Happy New Year

I wish all a Happy New Year 2007.

I want to thank all the people who have helped ComicRack becoming a better program during this year. Your feedback is the main force for further development.
I also like to thank the people who posted, told and spread information about the new kid on the block called ComicRack.

On the PayPal support donation front the project till now has received 0 (zero) €. I hope Amnesty International fared better :/

Anyways, Happy New Year and all the luck to you guys and gals out there :)

Nice Christmas surprise from Google

So they disabled the google pages where i hosted the ComicRackSetup.exe.

I have put the file now on an alternate location and will send google an email questioning about what the problem is, as i can't find anything in their Terms of Use...

Or are you not allowed to put a donate button on your page?

Maybe someone can enlighten me...

UPDATE: "Because this is a Google Labs product, we're unable to re-enable or investigate your site." Nice...

ComicRack v0.9.24 released

Merry Christmas to you all :)

Here's a little gift for you to get you over the holidays.

The new version adds support for manga style reading (right->left for double pages).
Also I've upped the maximum size for thumbnails four fold.

As always here's the rundown of the changes:

• NEW: Added Manga Style property to comics for flipped two page display (manga reading mode)
  

• CHANGE: Single click list checkboxes
• CHANGE: Sorting by year now also sorts by series if year/month same
• CHANGE: New maximum Thumbnail image size is 512 (small performance hit, but nice anyways :))
• CHANGE: Cover Thumbnails now honor the high quality settings
• CHANGE: Moved Hide sidebar into the main menu and changed the keyboard shortcuts

• BUG: Mark as read did only work with not read comics
• BUG: Removed invalid shortcut Ctrl-I from "Invert selection" command

Supporting ComicRack

I thought really long and hard about this one... there's now a donate button on this page.

ComicRack is a spare time project.
I'm not doing it to earn money.
I have a well enough paid job to bring me through the day :)

But I'm not going to fund this project with my own money. Call it principles. That's why it's currently only using freebie services.

What i would like to see for ComicRack is to get it's own web page, domain etc.
Also for the future there should be some kind of central database for comic information. So this means also money for database hosting and stuff like that.

So if you're enjoying the program, please support it.
If not, but you still want to do something good with your money, head over to these people.

ComicRack v0.9.23 released

This is just a small update.
I finally came around to make a new icon design and get rid of the 2 year old one done for RComix. Hope you like it.

These are the new icons for Application, Document and Setup.

Another long requested feature has made it finally into ComicRack: If the program is in 2 page mode, browsing forward actually advances 2 pages :)

List of changes:

• NEW: Added cover images to the delete dialog boxes
• NEW: Page forward in Two Page display mode advances two pages
  

• CHANGE: Changed the icon for ComicRack (was about time)
• CHANGE: page curl effect uncovers the current read page in the comic
  

• BUG: color names did not include needed spaces (wherever colors are to choose)

ComicRack v0.9.22 released

Now that's what i call agile development :)

This one includes some performance enhancements, the squishing of an ugly deadlock bug, some new features and in general all the other usual mojo :)

As i've moved the thumbnail/image cache to a new location comicrack has to rebuild them. Also you can remove the old cache folder at C:\Documents And Settings\User\Application Data\cYo\ComicsRack\Cache.

Quick rundown of the changes:

• NEW: Global filter for image keys never to use as cover thumbnails
• NEW: Added Read/Unread/Reading filter to quicksearch dropdown
  

• CHANGE: Restructured the Advanced Preferences Tab to make space for new settings
• CHANGE: Moved image caches to local non roaming profile (better for corporate environments)
  

• BUG: Fixed possible deadlock in cache/drawing
• BUG: Fixed link to website in start menu
• BUG: Fixed installer for Vista
• BUG: Fixed performance for thumbnail mode list resizes
• BUG: Fixed Alternate Series in Search Browser
• BUG: Wrong second (uncovered) page displayed in lists in rare situations
• BUG: Open previous comic from list did not work in reader

PullBoxOnline

Finally at least some people in the industry get it right.
Buy your non DRMed, 100% legal comics online and read them with ComicRack :)

I hope this is only the first sign of future things to come...

Flashback Universe

As a lot of people do not seem to know where to get eComics, i added a link to FlashBack Universe for your quick fix :)

ComicRack v0.9.21 released

Now that's called "pulling a quick one"...

Vista played an ugly trick on me (IShellDispatch5 for all you in the know :/)
So here's the fixed version and just for the sake of it, i also added some other fixes for which you would have otherwise waited another week...

Build 0.9.21:

• BUG: Fixed sorting on column header clicks
• BUG: Fixed hilite/selected state for non cover thumbnail items
• BUG: Fixed wrong text color for selected favorites folder items
• BUG: Fixed vista/xp shell32 incompatibility

ComicRack v0.9.20 released

A litter later then usual, here's .20

This brings some cbr/rar fixes, a nice page curl effect in the lists, selectable texts for the thumbnail view and other optimizations and fixes.

As i installed vista from the MSDN subscription recently (lets say i'm underwhelmed by this XP SP3 with a candy user interface) this one also brings ComicRack better looking and better behaving into vista land :)

As always here's the list of changes.

Build 0.9.20:

• NEW: Added startup progress indicator to the splash screen
• NEW: Count of group items displayed in group headers
• NEW: Text for thumbnails is now selectable
• NEW: Library tree remembers collapsed/expanded states
• NEW: Page Curl effect for thumbnail/tiles
  

• CHANGE: Tile Background less transparent
• CHANGE: More fluent initial window display
• CHANGE: Better guessing of non loaded thumbnail sizes (less flicker and movement)
• CHANGE: List selection code optimizations (less redrawing, faster)
• CHANGE: Switched list fonts to default icon fonts of os (looks better on vista)
• CHANGE: Smaller/nicer sort arrows in column headers
  

• BUG: Default List "Recently Added" was incorrectly named "Recently AddedTime" on inital install
• BUG: Fixed slow preview in Comic Book Dialog introduced with the full page change in 0.9.18
• BUG: Fixed some cbr/rar issues on Vista (and maybe XP)
• BUG: Hack for correct drawing of browser tabs on vista
• BUG: correct IPv6 handling in Vista for server code
• BUG: Fixed handling of incorrect windows explorer objects (e.g. Nokia Phone Browser)
• BUG: Fixed vertial scrolling during column resize or header dragging
• BUG: Fixed incorrect restoring of panel sizes on startup
• BUG: Thumbnails in lists did not honour the high quality setting