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Juice Portable 2.2 Development Test 10 (Testers Needed)

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Kevin Porter
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Juice Portable 2.2 Development Test 10 (Testers Needed)

Application: Juice
Category: Music & Video
Description: Juice lets users select and download shows and music and play whenever they want on their iPods, portable digital media players, or computers automatically. (Taken from Juice website)

Download Juice Portable 2.2 Development Test 10 [5.3MB download / 7.6MB installed]
(MD5: 15f831a09a93243f63c04953457afcf9)

Release Notes:

Development Test 10 (2008-05-03):

  • Fixed directory structure
  • Added application data environment variable

Development Test 9 (2008-05-03):

  • Updated PAF compliance
  • Fixed bug with downloaded podcasts not appearing after closing
  • Changed default settings for more "portable" experience

Development Test 8 (2008-03-13):

  • Fixed typos

Development Test 7 (2008-03-13):

  • Updated to latest development specs

Simeon
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Is there a reason

you are specifying a SF mirror?

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Kevin Porter
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Hmmm...

You're right. I didn't notice that. But, no. Blum

"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning." - Rick Cook

Simeon
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then

change it Blum

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Kevin Porter
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.

I will. Blum

"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning." - Rick Cook

Simeon
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You

Did! Blum

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ZachHudock
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In your JuicePortable.nsi

In your JuicePortable.nsi you have !define PORTABLEAPPNAME "Stellarium Portable"

JuicePortable.ini makes references to Stellarium

/Other/Source/Readme.txt makes reference to MediaCoder

The app works well, just those changes need to be made from what I can see.

The developer formerly known as ZGitRDun8705

Kevin Porter
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Hmm...

Thanks. Bad attention span. I'll get it up in the next few minutes.

"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning." - Rick Cook

Kevin Porter
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DT8

Development test 8 is up. Just fixed some typos.

"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning." - Rick Cook

EasyTarget
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Still keeping databases on host computer..

Hi; I've been giving this a whirl;

Juice is forgetting the status of items in it's feed between each use. Since several of the feeds I subscribe to have hundreds of 'historical' items in the feed, and I need these to be skipped to avoid downloading 1/2 a gig of junk (old) items.

Each time I restart Juice these 'skipped' items are now set to 'download' and Juice moronically fills my disk, then whinges that it has no space left.

If I go through the horribly manual process of marking these hundreds of items as 'skip', this is all forgotten next time I start Juice. Even if Portableapps has remained running in the meantime and I am still on the same host system.

-I just want stuff that works.

EasyTarget
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Default download location.

Juice (as it's installed default) used a location on the C: drive of my system as it's download location. This seems wrong for the portable version, surely the most common use will be to download to the USB device itself?

It was easy to achieve this in a nice way by specifying a absolute path without a drive assignment (eg. '\Podcasts') in the Juice preferences. This appears to be immune from Drive Letter issues etc, and is preserved between sessions.

Is it possible to modify the portable Juice defaults so that it has this set by default? I guess the 'Music' folder is the sensible default.

A little footnote; there are some MP3 'sticks' that have a 2 folder directory depth limit for playing music files.
- Mine is like that, and once Juice had added it's own per-feed folders to the path I could not play anything until I changed from specifying '/music/podcasts' to just '/podcasts'.
- Hopefully this is only a problem affecting MuVo owners Wink

-I just want stuff that works.

Kevin Porter
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.

I used a location on the C drive because it is extremely unwise to download directly to the flash drive. The constant adding of bits and bytes to the drive will quickly wear it out. You can change the location yourself, but I will not set it to download to the flash drive for these reasons.

"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning." - Rick Cook

EasyTarget
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Not convinced but...

Hi!, thanks for the reply. And thanks for working on this too.

A default of going to the host PC is fine, but I think that setting Juice to download to the flash device itself is a trick you need to document quite visibly. Do not underestimate how many users will want to use this directly from their MP3 player, so that they can just plug into any convenient PC while on the move and get the latest feed items/episodes. It's a subtly different usage model compared with the desktop-oriented portable apps.

In terms of wearing out the flash drive (capacity loss); if your flash drive is also your MP3 player, then the podcasts are going to end up on the device anyway.. But that is a lot of podcasts! 100,000+ write-cycles = 200 years+ at my average of one podcast per day, I'll wear out before It does Smile

-I just want stuff that works.

Kevin Porter
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Well

It's not that simple. In the download process, you are downloading bit-by-bit, and when each bit is received, it is immediately written to your flash drive, so there are a lot more writes than that.

"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning." - Rick Cook

tgrantt
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A couple issues

I've been using this an either it has an issue or I do. (Probability 30/70:))

I'm running Juice on my hard drive, and I left the default download directory as c:\juice\Downloaded Podcasts or whatever. (It makes sense to me that this would be especially useful if running on a flash drive.) When I close Juice, it copies the podcasts all to a Downloaded Podcast directory in the Data directory under the Juice Portable apps directory. (Sorry, don't have the exact path, currently on a different computer. Maybe c:\portableapps\portableapps\juiceportable\data\downloaded podcasts?) Anyway, when Juice is restarted, it doesn't find the downloads, and gets them all again. Both the copy and the download take time, and I'm not sure what the reason is for the transfer.

As a side note, someone on the Juice forum said that there is no further development on this. Anybody know if this is true? I wish there were some changes, like the ability to sort downloaded feeds by title, date, etc.

I am not my signature.

Kevin Porter
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Yep.

You're exactly right. I'm working on fixing that little bug. Also, Juice hasn't been in development since 2005, so no further versions will be made available unless someone takes over the project.

"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning." - Rick Cook

Kevin Porter
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DT9

Development test 9 is up. This release should fix all of the problems outlined above.

"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning." - Rick Cook

Patrick Patience
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EnvVar?

What happened to re-directing APPDATA with that line I gave you? Worked fine for me. Also, don't set the default download directory to C, because 1) you can't assume it's writable, and 2)people will most likely leave their downloaded podcasts there. I think it's better to download them to the drive, and let the user change it if they want.

Kevin Porter
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Yeah

I was having some trouble with the redirecting. I just wanted to get this out as a bugfix for some of the bugs mentioned in this thread. I can't seem to find out how to put a variable into the configuration file. Regardless, I'll talk to you on IRC about it.

EDIT: I've got the redirecting working, now all I need is some work on the configuration file. I'll play with it for a bit.

"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning." - Rick Cook

Kevin Porter
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DT10

Alright, development test 10 should fix all problems. I've added an environment variable switch, so that there's no toying with the actual hard drive at all now. Also, I changed the directory structure so that it downloads the podcasts directly to your drive in the "X:\PortableApps\JuicePortable\Data\Downloaded Podcasts" directory. I was debating as to whether I should have the directory in "X:\Documents\Music\Downloaded Podcasts" instead, but it seemed to me this was a better structure.

"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning." - Rick Cook

Patrick Patience
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Shum Shtuff

Okay, so this is lookin' pretty good. I've got a few comment however.

  1. I'd try to sectionize the code more like that other applications have done. It's alright how it is currently, but it is a little clearer and may be easier in the long run if you split it into sections like:

    • CheckDefaultData
    • CopySettings
    • LaunchNow
    • CopySettingsBack

    Just a suggestion, It really doesn't matter either way. Just a little easier to do it as above in my view.

  2. If someone sets the Downloaded Podcasts directory to say F:\Documents\Music, you can't expect them to know to use relative paths. I'd suggest using the ReplaceInFile function to update the drive letter before each launch in the config file. Check something like FileZilla for that.
  3. Another idea for where to set the Downloaded Podcasts directory to would to be to set it to Documents\Music if it exists. You can check out BonkEnc Portable for some usage ideas, but here's the rundown. You check if the variable "PortableApps.comMusic" (set by the future menu version) exists, if it's equal to $CURRENTDRIVE(have to get this variable before the replace in file code)\Documents\Music, you use it. If not, you check if $CURRENTDRIVE\Documents\Music exists. If not, you just don't worry about it. If either of those does exists, you do a ReplaceInFile on ipodder.cfg, and replace Data\\Downloaded Podcasts with $CURRENTDRIVE\\Documents\\Music. Follow? I know that's a lot. I'll be on IRC and IM for help.
  4. In the help.html add a 'Portable App Issues' section, you'll find the generic section in Jooleem Portable's help file.

We'll also have to add in the code to set the language from the variable the future menu sets. I know that may be a lot to grasp, so again, I'm on IM and IRC for help.

lymz
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The link is dead :-(

The link is dead Sad

iradi8
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Proxy appears broken

I am trying to put in Proxy settings, using Test 10, and it doesn't work. I am using a squid proxy server which is accessed on port 8080. Proxy logs indicate that JuicePortable doesn't hit the proxy server at all.

stephenjudge
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Almost there

Oh it's looking so close to being ready, but yes, the Proxy support is broken. I have also set a proxy on mine and it is not able to even scrape the name of the feeds. If you could fix that I'd be a happy bunny.

musasabi
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Words of encouragement

Hey this is a great idea for a portable app. I was trying to find a FF3 ext for this sort of thing and I couldn't. Plus, with some of the FF exts that I test, it'd be nice if I didn't have to worry about something like this creating a conflict.

I have yet to DL and try it out though because the check sum isn't correct.

Can you please clarify for me? Thank you!

lakeywhite
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Any news on this for full release?

I have just discovered Portable apps and this is something that I am finding very useful. How is the development going?

yatopia
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Any news on this for full release? -- Ditto

I'd also like to know if this will be part of the standard suite. This is an important part of the required suite, and SongBird doesn't fit the bill -- its podcatching is know to be broken, and AFAIK, no one is working on fixing it.

I've tried this and it appears to work fine. I have made it my main podcatcher, and will report errors if they occur.

One thing that it would be nice to have this do is to attempt to create the destination directory if it doesn't exist, and choose a default directory that is likely to be writeable. (need not be the USB device).

Thanks for you hard work on this.

Aciago
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Abandoned?

Is this project abandoned? I was looking for a good portable podcast client.

Regards.-

If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port,
and the bus is interrupted as a very last resort,
and the address of the memory makes your floppy disk abort,
then the socket packet pocket has an error to report Biggrin

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