If you're into Firefox/Mozilla perhaps Sage might be a viable option. It doesn't run within the tray, but it is nicely integrated into the browser.

Let's say I'm interested in making my own USB mouse out of wood as in this. Does anyone know where I could buy the optical mouse parts in small batches? I'd be willing to make a few as gifts, but I'm not interested in making them in batches of 1000 ;) I could also gut the parts from an old mouse, but I was wondering if there was a way to start with just the controller. Thanks.

I spent most of my childhood summers around Wells and have eaten at Billy's more than I can remember. Another good place is Lord's which is at the end of a long drive into small harbor. You can eat with a view of the flats. The state is huge, but some other highlights include: (1) Driving the coastline through Kennebunkport, past the Bush estate. (2) Bar harbor and Acadia (http://www.barharborinfo.com/) (3) Freeport (if you're into LL Bean stuff) (4) Portland, a nice port town with interesting architecture. (5) Kayaking around the small islands. There's great locations. (6) Any of the roadside shacks that serve fried clams :) Maine is a great place to visit, hope you have a good time if you choose to go. Cheers.

Check out CListCtrl::GetTopIndex and CListCtrl::GetCountPerPage. You should be able to calculate the last visible item this way. Cheers.

I'm trying to find out if there's a way to leverage the "Searching" progress indicator in XP. When you search for files in Exporer displayed the Luna interface, you get a little wrap-around progress indicator with 3 gradient filled boxes. It basically uses a WM_TIMER message to update the box positions. Spy++ tells me that this the window class is SA_Progress, but a Google search gives me only 1 newsgroup comment. I know it's trivial to implement, but I'd like to conform to the active theme colors and shapes, and the documentation for GetThemeColor isn't exactly definitive (or existant). Any suggestions? Thanks.

The biography of Alan Turing is a good read. Very interesting individual.

Do you mean the Mira?

Can anyone recommend a physically small, quiet, server appliance for a home network? Something that can store & rip MP3s, print/file serve, handle ICS, probably FireWire & USB 2.0 as well, etc. I thought about building one with the Shuttle SB51G, but was wondering if there were other options. DIY or pre-made suggestions are both welcome. Thanks.

If only you could show up a bit earlier, you could increase the lager count significantly at the Fremont Oktoberfest. :-D

There's always the allure that something I come up with will make money, but that isn't the motivating factor. Having said that, are the .Net runtimes going to be available for PPC2000/2002 devices as a redistributable? So that I could at least release a .Net app and gather feedback from users, even if they're non-revenue generating :) Or would I have to wait for the next PPC OS release? I'm just figuring that devices will become more prominent in the future and would like to get ahead of the curve. Plus, it's a justification for more toys :-D

Let's say that I was interested in learning to code for the PocketPC but wasn't sure where to start. I've found some decent sites (http://www.pocketpcdn.com and http://www.pocketgear.com for instance), but am still unsure if I should develop for the released v.3 embedded tools or embrace the "next generation" with the v.4 embedded tools and C# (see the MSDN Mobile Site). This wouldn't be for a corporate app, just something to learn on the side and expand my skill set for future employers. I'm pretty familiar with C++, but C# remains a musical mystery to me ;) Does anyone have experience on either of these platforms? If so, what would you suggest? If not, do you think this entire idea is misguided? All suggestions welcome. Thanks.

You might also look into the

I've not used this personally, but it received a good review from c|net: Infinology

You could also look at the STL's pair<>.

I think I've seen code somewhere that does this, but I need to be able to determine for a locked file what the owning process is. It would be even better if I could get a human readble representation of the process, but I'm willing to start at the beginning ;). This needs to work on 98/NT/2000. Thanks for any suggestions.

If you mean the Windows Installer, you can use the Registry table with Registry.Name = "-" and Registry.Value = "". Will that do what you want?

David, I think the call you want is MsiSetExternalUI, but I've not been able to get this to work correctly (does anyone else hear an article topic ;))? I can think of two other options. My least preferred is to move to InstallShield 7. This allows you to use the IS engine as a wrapper around the MSI database. You can create your dialogs using the standard InstallShield 5.5/6.0+ approach and drive the MSI database through InstallScript. If it's only a dialog or two, the option I'd suggest would be to create a MSI Custom Action that drives your custom dialog via a DLL. The custom action you can then update Properties in the active MSI database. Let me know if I can provide additional info. Cheers.

At least I know that I'll have someone to commiserate with ;) I've never used Python but have used Perl somewhat. It looks like you can do something similar with Perl too. Did you look at Perl as well and if so, what about Python made it the winner? Do you have any good links about embedding Python? Thanks Christian.

Hello all, I'm looking at including an interpreted scripting language into my application. The major constraints are the following: (1) It must be cross platform capable (Windows, Mac, maybe Unix). (2) It must be relatively lightweight. However, as I'm sure all such notions begin, "it doesn't need to do much" ;-) I saw the SAScript demo here (pretty helpful), but am looking for other options as well. Can anyone suggest what alternatives there are and/or places to look about how to roll your own? Any other info or tales of dread are welcome. Thanks.

Hello all, I need to determine if a given port number is available for a socket. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the reserved port numbers are output by "netstat /a". I'm guessing there's something in Winsock that lets me test for a given port's availability, but I'm not sure. Can anyone suggest how I can do this? Thanks.