Monday 27 November 2017

E2B v1.97d BETA available

New version available from the Alternate Downloads Areas (in both self-extracting .exe and .zip form in case of false-positive virus detection issues).

Changes from v1.96A

  • Make_E2B.exe - Extract button now works even if no USB drive detected and not run as admin, now warns that user will require WinHelper USB Flash drive for WIndows Install ISOs if using Fixed Disk
  • Desinfect 2017 sample .mnu file added
  • Fix $Default E2B Menu.cfg by adding !BAT to prevent initial error message after using PimpMydrive.cmd (bugfix).
  • Snappy SDIO .cfg file changed to suppress GNU licence EULA on first run + later version
  • Change to all menus and language files - menu help text now does not have leading space at start of each help line. 
  • New hstart and hwidth parameters can be set in MyE2B.cfg to set the x start offset and width of the menu help text. 
  • 'No !BAT string in MyE2B.cfg' error message suppressed if no MyE2B.cfg file exists (bugfix).
  • Small bugfix to E2B_Editor and it now lists both .bmp and .jpg files in open file dialog by default.
  • New grub4dos version. String command bugfix in grub4dos and other small bugs fixed. New setmenu draw-box command added.
  • CENTREHD code revised for better menu heading centering.
  • Small \_ISO\SampleBackround.jpg file added for use with E2B_Editor.
  • DrawBox.cfg theme added
The main change from v1.97c is that we have a new beta version of grub4dos that can draw lines and boxes directly onto the menu. More info here.

The new version also allows you to position the menu entry help text (usually positioned just under the menu box) to anywhere you like using the new hstart and hwidth variables,

The grub4dos string command also allows you to write text to any position on the screen.

So you can use the MyE2B.cfg file (for instance) to directly add lines, boxes and text to all the menus without needing to modify the wallpaper .jpg\.bmp file.

This would be especially useful if the text you wanted to display on the menu changed over time (such as the date) or changed from system to system (such as the amount of RAM present - see screenshot below).

BoxDemo

I have also added a 'BoxDemo' .cfg file to the demo Themes folders, so you can get an idea:


  • Move Help text area
  • Draw box around help text and label as 'HELP'
  • Write 'STRING ANd BOX DEMO' to display and underline the text with a line
  • Write copyright notice to bottom-right of screen
  • Write total RAM and CPU bitness at the side of the menu (4523MB 64-bit)
If you have use 'PimpMyDrive.cmd' to add the extra .mnu files, you should see the new theme listed by the Change Theme menu entry.

Note: Because there are only 4 lines of help text available, you should keep the line width quite long to allow for long lines. For this reason, using a narrow width area for the help text is not recommended.

There is no way to limit the help text to less than 4 lines (except to modify all the .txt and .mnu files and language files!), however you can completely remove all help text by setting the menu position to below the bottom of the screen (e.g. y position > 36 for 800x600). Alternatively, if the colour of the help text matches the colour of the background wallpaper that it overlays, then it will not be seen.

CENTREHD variable

The other change is that the way menu headings are positioned...
HEADPOS is the absolute YYXX start coordinate of the menu headings which you can change in the MyE2B.cfg file. Now the XX value part of HEADPOS is automatically set to 00 by E2B if you use the CENTREHD variable to automatically centre menu headings.

Typically, CENTREHD will be set to 1 if you want E2B to auto-centre all headings, or not set at all (set CENTREHD=) if you don't want the headings centred.

The documentation on the E2B site has changed to reflect this here.

These new changes should make it easier to position menu headings and help text, however if you have designed your own MyE2B.cfg configuration file, you may find that you will need to tweak the settings slightly.

If you ran 'PimpMyDrive.cmd' previously, please run it again after updating to v1.97d to ensure the .mnu files are updated.



Please report any bugs!

If you spot a bug or any compatibility problems, please let me know.
You can quickly revert back to a previous version of E2B by running Update_E2B_Drive from the an earlier E2B download.

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