Blog: WhizFolders, Articles and tips

Occasional hang fixed on clicking direct links: We had to code a workaround for a bug in RichEdit that sometimes caused a nasty hang when processing the directly typed links. Since this is an important fix, we had to release this version soon after version 6.3.4.

Improved processing of links to network locations in the topic list: When links were put in the topic list pointing to files or documents on network locations, some delay was introduced in the list, especially during scrolling. This has been fixed.

Note: There is a newer version 6.3.4.2 that fixes a link clicking problem in the editor.

Improved Help Window: Now Help is an independent application so that when you launch help, it doesn’t overlay document windows. Moreover, the help can be independently started from the Start menu icons for WhizFolders.

Improvement, new operation to open a set of documents together: You will see two new operations on the File menu of the Main WhizFolders window as shown below. If you always like to work on a set of documents together, you can open them first and then use the operation “Save list of documents to group…” Later, when you want to open all the documents in a group, you use the operation “Open documents in group” and they will be opened together. This is especially useful in the Tabbed mode. Note that these operations are only available on the main window’s File menu.

Improvement, “Document options” button below the list: Some users didn’t realize the options they could change in the File or Document options because the operation to change the File Options was not easily located in the menu or the toolbar. The button “Document Options” now appears below the list.

Tabbed interface, more fixes: Some more keyboard and menu problems were found and fixed in the new tabbed document interface.

Paste plain text, fix: The “Paste Plain Text” operation to paste a jump link incorrectly brought up Insert Link screen in the editor. Paste plain text should actually be a way to avoid this screen for the links. Fixed.

Search/Find Text, fix: Sometimes the search started in the quick editor didn’t stop at the end of the current topic. Fixed.

Opening WhizFolder documents from the shell, fix: When documents were opened from command line or shell, they didn’t get properly added to the recent documents or to the main document list. Fixed.

Update 21 Jan: The latest AVG update seems to have fixed the problem. Meanwhile, we were worried as some users continued to face the problem. So we have gone ahead and replaced both paid versions (including beta) so that now the false alarms won’t occur even for earlier AVG scans.

Update 20 Jan: I also wrote to AVG at the same time I posted this article. They were prompt with their reply and said that the problem is fixed in their next update. I have yet to verify this because I have to depend on Virus Total that might take some time to get the update. Those of you facing this problem, please update your AVG scan database and recheck.

Original article:
A false positive alarm by anti-virus software is a real pain for software developers. Most of the software today is protected by some kind of licensing wrapper that protects it against reverse engineering or hacking. The problem is, a malware developer may also use the same software to wrap its malware. Then sometimes the file signatures start matching and one or the other virus checker starts raising false alarms. Today, AVG is giving a false alarm on WhizFolders exe files. I just investigated this when a user raised the alarm. In my test with Virus Total, out of the 41 virus checking software, only AVG is complaining. Obviously its checking algorithm needs to improve. Chances are, many other software programs wrapped with the same licensing software would be affected and somebody will complain to AVF. Then they will release an update that will fix the warning for all such false alarms including that for WhizFolders.

If you are seeing this warning, please see if you can put WhizFolders in some kind of exclusion list so that AVG does not complain. Also check for an update for AVG. May be that will fix the problem. Meanwhile, we are looking into this and will rebuild WhizFolders and rewrap it with some modifications to see if this false warning goes away. We will post another notice here as soon as we do that successfully.

This version is already old. Please update to the latest.

Yet another tabbed mode fix: This version fixes a problem with the Return and Delete key in the Quick Editor when working in “tabbed” document mode.

For a complete history of improvements and fixes through 6.3 beta, please see History of versions

This version is already old. Please update to the latest.

Known problems in tabbed documents: Although, we have fixed many problems in the new “tabbed” documents feature, we are discovering new ones. For example, some keyboard shortcut keys do not work when in tabbed mode, especially in the editor. So we recommend that if you see any unusual behavior when using tabbed mode, please switch it off.

Improvement, Expand, Collapse selected: New menu items are available on the Edit menu and right-click menu of the topic list. These allow you to expand and collapse only the selected topics.

Improvement, Auto-expand: When you clicked on a topic list topic, it was expanded automatically and the previous item was collapsed. This feature could also be put off on the General Options–Misc page. But this feature made it difficult to do a multi-select with those auto exapands/collapses occurring. Now it doesn’t do an auto-expand on multi-selects.

Improvement, Make link warning switch off: When you right-click to make a link out of selected text, you get a warning about loss of formatting in the link text. Now this warning can be switched off for the session.

Fix, Make linked topic: The right-click operation on the quick edit to make a linked new topic automatically didn’t work for the choice “add the topic as first child.” This is fixed. Moreover, the program now remembers your choice for the next repeat of this operation.

Please do not use “Tabbed” documents mode till further notice:

Some operations like Search menu do not work well in “Tabbed” documents mode. This mode is enabled when you click on the “Tabbed” switch on the main window to switch it ON. I’d recommend not using the tabbed mode till the next update.

Since releasing version 6.1.4.2 of WhizFolders, we have found a few bugs and documented them in the Known Problems link that you will find in the “New features” topic of the help file.

We started working on these bugs after releasing the Trial version 6.1 at the end of July. Well, we have fixed almost all of these bugs and are keen on releasing a new version soon.

One particular bug took most of our time. It was too difficult to diagnose. Finally, it turned out to be a feature of Windows Vista. This is an interesting story and worth mentioning here. There is a new feature in WhizFolders 6.1 where you can set an option on the General Options–Taskbar page to let it start automatically with Windows. Looks simple enough but when I actually started using it on Windows Vista, many times, WhizFolders was painfully slow in some file operations after the start up. After a few minutes it would work at normal speed. This was a real puzzle. Moreover, this problem only happened on Vista. I found no documentation on Microsoft web sites and the search on google yielded nothing.

After much debugging, it dawned on me that somehow the priority of the program was being reduced. Searching on proper keywords finally got me the answer. It is a feature of Windows Vista. For about a minute after start up, Windows Vista reduces the priority of all start up programs to a very low level. The idea is to let the user click and start the favorite programs more quickly, improving the perception of the Windows start up speed to the user.

So if you are using Windows Vista and want to start using WhizFolders immediately on start up, better not use the above option to let it start automatically with Windows but start it manually by clicking on its icon. It will be more responsive, at least for about a minute or so.

To see version specific history from the help file, please follow these steps:

1. Click on the menu “Help–Help Topics” to open the help file in WhizFolders.
2. Go to the “New Features” topic at the top.
3. Follow the web link shown under the heading “Known problems, fixes and new features specific to this particular version.”

To see the complete history for Pro or Deluxe edition, click on the menu “Help–Version History” on the main window of WhizFolders. This feature works properly on WhizFolders 6.1.4.2. On earlier versions, it may not show the proper history page for the Pro edition.

• If you see the “Old Style Link” message on clicking a link, please do a Save. This will fix the link unless it was really pasted from web in an earlier version as the message says. We are going to improve this message in the next update.
• You must have noticed that when you are browsing topics, pressing a key in the right pane automatically starts Quick Editor there. This feature is for your convenience. But, please don’t type rapidly to start the editor. It may cause links in that topic to be disturbed. The same problem might occur if you use some kind of keyboard macro utility to insert text when the editor is not already started.

  If you have a habit of typing rapidly or use a keyboard macro utility, please always start the editor first by the “Start Quickedit” button and then type. We are going to fix this problem in the next update.

If you see the following message, don’t get alarmed.

“There seems to be an occasional problem with WhizFolders on your system that causes it to exit abnormally. Please contact us at WhizFolders Support with the contents of this message so that we can look into this problem.”

The message appears in rare cases. It means that WhizFolders terminated abnormally at least a few times on your system and has detected this. We care for your documents and have such smart checks in WhizFolders to protect your documents from corruption.

So far, we have seen that this can occur only in rare cases when Microsoft RichEdit 4.1 can not handle some particular RTF formatting and terminates WhizFolders without giving it a chance to display an error message. If you were to paste the same RTF in Wordpad, you will see the same problem.

What you can do about this problem?

Solution 1. Update your RichEdit dll: Normally, WhizFolders uses RichEdit 4.1 by default unless you turned off its use in the Editor page of general options. You can always confirm which RichEdit you are using on the “Status” button of the Help–About screen of WhizFolders. The use of RichEdit 4.1 is recommended for better usage of WhizFolders, especially with tables.

The DLL file for this RichEdit 4.1 exists in Windows\System32 folder by the name msftedit.dll. You can search for this file using Windows Explorer in the above folder and check its version by right-clicking on its Properties. Here are the latest known versions of this file:

• On Windows XP: version 5.41.15.1514
• On Windows Vista: version 5.41.21.2507, 5.41.21.2508 (both are OK to use)

If your dll shows an earlier version, you can update it by installing the latest Windows Updates. Or, you can even try installing the latest Internet Explorer.

If your dll shows a later version, please let us know immediately so that we can update this article. Note that the latest Microsoft Office might have a later version of this dll in its folders but WhizFolders only uses the one which is in Windows\System32 folders and which comes with Windows Updates.

If your dll shows the same version Then this problem may or may not be related to RichEdit 4.1. To confirm, please look at Solution 2 below.

Solution 2. Fix the document causing the problem:

Assuming that it is the RichEdit problem mentioned above, you can try to narrow down the problem causing document and then the topic by these steps:

1. Close all your WhizFolder documents. This is just to make sure you do not loose any data.
2. Go to the main window in WhizFolders, and do the advanced search in all the listed documents for any text. You can do this by menu “Search - Advanced search in All listed documents.”
3. If WhizFolders terminates without giving any message during the search, then it seems likely that one of the documents is causing a problem with RichEdit 4.1.
4. Now, select fewer documents by Ctrl-Click and do advanced search in “selected documents” only. This is a different menu item from the one shown above.
5. Chances are, the search will go through the fewer documents successfully. It doesn’t matter if the text is found or not. Search should finish without terminating WhizFolders. That’s all we are looking for. If it doesn’t, select only one document at a time before repeating the search in the single selected document.
6. Once you have found a document that causes WhizFolders to terminate, please open it and click on its topics one by one till it terminates. Once you know which topic causes termination, please contact us and we will tell you how to delete or fix that topic.

If the above test goes through without any problems, then your problem may not be related to RichEdit. In that case, please try to remember and get more clues. Have you ever noticed WhizFolders terminating without giving any message? In case you remember such incident, please send us the details on what operation you were performing at that time. If you don’t remember, please keep a watch from now on, and let us know the details when you encounter a case when WhizFolders goes away without giving a message.

Finally, there is no need to get alarmed by this message unless it occurs too frequently, several times a week. In all probability, the problem will go away once you update to the latest dll as described above.