What's new in the xStarter

February 24, 2006

• Program was redesigned to fix problems with regards to showing the program icon in the system tray when launching in Service Mode as preferred by some users.
• In the case of Terminal Services application, each user logged on will see the program on the System Tray but Tasks will run only in one instance. This will prevent Tasks from running multiple times for multiple users logged in on Terminal Services.
• While program is running on a computer with Terminal Services installed and with a working terminal client connection, the xStarter icon appears on all user's desktops. If you need to show icon for some users only (e.g. only for Administrators), this can be configured in the program under Preferences.
• On a Task's Additional Tab, a new option called “Run on Desktop of the current user” was added. This option specifies a task to be run with desktop interaction of the user whose Action launched this Task. (e.g. if a task was launched on event “Before user logoff” then with this option, it will execute all interactive actions on the desktop of the logged off user). Without this option, task will be executed on the desktop of first logged on user.
• Action DialUp/Connect with successful connection, returns connection speed.
• Added event to run tasks on windows deactivation.
• It's possible now to specify a Password in the program under Preferences. If a password is specified, it will prompt for the password when the program is called from the System Tray.
• In the Actions C opy , Move , Synchronize , FtpSyncUpload , FtpSyncDownload , an option called “Include subfolders” was added.
• In the action RunProcess , an option was added called “Wait until application exits” to wait for the process to finish before proceeding to the next Action to execution.
• New actions MouseMove and MouseClick , allows for mouse cursor movements and clicks. This is located under the Macro Action.
• New action ActiveWindowParams , returning parameters of current active window: caption, exe path, etc.
• If on an action DialConnect that has a connection already established, Action will return Success=True.
• In the action CheckMail, an option was added called “Convert charsets” to decode message content.
• Added events that will allow running of tasks Before user logoff/computer shutdown, A fter Logon/Logoff .
• Added event that will allow tasks to run on dialup connection/disconnection.
• Added option to make screenshots in Grayscale format.
• It's possible now to specify the option to run the program on Windows Startup/Logon only for the user or for all users under Preferences.
• Action ShowMessage can now show messages tool tips in the system tray. Additionally, it's possible to specify timeout after which messages will be hidden automatically.
• New action SortText allows sorting of text with different options
• New actions ReadIniValue , WriteIniValue , allows writing and reading of parameters to/from Ini files.
• New action SeialPortWriteEx with additional parameters to communicate with devices via RS232 port.
• Actions SearchFiles and SearchFolders now return value Count – number of files or folders found.
• Fixed problem with CheckMail action, text files in the attachment are now stored as files.
• Fixed some other minor and major bugs

December 21, 2005

• Dutch language has been updated. A lot of thanks to Henk van der laan.
• New option to launch tasks by keywords. E.g. it's possible to specify keyword "task1" end after entering of such word in any Windows program task will be runned.
• Added option to search text with regular expressions in "greedy" mode.
• New action WakeUpOnLan allows waking up a computer on the LAN, if they have such an option in their BIOS.
• New action GetMACAdress return MAC address of computer in local network. Computers must have the active NetBIOS protocol in their network preferences.
• New action MessageToTCPIPClient allows you to send messages back to computer-sender of message in the TCP/IP Listener. E.g. it's possible to send message back to the telnet session on another computer or in the PHP script on your website.
• Event TCP/IP Listener now return RemoteIP and RemotePort. After analysis of the values it's possible to permit running of task or not.
• Event TCP/IP Listener now has the option to listen to packets only on selected IP address of local computer.
• Action list now can be extended via buttons in the list title. This option allows you to see all action parameters.
• Action CheckMail now returns values MessFrom and MessTo.
• Fixed error with enabling/disabling of task with TCP/IP Listener event.
• Fixed error with variables having the same names.
• Other minor bugs fixed.

November 21, 2005

• Action SearchFolders now have option Don't search in subfolders.
• Now it's possible to specify mail Importance, Codepage, ReplyTo in the action SendMail.
• New functions DayOfWeek and ISODayOfWeek.
• Fixed error with global variables showing.
• Fixed error with passwords storing.
• Fixed other minor bugs.

October 17, 2005

• Italiano language has been added. A lot of thanks to Francesco Musella.
• German language has been updated. A lot of thanks to Christian Heutger.
• New action ReplaceText .
• New actions UpperText and LowerText to convert text in uppercase and lowercase.
• New actions ExitTask and ExitLoop .
• Now it's possible to shift tasks inside sections using Drag and Drop operations.
• A feature has been added to select what actions and statements will be launched in a task. A button on the toolbar called “Enable/disable actions selecting” is now available.
• You can now use the Else in the If statement condition.
• Action SynchronizeFolders now contain fields to specify included and excluded files in the synchronization process.
• Each task now can contain description (Additional Tab) with simple html tags inside.
• New action FtpCreateFolder .
• Action FTPDelete now contains option to delete folders from FTP server.
• Action LaunchedProcessCount can return number of executed processes by specifying the file mask. E.g. it's possible to know how many processes ran with file mask *.exe or win*.exe .
• In the window “Parameter selection” it's possible now to select variables.
• In the action CheckMail , it is now possible to select how to save email attachments when files already exist in the directory: overwrite existing, save with unique file name or don't save.
• Action SendMail can now send several files in the attachment. Files can be specified by files list (separated by semicolon) or by files mask (e.g. *.txt;*.doc).
• Added new action to work with date and time: GetDateTime , GetDateTimeBetween . Using this action, it's possible to delete all files in a specified folder that are 2 weeks old (Deleting/Purging old files).
• New action UnZip , support file types: zip, gzip, cab.
• In the actions Zip and Backup it's possible now to select compression level.
• Action Zip now supports relative and absolute paths.
• It's possible now to setup internal task variable from the command line. For example, you can create a task that creates a shortcut on the desktop and in the Target field, add text at the end: - set myvar1="hello1" set var2="hello friend". If any action of this task will contain variable value {MYVAR1}, then this variable will be replaced by value from command line hello1.
• xStarter now has the option in the program Preferences to select the folder where to store sections with tasks and program log files.
• An option has been added to check file corruption errors during FTP operations – option Check XCRC. This option is supported by a limited number of FTP servers.
• An error has been fixed in the statement If . Now all comparisons are being processed in the types of compared variables.
• Fixed error with action FtpSyncUpload, it was not previously coping files in binary mode.
• Fixed other minor bugs.

Version 1.62

February 16, 2005

• New actions for working with Clipboard has been added. It's possible now to use action CopyText for writing any text or value of internal variable into Clipboard. Has been added new action Paste for inserting clipboard contents into currently active window. For extracting clipboard content has been added action TextFromClipboard.
• Action CheckMail now contain option for saving email attachments into specified folder.
• Has been added action LPR for sending files to network printers.
• Has been added actions for processing of file's groups. With action FirstLastFile it's possible now to find first or last file in specified folder by file size, modification date/time, file name, etc. Action FileNames can be useful for extracting file name parts, for example, file folder, disk, short name, etc. Also for files processing can be useful action SearchFolders.
• Has been improved program features for exporting/importing tasks and task logs. Also now available function for exporting full information about task options into HTML file.
• Some modifications in the file system trigger. It's possible now to specify running of task only then size of new file is not changing in some period of time. This modification can be useful for monitoring new files what was copied to current computer by FTP protocol.
• Some bugs fixed.

Version 1.61

December 16, 2004

• New actions for moving files have been added.
• Action SendKey can not contain additional command for changing keyboard layout. So, it's possible now to send text in your own language.
  E.g. {LNG EN}Hello {LNG DE}Gruß
• New trigger: SerialPort event. With this event it's possible now to launch xStarter tasks by Serial port (RS-232) commands. Also in actions can be parsed readed from serial port string {ComEvent.String}.
• Action SendMail now contain option for storing sended messages in EML or MSG files. This files can be opened then by different email programs.
• Now xStarter tasks logs are stored in separate log-files.
• New languages available in xStarter: French, Hungarian, Hebrew.
• Some bugs fixed.

Version 1.60
November 25, 2004

• New actions for playing audio files have been added, so you can now play WAV, MP3 files and also Windows system sounds.
• New option: SearchFiles. With this action it's possible to search files in specified folder and exclude files from search results by masks.
• Now you can directly use the results from SearchFile as input parameters for other actions. For example if SearchFile found the string "c:\log.txt;c:\also_log.txt”, this could be used to delete, backup etc all files within the search results string.
• Some file and archive actions now contain the option to Exclude Files. For example, using the mask facility you can exclude "*.exe;*.txt". These files will be not processed by this action.
• New action: FileProperties. This action checks the main properties of a specified file or folder. Can be used to perform file operations only with files what satisfy some conditions (e.g. if size of file more than 2Mb or file is read-only). If this action returns Success=False then the file will not be processed.
• New action: HTML2Text. With this option it's possible to convert webpages or html files into plain text. It's possible now to create a Webpage trigger with this option, e.g. show a notification only when some webpage changes was founded. Or it's possible to track internet availability if Ping is not possible (e.g. beyond any Firewall).
• New action: ScreenShot. It's possible to create screenshots of full screen or active window or screen region (by coordinates). Screenshots can be saved as BMP or JPG files. Action can be used, for example, by webmasters (for screenshotting and publishing of webpages) and system administrators (users can make screenshots with program errors by hotkey and send them to system administrator by email).
• Some improvements to task configurator. Now actions can change their position via Drag&Drop operations. Main program windows now remember their state and position after closing.
• Now with even more examples to guide you.
• Some bugs fixed.
  

Changes before 1.60 version