Computeractive Caps Alert Update

Find the latest updates on the Caps Alert program here.

It's been a little longer than I intended but here is the latest update to the Computeractive CapsLock Alert program. Hopefully it's looking a bit more polished than when it was first shown to the world and it has some extra features that should make it more useful.

So I'm proud to annouce the following progress

1. Added a nice image
2. Let the user select how often the alert sounds (also how often it checks)
3. Let the user select their own alert sound (has to be a WAV I'm afraid at the moment)
4. Make sure the two settings above persist after you shut down the program
5. Added a link back to the Computeractive website
6. Changed separate stop and start buttons into a single button that toggles between Enable/Disable
7. Icon in Notification Area changes when Caps Lock Detected
8. Icon in Taskbar changes when Caps Lock Detected
9. Worked out and fixed wrong icon in published build
10. Hopefully produced a project with a setup wizard that includes a link in the Start Menu and Desktop

Click here to download the app. It is a compressed folder so follow the Windows wizard to extract the files. Once that's done, double-click on the setup.exe program. If all works properly you should get a CapsLockWarning icon on the desktop.

I should restrain my enthusiasm just long enough to make it clear that this is still work in progress, so while I know that I haven't told it to do anything impolite I can't guarantee that it won't. If you do have problems, do let me know so I can fix it. You can leave a comment below, but it would be more helpful if you can record the problem using the Windows Problem Steps recorder (video howto here) and send in the file to our letters address letters@computeractive.co.uk. This will give me more information about what may have caused the problem.

As an example of stuff I know isn't there, the program doesn't check to make sure that you've given it a WAV file when you pick the sound file. It's on the todo list, but please don't because I'm not sure how you'd go about avoiding the constant error messages.

I've also heard that some security software has blocked the app because it's never heard of it before. I'll look into getting the app signed, which should help matters. So much for all of these claims of watching what software does and making an intelligent decision.... Still, I understand the reasons, and I'd rather they took a better safe than sorry approach.

If you want to take a look at how it all works, you can also download the full Visual Basic 2010 Express project here. Please bear in mind that as it now includes some Computeractive artwork, you can't just use it for your own projects as I'm afraid, copyright and all that.

I have to say that working in Visual Studio is a joy after the web design work I've been doing recently. It really goes out of its way to help and while I'm sure it won't be getting me into good habits, it's getting the job done.

One thing that saved me huge amounts of time is the Settings tool. I wanted to make the selected sound and time interval persistent, that is to say they should be remembered when the program shuts down and restarted.

Thinking it through in my head, I was expecting to have to store these in a text file, probably XML, and load them when the program starts. Not impossible, but likely to take some time to set up.

So I was very pleased to see that Visual Basic has a settings tool built in. I haven't looked to see how or where the settings are saved but it's working and that's what counts.

Click on Project and then 'project name' Properties. Click on the Settings option in the options on the left of that window and start adding settings. And the code to change and then save the settings?

My.Settings.CheckInteval = newInterval * 1000
My.Settings.Save()

Laughably simple. The MSDN article can be found here with links to more information including the difference between Application and User settings.

Thanks for all the positive comments and suggestions. They're all very welcome.