Exposé 98 Plus! SR1 (version 2.2) Intel Version --- CONTENTS: * What is Exposé? * Installing Exposé * Running Exposé * The File Versions Combo Box * The Date Fields On The Wallpaper * The .ini File * Known Problems with Exposé * Further Development Of Exposé --- * What Is Exposé? Exposé is designed to be a simple, small, unobtrusive application that helps users to keep track of multiple machines being used on switchboxes. It will display a variety of information about a machine on the machine’s wallpaper, as well as let the user fill in some extra info about what the machine is being used for. --- * Installing Exposé Exposé needs only two files to run; EXPOSÉ.EXE and the Visual Basic 5.0 Runtime DLL (MSVBVM50.DLL). All of these files should be placed in the %SystemRoot% directory (C:\WINNT\ for example). In addition, Exposé creates two additional files when it runs; EXPOSÉ.INI (an ini file where it stores the information entered by the user) and EXPOSÉ.BMP (The picture file of the wallpaper). These will also be placed in the %SystemRoot% directory. If you want to use Exposé as a way to keep track of machine usage I recommend also putting a shortcut to it on the desktop, or in the start menu, for easy access by users. Exposé has been tested on NT4, Windows 2000, and the Alpha version on Alpha machines. Exposé will not work on Win95. --- * Running Exposé Exposé can be run two different ways; in standard mode (with the UI), and in automatic mode (no UI). Running it in standard mode will bring up the UI and allow the user to edit the user-defined fields. This is the default. To run Exposé in automatic mode, run it from the command line with the -a option (ie: EXPOSÉ -a). This will bypass the UI and run Exposé automatically. This mode was meant to be spawned by a startup script so that the auto-updated fields were sure to be updated each time the machine was rebooted. For the purposes of start-up scripts, Exposé can be run from a remote network location as long as the VB run-time DLL is either in that same network directory or is in tFilehe path of the local machine. --- * The File Versions Combo Box By default Expose will try to guess what file structure you have on your machine (K2, MCIS, Exchange 5.5, etc.) and will display them both in the UI and the wallpaper. If you have more than one of these programs installed and Expose chooses the wrong one you may manually select one using this combo box. You may also choose to have Expose display the versions of Custom Files by selecting [Custom - Click To Set]. The file version information slots will turn into flat, white buttons. Click the button of the slot you wish to set and use the File Open Dialog to select a file. Expose will remember to update the info for these files each time it is run until you select [Blank - No Files] or [Auto]. --- * The Date Fields On The Wallpaper You will notice two date fields (if you have run Exposé both in Automatic and Standard modes) on the wallpaper that do not show up in the UI. These display the dates and times when Exposé was last Manually and Automatically updated. The reason for the separation is that the manually updated date tells you when the user fields were most likely updated, and the auto-updated date, when Exposé is used in a startup script, tells you when the machine was most likely rebooted. This latter feature proved very handy when we have had some sporadic power failures in the past (Which machines got rebooted?!). --- * The .ini File Exposé will create a small .ini file in your system root directory called Exposé.ini. This file contains user entered information that Exposé needs to remember from execution to execution, but it also saves all the data that Exposé places on the wallpaper. This can be used to remotely check the information of a machine that has run Exposé by viewing this text file remotely. If Exposé is run on a multi-boot machine it will create multiple .ini files; one for each boot option that it is run in. The data will be kept separate for each boot option. --- * Known Problems with Exposé Running Expose may produce an error that there is an incorect version of the MSVBVM50.dll. This is because your machine has a verion of this dll that is older than the VB Service Pack 3 release. Exposé will not pull the full domain on an NT5.0 machine at this time. It will pull the first part of the domain, but the rest of the machines address (which is now included in the domain) will not be displayed. Exposé will not properly pull the processor speed for 486 machines. (No plans to fix this.) Exposé will not display the wallpaper properly with screen resolutions lower than 800x600. Some of the info will be off the right edge of the screen. There are no current plans to change this. --- * Further Development Of Exposé Exposé is still under development, and new features are being added as I learn how to implement them. Any problems and/or suggestions are very welcome. Usage is at the users risk. My strategy has been to keep Exposé simple enough that there is little room for bugs. Items on the current agenda include: + Change the background bitmap from 256 colors to 16 colors (to save space) + Include Platinum file structure