A blog about nothing

So my wife is currently using the program and this is questions she came up with. As I make additions I hope to fix/answer a question listed below:

1) Page 3 in tutorial: “tool tips” don’t stay on screen as long as your mouse is over them—they should. I couldn’t read the whole example and it never came back.

2) Does each category need to be a budget pool also?

3) I need a previous button in the tutorial in case I want to go back.

4) When adding new data, there’s an empty grey box at the bottom. What’s it for?

5) Also on the new data page, when the drop-down menu for the Item Category is “dropped-down” the mouse disappears. (very freaky)

6) How do I change the name of a category? I didn’t type it all before I hit enter. Also, I need to be able to remove/delete a category.

7) On the edit data dialogue page the categories on the right should be in alphabetical order. So should the drop down menu. (it’s only that way because I entered it like that).

8) The close button doesn’t work. The X does though.

9) In Edit Budget Pools Dialogue, the white box doesn’t let you mouse scroll unless you click first.

10) In the Edit Categories Dialogue it says “categories attached” at the top right, I think it should say “Attach categories to budget pools”.
Also, after dragging over the category, it scrolls to the bottom AND reopens all pools I’ve closed, even if you were adding to the top, very annoying.

11) Make sure the right side stays where I left it.

12) Add “quarterly” to the frequency options, i.e. “every quarter” should be an option along with “every year”, etc.

13) Have the program prompt me to save when I try to close anything

Persistence - I define this as the ability of the program to restore itself upon the re-opening of a file. This means that any time you save the file, a persistent state is saved of the current location, size and tabs opened. A simple version of persistence but for now, it satisfies my wifes requirements. Comments are welcomed.
Next goal will be windows. The ability to detach tabs into new windows for side-by-side comparison.


SharpCashV1_0_0_16_c.zip

I'm finally ready to add my first version of the file to be available to the public. Its very different than the old sharp cash. Most notably will be the idea of a budget pool. The program isnt fully functional but it will give you an idea of where I am going with it. I plan on adding more features regularly, so stay posted for more to come. Unlike the previous version, every upgrade will incorporate the ability for the program to silently update the database and file format.

I have also included the "project and scope" document and the "specifications" document to give you a better idea of what is to come in version 1. When version 1 is complete then version 2 will start. Version 2 is probably what most will use since it will include OFX.
VisionAndScope.pdf
Specification.pdf
SharpCashV1_0_0_15.zip

Code is provided in the ZIP. If you just want to use the program, copy the contents of the Release folder (SharpCashV1.0/SharpCashV1.0/SharpCashV1.0/Bin/Release) to whatever directory you want to use the program. To get started just do File->New. If you have any questions just add a comment to this post. I will receive it and will respond back.

To be honest #cash frustrated me and annoyed me. I could never get it perfect. Its been....9 months since I stopped working on it....and now its bugging me to come back alive. The problem last time is that I let myself get too involved with feature creep. I first said...lets do it simple...but then what about this and what about that.

Screw it. I'm going back to the basics, but since I've already gone threw this before, I know a little bit more now about how to tackle the project.

First things first. The backend. I want it to be secure. I want it to be portable. I want it to be simple. I choose SQLite. In fact I'm still going to use the SQLite .Net framework from http://sqlite.phxsoftware.com/

Second thing....how to serialize the data....that I must think about. I want it to be flexible enough to handle anything and yet secure enough so random rouge code doesnt touch databases its not supposed to....I'm really going to have to think about that.

Third thing....OFX...a requirement for any accounting software

Fourth thing...A plugin system to allow me to add extra stuff later...

Last thing....extraction....how to extract out the current data. CSV, EXCEL, etc....for now I'll stick with CSV.

Thats it. Everything else to pretty it up will come later. Accounting logic later. Graphs later. I first need to do the above well and when thats all done, we can move on to an interface.