate a hash of the password, and only store that hash. When the user enters a password and you need to see if it is correct, compare the hashes. This way, no one (including you or the user who created the password), can ever retrieve the stored password.

People often use md5 for this purpose, but it's implementation is somewhat complex. For the level of security you're providing, crc32 is probably sufficient (and can be implemented in just a few lines of code). There are plenty of other commonly used algorithms to do this, but their names escape me right now.

Your history viewer has some great features, and I'm sure that they are appreciated by many.

[Master Jedi]

I've heard DES is good, but I've never looked into it. Even so, the password 'protection' offered is still pretty weak. No matter what I use, there are still a few good ways around it. I've got an idea that might help with that, but it'll take a while.

As for the different save options, I know how to hook the common dialog control, but I don't have a clue how to add a check box to it. I guess the best solution would be to add another form where a user can change his/her save options, then input the file destination in the common dialog.

The parsing of log files can be slow and cause errors at times, so I made it optional (Help | Options...). However, I have "Parse This File" as an option for users that have it disabled, but want to use it for a specific file. Using the menu command while automatic parsing is enabled will update the displayed file to reflect any changes that have been made since the file was last processed.

Lastly, Help | Topics simply displays the first.html file included with the viewer. I don't have any program to generate windows help files, so I figured that was my best bet. It is however in dire need of an update, which it will get when I resolve the rest of the issues I have.

[Cards]

I was just readin this thread, and I can't believe how few "thank you's" there are...so, here's mine Thanks a lot for a great addition to aim+. The layout is nice, the search for text function is awesome, and the password protection is nice...even if it is weak. (No matter how weak, it's a great deterrant for comp illiterates or just ppl who aren't particularly motivated to get past it.) So...thanks a lot, very useful!

Just started playin around with the newer version a lot more...(had v1 until about 3 hours ago...) and realized that searching to find which log file contains certain text is nice...but once it's in the viewer, there's no way to search within the file to find that piece of the conversation (unless I'm just missing it...) Being able to do that would be really nice for finding info in long convos, or logs of ppl you talk to regularly throughout the day. If there's any way you could implement this, I think it'd be a great addition. THANKS

-Cards

[Master Jedi]

I was just readin this thread, and I can't believe how few "thank you's" there are...so, here's mine Thanks a lot for a great addition to aim+. The layout is nice, the search for text function is awesome, and the password protection is nice...even if it is weak. (No matter how weak, it's a great deterrant for comp illiterates or just ppl who aren't particularly motivated to get past it.) So...thanks a lot, very useful!

Just started playin around with the newer version a lot more...(had v1 until about 3 hours ago...) and realized that searching to find which log file contains certain text is nice...but once it's in the viewer, there's no way to search within the file to find that piece of the conversation (unless I'm just missing it...) Being able to do that would be really nice for finding info in long convos, or logs of ppl you talk to regularly throughout the day. If there's any way you could implement this, I think it'd be a great addition. THANKS

-Cards

It's already in there. When viewing a file, just click in the pane with the conversation and press Ctrl-F. It's already a feature of the Web Browser control I'm using.

[J3utton]

When one of my friends fomats thier screen name... the logger creates a new folder with the name of the new formatted screen name and starts saving the convos there... is there anyway that you could make it so the program saves it in the orgional folder?

I dont think this would be hard to do, I already got a few ways in my mind... but I only know C++ and java so i dont think me tryin to explain it would help much considering its coded in a diff language...

thanx

[jff2k]

I don't think this would be possible, because your buddy signs on with a *NEW* name - and AIM does not use Numbers like ICQ does... so it's not possible to merge the old one in to the new name...

Well, it may be possible to change it manually with an option in the viewer... but you also can go to the History dir of AIM+ an move all files from the old dir to the new dir...

[Big-O Ryan]

J3utton: This is a problem that would probably have to be addressed by AIM+, not a history viewer.

[Master Jedi]

J3utton: This is a problem that would probably have to be addressed by AIM+, not a history viewer.

Well I could do it...but I don't think that's a function for a history viewer.

[J3utton]

yeah true... sorry, i didn't think about that...

[ToribikuHorasu]

can you tell me how to exactly install it step by step? toribikuhorasu@hotmail.com or toribikuhorasu on AIM

[jff2k]

Install AIM and AIM+,
download the replacement viewer,
open the Zip-file,
extract the files to C:\Program Files\AIM+

that's it, now you can run it like the original one.

[Master Jedi]

Install AIM and AIM+,
download the replacement viewer,
open the Zip-file,
extract the files to C:\Program Files\AIM+

that's it, now you can run it like the original one.

Thanks jff2k, I couldn't have said it ant more clearly myself.

[Master Jedi]

I'm woried now...With the new release of AIM+ coming, if they implement password protected ZIP files for histories, my viewer won't work anymore and it'll take me forever to make it work. Hmm...maybe it'll be optional or I'll have to hold off until it is.

[Knight]

Have you considered they might have been so impressed with your idea, they might have included an identical fucntionality in it? (Anything is possible)

I would imagine any sort of file protection they include, they would also make it easy to disable it. I.E. a check box that says, save my logs as password protected ZIP files.

BTW, i think htat's a great idea in itself. It would hugely shrink the log sizes. Granted, in these days of 200 gig drives, not many people think of that, but economizing still has it's style points.

I'm still impress that Steve Gibson (of www.grc.com fame) still codes everything in assembly because he hates how bloated other languges make the execuatble.

[Big-O Ryan]

I'm still impress that Steve Gibson (of www.grc.com fame) still codes everything in assembly because he hates how bloated other languges make the execuatble.

I somewhat wish that Steve Gibson didn't code in all assembly -- I can only imagine what he'd get done if he was working at a higher level..