This release has some changes in licensing.

1. There are curently two license “levels”: silver and gold. The silver license is out of box. The gold license is for people who donated to MapleXp development. It provides access to advanced features. (hidden tasks at the moment)

2. Current license level is shown in status bar.

This release brings few bug fixes and some small improvements such as:

• the task chooser window got context menu with 2 commands: expand/collapse all
• drop down list that was used to filter hidden task has been replace with toolbar icons

I also uploaded an updated version of MapleXp manual in PDF format.

Tasks and work items can now be deleted directly from their respective “modify ..” dialog boxes.

Now .. Hidden tasks.

This is a more advanced feature directed at people who collected lots of data over time and have many tasks they are no longer interested in.

Now it is possible to hide any task and thus make it invisible. There are a few simple rules that govern this new behavior:

• no data is actually deleted; this is only about how tasks and work items are presented to the user
• –> you can unhide tasks at any time
• making a task hidden makes all its subtasks hidden, recursively
• –> you can unhide only tasks that were explicitely made hidden
• –> you can, however, make a task hidden even if some of its children are already hidden

Icon code

Due to this new feature there are also new icons to represent tasks status.
You can see the following icons in the task tree to show whether a task is pinned or running:

• container task (no change here)
• regular task
• pinned task
• running task
• pinned running task

Hidden status is represented by icon color

• regular task
• first hidden task (task, that was made hidden explicitely)
• hidden task (hidden task, because its parent is hidden)

Any combination (shape + color) from the two groups is possible.

Visibility combo

Another new UI element is a drop down list shown above the task tree. It allows you to enter one of the following modes

• regular tasks (only regular/non-hidden tasks are shown)
• regular tasks + first hidden ones (there are shown regular tasks and first hidden ones)
• all tasks (all tasks are shown)

License

The hidden tasks feature requires the Classic license level 5.
Without this license installed you can hide or unhide any tasks but you cannot use the visibility combo to filter them (it defaults to “all tasks”)

The very first change in 1.5.6 is a new license file format.
To obtain an updated license please send me your registration data in form of three lines:

Registree Name
Company Name
City, Country

Please, include information if you have ever donated to MapleXp.

Another related change is removal of public/private licensing model. From now on MapleXp operates only private (per-user) licenses.

Status bar

There are now 2 panels shown in the status bar on the right:

• database file (only file name; full path shown in tooltip)
• present setting for time quantum (also has its tooltip)

Putting time quantum into status bar allowed for static labels:

• in the summary panel of the tasks window
• as column name in the work items window

Bug fix

A small bug related to “stop & review” command was fixed.

To reproduce this bug you would have to:

• enable feature “do not register work items shorter then …”
• put check at “ask before the work item is lost”
• click “stop & review” before your job reached set number of seconds

In such a scenario a dialog box is shown which allows either to register or to ignore that “too short” work item. After “Register” had been clicked the work item was added to the registry, whereas some users expected the “Review Work Item” dialog box to follow. Now this dialog appears and allows to correct the newly registered work item.

1. First off all, the installer has been changed in few ways:

• the main change is that this version is a per-user installation which does not require administration privileges to install MapleXp (default location not being “Program Files” folder, though)
• it has some basic UI which allows you to choose the installation folder for MapleXp

Installation is still side-by-side which allows you to keep all versions at hand.
This allows you to run some older version in case the newer one had any bugs.

Though, I am going to add some “uninstall” feature in nearest future.

If there is any demand for “administrative” installation please email me. I can publish both versions.

2. I reviewed available SQL CE versions.

There are actually three releases: RTM, SP1, SP2.
MapleXp is linked agains SP1 but it should correctly load any of the other versions. If you had problem with this please drop me a line.

3. MapleXp is published in two .NET formats (native, 32-bit)

The 32-bit versions has a seperate shortcut in start menu. What is the difference?

On 32-bit windows there is no difference; both executable will be running as 32-bit apps.
On 64-bit windows the native image (default one) runs as 64-bit app, 32-bit image runs as 32-bit.

Who may need the 32-bit image then? Users who run MapleXp on 64-bit windows but have only 32-bit SQL CE installed. (RTM was only available as 32 bit). If this is not your case, don’t bother.

4. Changes in interface.

I decided to remove the “honor time quantum” checkbox which was available in the work items and tasks windows. Now you can see both values at the same time. For the tasks window it is the total/summary time; for the work items window these are 2 columns with duration.

I added some encoding to point out what current time quantum setting is. This is for example A/30S. How to decode it:

The first letter represents “calculation formula” and can be one of A (ANY = count each started unit), H (HALF = count if half if the unit passed), F (FULL = count only whole units).
After slash there is actual time quantum (in seconds or minutes).

Please enjoy!