MyDefrag version 4 sneak preview

[Stilgar]

Here's my first try for jEdit as editor for MyDefrag scripts:

I don't see an attachment?

Strange - I see it after I posted it. I added the picture again.

[tw3kr]

Very sorry for ignoring most of this topic, I read some posts in different pages and checked out the site thoroughly. I have recently just started using JKDefrag again, and I was very happy to see this after having a wonderful experience with JKDefrag 3.36.

JKDefrag (or in the future MyDefrag) has recently just been added to one of my many best free software tools I use regularly. I've been through them all that are reputable that I know (Diskeeper, PerfectDisk, O&O Defrag) I tried the trial of all four, and bought Diskeeper and later PerfectDisk. I was sick of excess services running, or making a batch file to manually start them. I wanted something that was light weight and effective, and I remembered JKDefrag and decide to take another shot at it.

My previous experiences of JKDefrag were not all that great, until I really got into reading the front page, and the suggestions for it. I also found one of the JKDefragGUI versions that I really like, as I was having little patience with customizing what to defragment via command line. It was not that it was confusing, it just took a while, as I totally wanted to make JKDefrag do exactly what I wanted to do.

When I discovered Emiel Wieldraajjer's JKDefragGUI, everything changed. I have found the optimal setup for me of what folders for JKDefrag to optimize and defrag, what to move to the end, and what to exclude. The customization of JKDefrag is really what makes it for me. The default double-click of the .exe really is great for most purposes, but not for me. For anyone curious:

Code:

Include list:
C:\Games\,C:\General\,*.dll,C:\Users\,C:\Program Files\Windows Sidebar\,*.exe,C:\Windows\Prefetch\,

Spacehog list:
*.tmp,*.bak,*.old,*.txt,*.chm,*.ini,*.log,*.dat,*.wmv,*.gz,

Exclude:
*.sav,*.xml

There are a few more things I want to do here, and later I will compile my list of what to and what not to defragment in the Windows directory, but for now, it is still great!

With JKDefragGUI there is no -u and -e needed. Of course, it would be much more effective to compile the bat file, however, I got tired of typing: (-u *name*, -u *name, etc). JKDefrag is a really great tool, when I purchased my Western Digital 10,000RPM VelociRaptor, I wanted to maximize it's performance as much as I can. And the results show with JKDefrag, as I do a full sort in my Games directory, and then defragment it after a new game install. Loading time differences are very noticeable.

From what I see it, MyDefrag 4.0 is just a major improvement on the already best disk defragmenter out there.

Good luck, Jeroen, JKDefrag is amazing.

[elfring]

Version 4 will not be released under the GNU license, but under a "free software" license. The program can still be downloaded and used at no cost, fully functional, no time limit, no advertisements. But not the sources, those will only be available to paying customers. Releasing the sources of version 3 has not resulted in what I was hoping for, no community of programmers sharing code. The sources are mainly used by companies to create their own defragmenters and earning big dollars, and they are not sharing their code.

There are a few software developers who offered source code improvements and corresponding applications. More enthusiasts might be needed to increase the probability for further contributions. A couple of factors support and attract free collaboration in a wider community.

Money helps a lot ... 

[jeroen]

Good luck, Jeroen, JKDefrag is amazing.

Thanks for the rave review, I appreciate it! Version 4 is more or less downward compatible with v3, the GUI programs for v3 will need a few small tweaks to work with v4. But I am sure that very soon there will be GUI's specially designed for v4, opening up all the new capabilities for endusers.

[grahamcopley]

Allright, here is a snapshot of the JkDefrag v4 scriptengine in action. As you can see the diskmap of v3 is still there, with a couple of additions. There is now an exit button, the program can be paused, and the diskmap can be zoomed. The crosshairs in the first blue bar in the diskmap are the cursor, and the text at the bottom (below the diskmap) is information about the file under the cursor.

How complete is Mydefrag v4 (80%?). Roughly, how long might it be before you think that it is ready for general release (weeks, months?).

Is it currently in a reasonable working state? If so, I'm sure lots of your followers would like to use it, even if only some of the new features can be used - e.g. the ability to optimise using scripting, the layout.ini ability, the diskmap crosshair function.

I'm positive that Mydefrag will be such a great product, waiting for its release it is torture for those of us who are eagerly waiting to get our hands on it.

[SledgeHammer]

I'm positive that Mydefrag will be such a great product, waiting for its release it is torture for those of us who are eagerly waiting to get our hands on it.

Signed.

[jeroen]

How complete is Mydefrag v4 (80%?). Roughly, how long might it be before you think that it is ready for general release (weeks, months?).

I've been preparing the first beta release for the past couple of weeks. The program is not finished, but good enough for that first release. As yet I have only tested it on Vista.

[DGMurdockIII]

please keep it open source iv been wating for v4 to till i made any change to becse i have a bunch of stuff i want to do and waint to see what v4 is like first then i will make the stuff they hasent got added and submit patch back

[jeroen]

please keep it open source

I'm sorry but I have decided not to release the sources of v4. For more information see other answers from me here in this thread.

[gaspard.leon]

looks good... since some pedantic posts have been put in I'll throw in my 2 cents:

1. download page is deceptive... perhaps just remove the link to the 404 message... or put a note
  Also, the release date is not updated it says August 2008, perhaps "Release date: coming soon" or "Release date: First half 2009" or some such..

2. small item: the file names of pages have spaces which means %20...

3. another small item: 4 character extensions (.html), as you said before

True. But I am still worried about a long extension. People are not used to it and it will look strange in directory listings and such.

perhaps you should switch to .htm if it makes you feel better or worry less

4. Use CSS and abandon old non-standards (HTML attribute layouts), you mentioned you had Firefox... even IE7 supports CSS... you've also mentioned you have only tested on Vista... old stuff is not worth it.

5. Thank you for a great utility! it works well and has a much better display then any other Defragger I use!

6. Can't wait for 4.0!

Cheers,
Gaspard

[jeroen]

I'll throw in my 2 cents:

Thanks, I appreciate it! I've already removed the spaces, just not uploaded the changes yet. For some reason .html seems to be the standard on the internet, don't know why. I have run the pages through the CSE Html Validator v8.0 and except for some minor things the html is perfectly fine. I don't like CSS, so I'm not using it.

[Monty98]

I think you may have confused what gaspard.leon was saying, the HTML you are using is not correct and most presentational markup elements have become deprecated under the HTML 4.0 specification, in favor of CSS based style design. Having said that, when using alternative browsers (or that work with strict HTML) those bad presentational elements show up as errors and mess up the page rendering.

No offense to whoever the CSE is; but according to the World Wide Web Consortium (who govern the HTML standard), these are 21 errors on the index page. Part of the problem with CSE might be that you have a "Transitional" document type set; which states ahead of time that the document is broken and has non-standard markup; so the validator should only pick up on errors that would break the document object model. The "Transitional" document type also forces the browser to use quirks mode to render the page (regardless of errors); which causes a whole host of different screwy stuff to happen depending on what browser is being used. [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quirks_mode ]

The structure and appearance of a web page is described by a combination of two standardized languages: HTML, a markup language designed for web use, which describes the structure and content of the page, and CSS, a generalized stylesheet language, which specifies how the page should be rendered in various media.

gaspard.leon was simply saying [and I agree] that you should use standards compliant HTML for the new website and for some of the presentational effects that you have, you may need to resort to CSS.

Warnings:

Code:

No Character Encoding Found!

Errors:

Code:

Line 11, Column 14: there is no attribute "BGCOLOR".
Line 11, Column 29: there is no attribute "TEXT".
Line 11, Column 44: there is no attribute "LINK".
Line 11, Column 60: there is no attribute "VLINK".
Line 11, Column 76: there is no attribute "ALINK".
Line 11, Column 97: there is no attribute "LEFTMARGIN".
Line 11, Column 111: there is no attribute "TOPMARGIN".
Line 11, Column 127: there is no attribute "MARGINWIDTH".
Line 11, Column 144: there is no attribute "MARGINHEIGHT".
Line 13, Column 7: element "CENTER" undefined.
Line 30, Column 16: document type does not allow element "MAP" here; missing one of "P", "H1", "H2", "H3", "H4", "H5", "H6", "PRE", "DIV", "ADDRESS" start-tag.
Line 44, Column 65: there is no attribute "BGCOLOR".
Line 46, Column 36: "NOWRAP" is not a member of a group specified for any attribute.
Line 48, Column 77: there is no attribute "BORDER".
Line 50, Column 15: there is no attribute "FACE".
Line 50, Column 51: there is no attribute "SIZE".
Line 50, Column 55: element "FONT" undefined.
Line 54, Column 17: there is no attribute "BACKGROUND".
Line 56, Column 12: there is no attribute "WIDTH".
Line 123, Column 86: there is no attribute "ALIGN".
Line 155, Column 7: element "CENTER" undefined.

[jeroen]

I think you may have confused what gaspard.leon was saying

Thanks for your explanation. I appreciate your efforts in explaining it but I am sorry, I am not going to use CSS. The situation is the exact opposite of what you are describing. Browsers have no trouble at all with old-style HTML, which is what I am using. It's HTML 4.0 that browsers have great trouble with. The problems with CSS and browser compatibility are well known, discussed and documented on a great many websites, and the World Wide Web Consortium would do us all a great service in retracting their overcomplicated, unusable, and impractical "standard", so we can all go back to HTML that actually works.

[Baffo32]

I would like to add my voice to those complaining about the change in open-source status.  I have used jkdefrag solely because it is the only open-source windows defragmentation tool around -- there are many free defragmentation tools, but none open-source.  With closed source software, I can't fix bugs I encounter, and there is no community review.  Jkdefrag saves the day -- but closing the source in the latest version really lowers its potential quality.

The primary reason I have never contributed to jkdefrag is the lack of source access -- there is no bug tracking system, there is no public cvs/svn/git server, things available for free on places like sourceforge.net, code.google.com, www.berlios.de .  It makes it seem silly to be patching e.g. jkdefrag 3 when jdkefrag 4 is apparently a total revamp, but the source hasn't been released yet.  And then I learn it will be closed source.

It is incredibly unfortunate that thieves have stolen jkdefrag for their own gain.  I was unaware of this, and the reasons for closing the source are understandable.  Other free projects have gone this route as well.  However, I think that jkdefrag 3 was an amazing project, and that a public fork on a public system could be a worthwhile endeavour for the community.

My questions:  What will be the route for purchasing access to the source code for MyDefrag (I see no obvious mention on the site), and what will be the associated license for the code?

[jeroen]

What will be the route for purchasing access to the source code for MyDefrag (I see no obvious mention on the site), and what will be the associated license for the code?

I have not drawn up a license for that yet, but it will very likely be a "pay once" license. I have also not decided on a price, but I am thinking something in the order of 5000 euro. The target audience would be companies that want to build a commercial defragger product, or incorporate a defragger into a system maintenance product, or large companies with hundreds of installations that want to make a custom version. All of these can easily pay such a fee. I don't expect to sell many licenses.