Sloth v0.1 beta released

This is the first beta that is announced on this blog - and it is also the first beta that uses the .Net Framework v2.0. All beta testers up to and including v0.0.25 got away with just using .Net 1.1, but now you will all need to upgrade. You can download the .Net 2.0 framework installation here if you don't have it (the Sloth installation will tell you if you need it).

Apart from the move to .Net 2.0, there are a number of changes, fixes and additions to Sloth this time around too. A massive job of refactoring has been undertaken as well - this will not really be visible to users (perhaps except in the form of new bugs), but it has really cleaned up the codebase and will make it a lot easier to add exciting features in the future. The job is not finished, however, so a lot of time will be spent on refactoring for the next betas as well. This really should be reflected in the overall quality of the application.

So apart from boring stuff, what's new this time?

New features in the search window

Instead of just searching for phrases, you can now also perform "all words" searches, as well as search for regular expressions and tags.

In this example we have searched for anything that contains both of the tags "babe" and "star" (these tags are defined by my personal rule set, and may or may not be anything like the ones you're using).

As you can see, there is also now a Search button in place. This means no more "I'll start searching if you haven't typed anything for 0.8s" behaviour.

Tags are now clickable in ShowInfo windows

A consequence of the above is that it is now also possible to click the tags displayed in ShowInfo windows such as this:

Clicking a tag would open a search window like in the last paragraph, showing all shows containing the same tag.

Programmable hotkeys

In older versions of Sloth, there were just two hard-coded hotkeys; Win-S for opening the main window, and Win-K for killing all open alerts. It is now possible to define as many of these as you want. The config window GUI is pretty ugly still, but it mostly works.

I'm guessing there's room for improvement here. Just like in every single other piece of Sloth GUI. :)

Keep in mind that this means that the two hardcoded hotkeys are no longer there! If you want to keep them, you'll have to add them yourself!

New context menu

Sloth now features a global, semi-intelligent context menu. This menu formats itself according to what the user is clicking. In the future it will also be user extendible, meaning you can add your own options to it. Want to search a certain website for actor information? Or perhaps launch VLC with the IP address of the channel you're clicking? The possibilities are.. eh.. well, several.

Grid view enhancements

The grid view is coming along nicely, although it is still a performance slug and there are a number of bugs living large.

You can now right click on individual shows and get the same context menu as in the rest of Sloth (see above).

Find pictures of actors and directors

Don't you just hate it when you recognize a name but you just can't place them? Well, I do, so I made this silly little thing which locates pictures of people off the net and shows them to you. Like this here:

You get this function by right clicking on an actor or a director in the ShowInfo window, and then choosing "Find picture(s)..." - please note that this is a web search, not in any way under my control, so the pictures you get may not even be remotely related to the person you're looking for. It could be them, or it could be someone they worked with, a movie poster without them featured, or their stalker.

Alerts rewritten

Alerts have been completely rewritten from the ground up. They may still look almost the same, but they now use much less resources, the close button is bigger, they can be used for much more, and they don't steal focus from other applications when they appear. They also react better when scores change.

Download and install new Sloth from inside Sloth

I know a lot of you - and myself - have wanted this feature for a long time. And more software really should have it. Remember the old, annoying window that would pop up with New Sloth information and not close until you went to the forum? Well, here's the new version:

Check out the ugly blue progress bar at the bottom. This appears after the user presses the Install-button. Once it is done downloading, it will start the installer automatically. The installer will in turn shut down Sloth and optionally restart it after the upgrade. All you have to do is click "Next".

This feature will of course not be seen by anyone until it is time to download the next beta after this one.

Minor changes to GUI and other stuff

There is a new date picker control in windows where you can choose what day to watch (individual channel windows, Interesting Shows window, and Grid window). This is currently a simple dropdown list showing the list of dates we have TV data for.

Bug fixes

Unsurprisingly, a number of these bug thingies have also been fixed. The fixes include:

• Even if Sloth was configured not to play an alert sound, it would try to, throwing an exception in the process.
• Tags are now case insensitive.
• In certain conditions, if you added a new rule, alerts would not show up for shows matched by this rule (even if their score was high enough) unless you restarted Sloth.
• When rule changes led a show with an open alert to drop beneath the alert threshold, the alert was not removed.
• If the config window was minimized, pressing the Config button (main window) or menu item (systray context menu) did not "unminimize" it.
• If shows in the XMLTV file are overlapping, Sloth will now clip them so that the first show stops when the second begins.
• If rule changes cause tags to be added/removed for a show with an open ShowInfo window, the tags display will now be updated properly.
• If you delete a rule in the config window, the rule list/categories are no longer reset. This caused GUI annoyance.
• A bug that caused Sloth to screw up config window GUI related to online file checking has been fixed.
• The wizard could overwrite your rule file if you ran it after the initial install.
• The wizard could in some cases put the main window outside the screen on low-resolution systems.

Supported operating systems

Currently, Sloth is only verified to work on these versions of Windows:

• Windows 2000
• Windows XP

It also installs and runs fine on Windows Vista, but if you end Sloth and then restart it, it won't run. It also won't run after a reboot - in fact the only time you can get it to run is right after the installation. This is being looked into.

Statistics

I am slowly implementing unit testing for the libraries (SlothConfig, SlothCore, SlothUtil) to make sure I can refactor code without breaking existing functionality. That is the idea, anyway. Basically, I am supposed to write a test that runs every piece of the library code with every possible piece of input, and report if it breaks. I am not there yet. But for each test I add, it is less likely something will break as a result of change. And every time I fix a bug, I can write a test to make sure it doesn't come back.

As of Sloth v0.1 beta, there are 92 unit tests passing, and none failing. If some failed, I couldn't really release it.

 Availability

If you're a beta tester, you know where to get it. If not, send me an email, and we'll see about making you one. :)