Mouse Odometer Copyright (C) Moose O'Malley, -------------- March 2015. +===========================================================+ | T A B L E O F C O N T E N T S | +===========================================================+ | * Introduction | * Using Mouse Odometer | * The Future | * Reviews / Awards / CDs | * Freeware Information | * Warranty | * Amendment History | * Contacting the Program's Author +===========================================================+ Introduction : -------------- Mouse Odometer is for IBM compatible PCs, desktops, laptops, netbooks, etc running any version of Windows from Windows 95 onwards, which includes Windows 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP, Vista, 7, 8, 10, etc, 32 and 64 bit. This program is free software. Anyone - any person, any company, or any business - can use this program for free. No fees or payment is required. See "Freeware Information" below. Mouse Odometer is a "for fun" program that simply keeps track of : - Your mouse cursor movement and converts this to a total distance travelled in Kilometers by the mouse cursor, based on the screen resolution and size of your current display. - And the number of left and right mouse clicks. At the moment, the mouse movement is monitored 20 times per second. In Mouse Odometer's Settings Screen, you can enter your viewable screen width and viewable screen height to make the distance calculations as accurate as possible. Developed using 32-bit Delphi. This program will **NOT** run under Windows 3.x (even with Win32 installed) !! Using Mouse Odometer : ---------------------- To use Mouse Odometer, simply run the program and then let it do it's mouse monitoring and measuring. When Mouse Odometer is run, it is auto-minimised to the Windows TrayBar (with the clock, etc) on start-up and whenever the program is minimised. The icon for Mouse Odometer in Windows TrayBar is the "mouse with red legs and black shoes". Double click on this icon to open Mouse Odometer's window, or right-mouse click on the icon and select a menu option from the pop-up menu. The program keeps monitoring mouse movement and counting mouse clicks even when it is minimised or iconised. Use the settings screen to enter your viewable screen size in centimeters, which is used in converting pixels to Kilometers when calculating the movement distance. The Future : ------------ In the future, many improvements could be made to this program, such as : - Enable the user to specify how often to check for mouse movement. At the moment, the mouse movement is monitored 5 times per second. - Improved accuracy - does anyone need their mouse monitored more than 20 times per second ? - Add in forecasting to estimate how far the mouse will move in a year at the current movement rates. - Add in averages for the Km or Miles moved per hour since monitoring was first started. - Monitoring on middle (3rd) mouse button clicks. - Mouse wheel movement monitoring. - Anything else ? If you would like any of these improvements, or would like to suggest more, please email me and let me know. As with all of my shareware programs, how much more work I do on this program depends entirely on what support I get, how many people use the program, etc. None of my programs are perfect - I am the first to admit that. I have ideas for improvements and enhancements for all of my shareware. How much I improve things and when depends on the support I receive for my hard work. Reviews / Awards / CDs : ------------------------- None so far. Freeware Information : ----------------------- This is free software. Anyone - any person, any company, or any business - can use this program for free. No fees or payment is required. However, if you find the program useful, then please consider making a PayPal donation to support my efforts. (To make a donation, please run the program and select the "About" option under the Help menu, and then click the PayPal link on the "About" screen). Warranty : ---------- This software and the accompanying files are provided "as is" and without warranties as to performance or merchantability or any other warranties whether expressed or implied. The user assumes the entire risk of using this software. If you do find any faults with this program, email me and let me know. Amendment History : -------------------- Vers Date Description 1.0 14-Apr-2000 First Public Release. (5,285 lines of code / comments.) 1.1 10-Jan-2001 Make the Font bigger. Improve the display. Add in Left and Right Mouse Click counting. Add in "Always On Top" menu option / functionality. (7,180 lines of code / comments.) 1.2 17-Apr-2001 Add in support for "Big Fonts" and "Other Sized Fonts" - with these Windows resizes the windows automatically - but only sometimes and it doesn't always do it right, so now I make sure my main window is the right size before doing any scaling, etc. i.e. I make it fit the component(s) that extend the furthest right and furthest down the form. See the Start Menu -> Settings -> Control Pannel -> Display -> Settings Tab -> "Advanced" button -> "General" tab for your PC's settings in this area. Bring program up-to-date with my latest code libraries. Thousands seperator in the mouse clicks (its amazing how quickly you click a mouse button a few thousand times !!). (8,168 lines of code / comments.) 1.3 13-Oct-2001 Add in a comma seperated on the number of mouse clicks. Add in support for *huge* numbers. The program now handles up to 9,223,372,036,854,775,807 (~2^63) mouse button clicks - yep, that's 9.2 Exa clicks folks !! - and up to 10^308 kilometers travelled (the diameter of the entire Milky Way galaxy is only 10^17 kilometers) - so, these huge numbers should hopefully be enough for everyone ... ;)) After a year of using this program, I am already up to 200,000+ mouse clicks, so at this rate, this program should be useful for more than 650 billion lifetimes of mouse measuring before the numbers start at zero again !! If any immortals feel that these numbers are still too limited, let me know !! ;)) Add in "Restore Factory Defaults" menu option. Brand New About Screen and associated functionality. Add in support for the Maximise icon in the top right corner of the program's main window. Enable the program to live on the Windows 95, 98, NT, 2000, etc tray bar. (8,997 lines of code / comments.) 1.4 07-Nov-2001 Output distance travelled correct to 8 decimal places which is the resolution of my current measurements. (The previous 10 decimal places were overkill). Add in support for Metric (centimeters, kilometers) and Imperial (inches, miles) units of measure. (9,738 lines of code / comments.) 1.4b 20-Nov-2002 Bring the program up to date with my latest code libraries. (30,256 lines of code / comments.) 1.5 07-Mar-2003 Remove the Tray Icon functionality, which was clashing with the ability to run the program minimised, normal, or maximised on startup. (Thanks to Thomas B for reporting this problem). Bring the program up to date with my latest code libraries. (46,659 lines of code / comments.) 1.6 30-June-2003 Add in support for all of the various Windows Regional Settings for floating point numbers. i.e. Allow people to use something other than a full stop as the decimal point, and something other than a comma as a 1,000's separator. Bring the program up to date with my latest code libraries. (46,848 lines of code / comments.) 1.6f 3-Sep-2007 This program is now FREEWARE - see "Freeware Information" above. 1.7f 2-Mar-2015 Auto-minimise Mouse Odometer to Windows TrayBar (with the clock, etc) on start-up and whenever the program is minimised. The icon for Mouse Odometer in Windows TrayBar is the "mouse with red legs and black shoes". Just double click on this icon to open Mouse Odometer's window, or right-mouse click on the icon and select a menu option from the pop-up menu. Greetings to "Morc" who requested this TrayBar functionality earlier today. Add exception handling to the loading and saving of program settings (INI file) so that the program executes and exits cleanly (no error messages produced) even if running from a read-only device such as a optical disk (CD-ROM, etc) or there are disk errors or the disk is full and/or the INI file does not exist and/or it cannot be created. Bring the program up to date with my latest code libraries. (770 lines of code / comments / blank lines in primary source file.) (32,435 lines of code / comments / blank lines in all primary, library, and include files.) If this program was not downloaded from my Home Page, then it is possibly an old version. The latest version of this program is available from my WEB page - see below. Mike "Moose" O'Malley ____________________________________________________ Moose's Software Valley - Established July, 1996. WEB: http://moosevalley.fhost.com.au/ ____________________________________________________