Javascript Plus!, an advanced editor for javascript files.
Luis Leonardo Nuñez Ibarra. Year 2005. email: [email protected].
Chilean, married, I have 2 children. Video game and table tennis fan. My first computer was a Talent MSX that my dad bought me back in 1985. On it I took my first steps playing games like Galaga and PacMan and then programming in MSX-BASIC.
Currently my area of knowledge is related to .NET technologies with more than 15 years of experience developing several web pages using ASP.NET with SQL Server and Oracle databases. Technology integrator, service development, desktop applications.
JavaScript Plus was a text editor for JavaScript created by me back in 2004. The project was distributed as shareware and is now released for study and available to the community. It was written in Visual Basic 6.0 using mainly many libraries created by the website http://www.vbaccelerator.com and adapted to the project.
This project occupies 33 ActiveX components
The PVB_XMENU.DLL file is a custom component so that the menus can apply icons and help at the time of selection.
It must be done from the windows command line regsvr32.exe [component name] For Windows 10 you will need to install with administrator permissions.
If you get a component license error when executing the project, you may need to install the Visual Basic 5 runtime (MSCVBM50.DLL) and download the VB5CLI.EXE and VBUSC.EXE files, both available on the Internet for download. This will fix VB5 component licensing issues.
I would like to share with you this story that can be motivational for more than one person who wants to start with an idea and doesn't know how to start. Many years ago I worked as an external resource at the AFP Habitat in the Pedro de Valdivia metro. As it was external we were almost "shit" unlike those who work for the AFP. In that AFP the IT floor was on the 10th floor and they worked with a language that a guy there called IUX had invented.
It was a language like XML supported by javascript that was more tangled than shit with which they built portals for the AFP. At that time I didn't know javascript and if we had to ask questions about how to do something we had to ask the "interns" who had little or nothing to do with us. Furthermore, we had the internet blocked and the work environment was not very friendly. Faced with this situation, I was forced, so to speak, to develop my own editor for the Javascript language in my free time and at home (back in 2005) in Visual Basic 6. It turns out that the editor began to be of interest in my area colleagues who gave me ideas and suggestions on how to improve it.
At the end of that year, I received a job opportunity at Banco de Chile on State Street and I left that shitty workplace. I continued working in my free time and at night when everyone at home was already in bed on ideas and improvements for my editor. An acquaintance suggested that I develop it in English, upload my own portal (.cl) and sell it in "shareware" format (test before using). He already had a utility vehicle that he sold in that format and it was doing quite well.
To keep it short, I converted the entire application to English, created a .cl and found out the sales channels in the USA for shareware software developers. I channeled the sale through REGNOW, which collected a certain amount that you could configure and notified you of the payment, the commission on the sales and the deposit of the money from the USA to your national checking account. Look for all the software distribution portals in that format and upload my application, the description, download link, images, the type of trial, value of the software, etc... Versions 1 and 2 were literally shit.
Zero sales until one day I received an email from a guy from Belgium who told me that he tested programs and that he saw that my software had potential but that many things had to be corrected and improved. If I wanted, he could give me his help as a beta tester at no cost. I worked for about 3 months redoing the entire interface, correcting errors, ideas and improvements that the guy was giving me in order to improve the application. Due to the time difference with Europe, we only coincided with a certain night time here in Chilito.
Released version 3 of my application, what was my surprise that the next day in the morning I had 4 purchase orders pending processing and I did not even have any algorithm or anything to carry out the trial of the application. So Chilean style I generated a full version, a little basic documentation on how to install and how to access the "full" sector of my software. Then came several versions, improvements, new ideas and more sales. My software named "JavaScript Plus!" I sold it for 45 USD and earned about $2,000,000 pesos in sales in 5 years. (My website lasted until 2010).
The story is a little long, but as you will see with effort, patience, perseverance, perseverance anything is possible.
Finally, to this day I still use it for some things in particular in my work. It was developed entirely in VisuaL Basic 6.0 with the .dll libraries from the site www.vbaccelerator.com which for me was one of the best and most advanced sites dedicated to VB of my time.
I hope you liked my story.
The project ended in 2010 due to lack of time, low sales and the useful life of the application. I must be grateful for everything I learned with him, the many nights I went to bed late, the cold winter of that year, especially 2005, and the countless cups of tea I drank.... xD
I currently use for my personal purposes a "LITE" edition of the application called "Javascript Studio". This version is more simplified and lighter than the last previous version.
Javascript Plus! It was hosted on the website http://www.vbsoftware.cl. This site name originally came from a personal project that I had called "vbproject" and of which I was very enthusiastic about the basic visual language from version 4 to 6. This site is currently "taken over" on NIC by someone else. Curiously, it uses the application as a promotion on its site but it has a direct link to casino games. I don't feel like starting any kind of fight or legal dispute over the name of the site. Curious that they have the project as a reference in this one. Perhaps as an experience they take care of their websites or register their brand.
Javascript Plus! It is not a registered trademark name and I would expect it to remain as is. At the time I did research on the "legal" issue of trademark and patent registration but it was cumbersome and expensive for me at the time. I do not know if this will remain the same today or if the application registration process has been simplified. If you are reading this it is so that you learn from someone who did everything that is written, learn from him and perhaps it will serve as inspiration for your project.
To use the sales channel, use the one provided by the company http://www.regnow.com. You have to set up an account, indicate the deposit information of the destination account and request the bank for a transaction number to authorize international deposits. Then in your regnow account you configure how often you want the deposits to arrive (in my case they were every 200 USD).
Regnow gives you the entire sales and payment processing channel. You only receive the transactions carried out. At that time, regnow charged me 10% of each sale.
For promotion channels, there are many and varied websites that offer you to promote your product in many ways. Some are free and others improve your search position by making a payment. Some editor reviews your software and rates it with "stars" as appropriate. At that time I looked for many software distribution portals and uploaded the information.
The information was uploaded using the PAD application which allowed you to configure several common parameters in the software distribution portals or you had to enter all the values "by hand" as appropriate.
The installation process was carried out using the Inno Setup Script Wizard application (https://jrsoftware.org/isinfo.php) which generated the entire script and installation process of all the application files. Then the application "compiles" your project into a setup.exe file which performs all the typical traditional steps of a software installer.
For the application trial validation process, the project has a flag within the conditional compilation options. This parameter is called LITE. If it has a value of 1 at the time of compilation, then it was the trial version and the application was allowed to be used up to 30 times. After that number, the user was invited to purchase the application and its use was blocked. The method to avoid possible hacks or cracks used the following trick:
The executable application was "signed" with a small program written in visual basic that adds an "additional" signature to the executable file. Later in the validation process, these extra bytes were validated in order to avoid any alteration in the file.
Then the execution process for the first time installs 10 files in the windows/system directory of the system and then via the windows api it changes the creation date. The names were like system files so as not to generate suspicion. The loading process validated the existence of those 10 files. If one did not exist then it was a possible hack/cracking attempt on the application and it would not start.
For the paid version, the user was asked to create a file called "reguser.ini" in which it simply had the value of the user's name. Then the application detects internally when this file is registered and in addition the installer of the "registered" executable came with an additional file called "license.dat" which contained encoded in base64 Pablo Neruda's poem "Die Slowly". If the reading of the file matched the "encoded" poem then it was a valid version, otherwise it was not valid for execution.
The project is built using various technologies of the time. I highlight the main ones:
To generate the application's help file (.HLP) I used a program called HelpWriter32. Which was a very helpful editor and file generator. These were compiled from a .rtf file.
It was very interesting to generate all the program documentation using the help files. The utility and compiler comes in the Visual Basic 6 distribution, I think in a folder called utils...
This application has software components from http://www.vbaccelerator.con and http://www.planetsourcecode.com
Interface
Interfaz moderna como Microsoft Visual Studio .NET
Interfaz de documentos múltiples
Familiar MS Officeź pestañas de estilo
Panel dividido
Text editor
Numeración de líneas
Ajuste de línea
Múltiples niveles Deshacer/Rehacer
Buscar y reemplazar con soporte de expresiones regulares
Buscar en archivos
Code syntax highlighting
Resaltado de sintaxis JavaScript
Resaltado de sintaxis HTML
Writing HTML code
Inspector de código para etiquetas HTML
Autocompletar para etiquetas HTML
Generadores de etiquetas HTML
Selector de color HTML
Explorador de código HTML
12 asistentes HTML
Writing JavaScript code
Autocompletar para objetos JavaScript
Sugerencias de la función JavaScript
Explorador de funciones JavaScript
Navegador de objetos JavaScript
18 JavaScript Plus! Asistentes (Integrados)
Connectivity Features
Abrir documentos desde el servidor HTTP
Abrir/guardar documentos desde/a un servidor FTP
Code preview
Vista previa en el Navegador Externo (sin guardar el archivo)
Productivity tools
Portapapeles de varios elementos
Explorador de archivos incorporado
Biblioteca de códigos
Validación HTML usando HTML Tidy
Navegador de etiquetas HTML
Navegador de objetos JavaScript
Validación de JavaScript usando JSLint
Help and reference
Referencia JavaScript
Referencia HTML 4.0
Referencia CSS
Ordenado Referencia
Referencia JSLint
Benefits for professionals
Edite HTML, JavaScript en un solo programa
Carga limpia, ligera y rápida
Interfaz familiar que permite un arranque rápido
Todas las funciones esenciales de edición de código están en su lugar
Editor de texto, menús, barras de herramientas y teclas de acceso directo totalmente personalizables
Reutilizar eficientemente fragmentos de código comunes
Pocos clic clic FTP subir o actualizar
Benefits for students
Fácil de aprender y usar
Varias plantillas y fragmentos de código
Asistentes HTML y JavaScript de inicio rápido
Ayuda a aprender HTML, JavaScript e incluso algunos scripts
Main Features
Construido con JavaScript y HTML Autocompletar.
Incluye la referencia completa de JavaScript y la guía básica 1.3, 1.4 y 1.5.
Incluye referencia completa HTML, CSS, DOM y JSCRIPT.
FTP integrado.
Construya su propio proyecto personalizado “JavaScript Plus!”
Incluye 18 JavaScript Plus! Asistentes (Agregar a Favoritos, Calendario, Menú de Países, Barra de desplazamiento de colores, Menú desplegable, Enlace de correo electrónico, Asistente de IFrame, Transferencia de imagen, Última fecha modificada, Menú izquierdo, Metaetiqueta, Enlaces de texto MouseOver, Ventana emergente, Transición de página, Menú emergente, Menú TabMenu y TreeMenu, SlideShow)
Navegador de objetos integrado. Explore todos los objetos javascript, métodos, propiedades de una manera fácil.
Expanda el entorno utilizando plugins. Cree su propio plugin usando activex dll. JavaScript Plus! incluye un esqueleto de muestra de Visual Basic 6.0 para crear sus propios plugins.
Previsualice su archivo en el navegador. JavaScript Plus! es compatible con Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox,
Netscape y Opera.
Soportes de macros.