Windows XP extended support ends in 700 days

Windows XP extended support ends in 700 days (a little more than 1,000,000 minutes). So most probably after Apr 8, 2014 Windows XP will be unsupported by our software products. May be some days before, or after, but this is inevitable – you (who are still on XP) will be forced to upgrade if you want to continue using latest releases of our software products.

Windows XP End of Support 700 days

What this “unsupported” mean for you as the end user? There are main two things that will happen after that date:

  1. We will not test our software against Windows XP. There are no guarantees that newer version will continue to work with Windows XP, however, Windows Server 2003 R2 support ends Jul 14, 2015, and because Windows Server 2003 is based on the same kernel and the same shell as Windows XP, it is very possible that you will be able to go with XP another year or little more.
  2. Second thing is, that we will eventually switch to newer Visual Studio version, which means, that you will not be able to (physically) run our software on Windows XP or Windows Server 2003. Each version of Visual Studio can target certain Windows versions, and I am sure, that Visual Studio that will be released after Jul 14, 2015, will not support these older Windows version.

Also, note that, it is not guaranteed that we will support these both OSes till the Microsoft Extended support ends. We will do a reasonable effort to support our users, but not the operating system that nobody is using.

Again, Windows XP Extended Support End Date – Apr 8, 2014. Source: Microsoft Support Lifecycle.
Windows Server 2003 Extended Support End Date – Jul 14, 2015. Source: Microsoft Support Lifecycle.

P.S. My personal recommendation is to upgrade to Windows 7 ASAP, or at least wait till Windows 8 comes out and upgrade then!

P.S.S. There is a simple Desktop widget from Microsoft for Windows that shows how many days left till Windows XP support ends. See the screenshot above. Here is a download link: Windows XP End Of Support Countdown Gadget.

Febooti Command line email v4.1 is available now

Febooti Command line email v4.1 is available now. Among updated OpenSSL libraries, we have made improvement related to iOS. One of our users have reported that iPhone uses CID image caching using CID from HTML email provided from email client. Checking relevant RFCs indeed confirmed, that image CIDs must be globally unique (unique in email itself is not enough). We switched to GUID, so chance of collision is almost impossible, even if all 7,000,000,000 of world population would send emails using our Command line email tool simultaneously.

Note to developers and users who use .eml files: If you develop similar software — that sends emails that can land in the iOS/iPhone inbox, then extra care should be taken, because if possible attacker can guess your next image CIDs, she/he can take advantage of that fact and poison iOS email client cache with some SPAM images that will appear in your sent HTML email message.

Download latest version: 32-bit / 64-bit
Read history: change log
More information: Command line email

Folders can not have a dot at the end

Automation Workshop have a small UI glitch. When you try to rename folder by appending one or more dots “.” at the end of the folder name, nothing happens. Dots just disappear. This behavior is caused because of the way Windows handles file/folder renames, and Automation Workshop uses OS File System folders behind the scenes.

Automation Workshop New folder

What does this mean for you as a user. You can not have folder with “.” at the end. For explanation and more info, and a similar bug in Windows Shell read here: Disappearing folder – bug in Windows 7.

Most probably this will be fixed in next Automation Workshop version.

We have just released Automation Workshop v1.2

After more than 1/2 year of development, we have released Automation Workshop v1.2 (see list of changes). The most exciting new feature is Automatic backup.

We implemented automatic backup using our own Automation Workshop actions, namely, Zip files Action, Export registry Action, and a couple other. This means that Automatic backup is acting like regular Automation Workshop task — it writes in Service log file (success and failures), it can be easily extended or changed, users can even implement they own backup tasks easily.

Also, it is interesting to note that our internal automated test cases have just passed more than 1500 items. We are using a special kind of test driven development. Of course if we split all test cases into smaller peaces, there will be far more than 15,000 items, but in our metrics it is more that 1500, and each of the test case has taken [on average] more than 1 hour to build. So it is approaching a one year of full time work (WYE).

And one more thing, in 753 days Extended support for Windows XP will end. For our users this means, that after this date we will stop releasing fixes for Automation Workshop on Windows XP. Windows Server 2003 support will end about year later. Both Windows XP and Server 2003 are based on the same codebase, so most probably Automation Workshop will run on Windows XP a year after Extended support ends.

Febooti Software products tested on Windows 8 Developer Preview

When Microsoft releases a new version of Windows, everyone expects that all his/her software continue to work. Microsoft spends plenty of resources to ensure that upgrade to newer OS does not break anything.

We at Febooti Software also are paying much attentions to compatibility. A couple days ago Microsoft released the Windows 8 Developer Preview version with a new Metro interface. It is nothing near the final version and many things will change along the road of Windows 8 (Beta 1, Beta 2, Release candidate 1, RC2, etc.).

Currently all of or software are compatible with upcoming Windows 8 64-bit and 32-bit versions. Our discontinued software product – Febooti ieZoom toolbar is compatible with Windows 8 and Internet Explorer 10.

Below are some screenshots where our programs are running under Windows 8.

From scripting to Visual tool and back to scripting

In the beginning there was a IT World without an easy to use automation solution. Then came Febooti Software and in November 03, 2008 they released Automation Workshop. And IT professionals were happy, because they could create Automation Workshop’s Tasks using GUI, instead of writing boring Batch (.bat) scripts, VBScripts, JScripts or even PowerShell scripts.

This is our story. After the launch of Automation Workshop, we were happy, because many recurring tasks now could be created without writing single line of code. Our users were happy too, because they could reduce costs by using our software.

But time passed and support requests came in. And many people were perfectly satisfied with Automation Workshop, however they needed some small thing/tweak/feature/improvement that were not available using Automation Workshop’s standard features.

So now in year 2011 we released Automation Workshop v1.1 that features a new Action – Execute script.

This is Action that can execute JScript (.js), VBScript (.vbs), PowerShell (.ps1) and Batch (.bat) scripts. Now we are feeling that we are somehow returned to the starting point where users need to write scripts, write code instead of using elegant and intuitive GUI tool. But this is not the same place where we were in 2008. Now users can combine both strengths – Visual GUI tool and power of the scripting.

Also, it is interesting to note that this new action Execute script combines scripting from 3 different PC eras:

  • Batch file – 1981 (with the first version of MS-DOS);
  • JScript – 1996;
  • VBScript – 1996;
  • Windows PowerShell – late 2006.