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Yes, An Update

While I am not as active using VB6 for day to day work anymore, along the way my colleagues and I have needed to repackage some existing applications after bug fixes and just to cope with the changing Windows landscape. We've made a few changes since the last version posted and things look good.  I decided to post this update but please note that it has not been tested as thoroughly as most of the earlier releases! So be sure to test your MMM'ed applications packaged using MMM 0.12 thoroughly before releasing them. See the Change Log (Related\MMMChangeLog.txt) for details.  Here are the notable changes though: Another attempt to ... (read more)

Just some notes

I hope everyone is getting some use out of MMM or the various offshoot projects either based on it or inspired by it. My friend Jeff tells me there have been a few recent mentions of MMM in the forums and even the old Microsoft VB newgroups some folks are keeping alive.  He passed on a few comments I thought I might try to respond to: Beta.  All released versions of MMM were "beta" and there has never actually been a finished edition released into the wild as either source or object.  Much of that was related to some non-sharable source code it took a while to replace, but most of it was because a finished product was always meant ... (read more)

... There Is Another!

Another new MMM beta release, that is. I never expected to be doing this, but within just a very short time of posting my previous entry here on MMM and DPI Awareness my old buddy Jeff Smith (of Aunt Belle's) called and gave me an earfull. Better than just telling me how "full of it" I am, Jeff had test cases and a solution!   So I'm posting an 0.10 beta version with full source, and this will probably be the "final final" MMM release.  For those who have already forked 0.9 Final with your own improvements, there is only one change: the resource DPIAWARE was replaced and MMM was recompiled. The new package contains the ... (read more)

High-DPI Revisited

While I can't offer any sort of support anymore, remember that in the previous post here the final source code was made available.  This should allow people to locate and fix bugs they find or add new features. High-DPI Awareness Lately I've been buried in emails (most end up routed into a "MMM support issues" folder I rarely look at now) whinging on about problems with programs where the manifest had "High-DPI Aware" selected. I cannot reproduce any "bugs" in this myself though I'm not saying there aren't issues. But please note that it makes no sense to mark a program High-DPI Aware if it isn't! I direct you to the ... (read more)

PScript Portable Software Script Host

I am not in a position to do any more work on MMM right now, but I have cleaned up and repackaged a small utility that can be useful with "MMMed" programs meant to be run from portable media. Portable Applications One thing MMM is useful for is creating portable software in VB6. But what I have found is that some programs just work a lot better if their data is on the hard drive.  The performance is better, "wear" on flash memory drives is less, and for CD-based runs anything that needs to be altered in use (even if you don't need the updates afterward) just won't work on your source medium. I got sick of CMD/BAT files ... (read more)

MMM Source Now Freely Available

After a lot of work to get final clearance on all of the code used in MMM and to "clean room" replace everything else I could not get cleared, we're there. The most recent version of MMM can now be made available in source code form.  While still copyrighted, anyone is allowed to use it for their own purposes including derivitive works.  There is no source license and no promise of support at any level.  All other developers who worked on MMM over the years have signed off on this or their code has been replaced by all new code. Effectively you are free to do as you wish with the source aside from claiming that you wrote it ... (read more)

Fixing those SxS syntax errors in encoding

Well it seems as if more people are stumbling over problems when they use buggy libraries and package via MMM. I'm, pretty sure I've found the culprit: bad attempts at encoding illegal XML characters combined with very poor quality libraries you are trying to use. I won't mention names, you know who they are if you've had these troubles.  It seems that they've been creating libraries where there are typelib comment strings that are improperly terminated.  It looks like they think you can just slop your C string buffer in there and everyone will stop at the first NUL and ignore your buffer garbage.  Clearly somebody is using poor build tools ... (read more)

A Long Wait for a Small Update: MMM 0.8

Yes it has been a very long time since the last update.  And worse yet only a few changes are here.  I hope they help some of you though - and don't break anything you have been using! See the readme file for details. No, there is still no way to reload and rebuild from a saved .MMMP file.  This just isn't anything I've gotten back to for a long time, so only the most pressing issues I have fixes for are addressed.  I hope to get back to VB6 programming again on a regular basis someday, I agree it still has a lot of life left in it.  MMM has been working well for me on the occasions where I need to make a fix to one of my own ... (read more)

Hello Europe: MMM 0.7 is Here

There won't be a version 0.6.8 as suggested earlier.  For whatever reasons several people seem to want another version numbering scheme to be used, one that exposes the build number.  So now we're at MMM 0.7! New Version 0.7 I wasn't quite ready to put out a new MMM version but then over the past three days I got two bug reports I couldn't ignore. Both of these involved a problem with "comma as decimal point" in some international locales.  A very strange coincidence, but right after fixing this the first time a second report of the same problem came in.  This was enough to get me to pull a new release from the MMM codebase ... (read more)

ADOX 2.8 TypeLib in Vista SP2

Wow, it took me some time to notice it but Microsoft must have been listening. One of the headaches to watch for in Vista was that DAC 6.0 (and MDAC before that) was not including the compatibility typelibs for ADOX the way they do for ADO.  Suddenly I see we have an option now though: msadox28.tlb is there, which implies that msadox.dll now exposes both sets of interfaces. Now programs compiled on Win2k or WinXP against ADOX 2.8 should work under Vista SP2 unlike previously.  I had been changing my habits to use late binding for ADOX objects but someday (once all Vista in the world is at SP2?) I won't have to anymore.  We can hope that Win7 ... (read more)

Looking Toward 0.6.8 Soon

Early feedback has been full of small feature requests.  Some of these seem odd, like requests to make MMM into a general purpose resource editor or some sort of 24-bit color icon embedder.  Others are just off the wall, like asking that MMM support non-VB development tools (huh?).  Still others make a bit more sense, like requesting that MMM fully install as a development topol and add a "Package with MMM" shell verb for .VBP files. Other programming tools already offer their own ways to generate isolated applications.  MMM is targeted at VB6 to help make up for Microsoft's failure to support the community. Version 0.6.8 will ... (read more)

MMM 0.6.7 Ready For Testing

New Version 0.6.7 As described earlier MMM version 0.6.7 is ready for testing and use.  Download it here. While I have put it through some extensive testing nobody else has taken a look at it yet so there may be serious imperfections.  More importantly some application manifest XML changes have been made that might need further tweaking to avoid breaking cases that worked fine earlier.  Please report any problems, and fall back to version 0.6.6 if necessary. That may seem a little alarming, but everyone should keep in mind that MMM remains a work in progress.  There has never yet been a "final release" version at any ... (read more)

December Security Update woes continue

I see there is another attempt to release a Security Update to VB6 SP6: Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 Service Pack 6 Cumulative Update dated 5/4/2009.  See KB957924 for details. I have not tested it myself yet to determine whether it fixes the problems the earlier attempts have (breaking MSChart20.ocx for one thing, Winsock control for another).  However but I see that other users say it has not fixed the Winsock control that was also broken in earlier attempts. So far all of the problems I've seen look like bonehead "off by one" errors in the code. Thus I still recommend this "critical update" be avoided - almost 6 ... (read more)

Degraded progress: better than no progress?

Hello Again Yes, it has been quite some time since my last post here.  Progress has been disappointingly slow, probably for the same sorts of reasons you experience in your own projects: Other priorities such as family, health, finances in the present economy, and programming efforts with much higher priority. Laptop that was being used to squeeze in time to work on MMM died, it now appears permanently.  All I'll say is there is a brand of computer I won't trust again soon as well as a certain chipmaker. An amazingly large number of feature requests for MMM, and a few minor and serious glitches that finally have been ... (read more)

KB 926857 and KB 957924

I was able to confirm a problem another user uncovered in the MSChart20.ocx (version 6.0.98.13).

I am holding off installing the Security Update myself until we get further news, and I hope a corrected Update.

Servicing Reg-Free COM Applications: Ideas?

No news, but so far so good on MMM.  No new release ready yet I'm afraid, and it may be late February 2009 before we see one.  Sorry. For now: MMM 0.6.6 is still current. Servicing XCopy Deployments One of the issues we face when creating XCopy deployments with Registration-Free COM is a new challenge in servicing our applications. Installing applications conventionally means that we use a great many components stored in central locations locatable via the registry.  It also means that Windows Update, downloaded Microsoft patches, etc. all update our applications as a matter of course when users install them.  Not so for our ... (read more)

Version 0.6.6 does not expire

The new version of MMM has almost no changes except for eliminating the expiration date. As I mentioned previously this utility is now stable enough that I am no longer concerned about having seriously imperfect versions floating around in the field.  So to eliminate worries about relying on a tool that will stop working suddenly this feature has been taken out.  MMM is still incomplete and I still consider its status to be in extended beta test release.  I hope to produce a true 1.0 release by the second quarter of 2009. As with any new release I'd appreciate early feedback about any problems encountered so that I can get them ... (read more)

Upcoming release

There has been little activity on MMM for some months.  A new version will be posted by December 1st however, and while it will not contain many changes it will remove the time bomb from the program.  MMM is stable enough at this point that I feel quite comfortable doing this. No new features are expected to make the December release, and there is only one minor bug fix that should be fully tested and included by then.  Most users wil only notice very minor cosmetic changes.   The positive feedback has been very encouraging.  I hope to have some time to get the two major new features finished: online Help and command line ... (read more)

MMM's Monolithic Manifest

One of the oddities of current versions of MMM is its flat manifest.  This might seem particularly confusing if you've tried to peruse the sparse documentation on side-by-side manifests and roll your own.  Most of the material available from Microsoft talks about the use of application manifests that reference secondary assembly manifests.  In the most general cases this goes further, with assembly manifests referencing subassembly manifests ad infinitum. One purpose of this is to foster modularity and reusability.  In the general case you would produce a catalog of assemblies with their own manifests and just plug them into new ... (read more)

Isolating the DHTMLEdit control: Vista

A few people have asked me what to do about the DHTMLEdit control.  This was pulled from Windows Vista for several security reasons but a version for applications (not Web pages) was re-released as a Vista add-in. DHTML Editing Control for Applications Redistributable Package (x86) I'm not sure of the implications of using MMM to isolate this component on a pre-Vista machine and then carrying your XCopy package to a Vista system.  What does seem to work is to install the package above into a Vista development machine and isolate it there.  The result seems to work fine in Windows XP SP3, but I haven't tested other OSs yet. Note that MMM will ... (read more)

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