Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Universal Add-in Manager


This program's objective is to manage add-ins for those programs that don't provide a good plugin manager, that allows you to remove or disable the extras at any time. Universal Add-in Manager (UAM) will allow you to do so, either the add-ins are organized in folders or all together.


UAM calls each set of files you add a pack, so, usually, you create a pack for each add-in. Packs are organized in groups, so that you can manage add-ins from different programs, all in the same place.
To know more about how it works, visit the software tab or read the rest of the post.



Manual (sort of)

The interface is centered in the main list-view, surrounded by buttons that cover the various possible actions.
The buttons are separated in three categories, the group buttons, pack buttons and general buttons

The general buttons are just the basic things, exit, about and preferences. You must visit the preferences as you start using the program, to set where is the library folder, the place where the disabled packs will be moved to.

The group buttons are used to manage groups, create, edit and remove, and of course the combo-box to change group. When you create a group, you set its name and default folder, which is the default base folder for your packs (explained next). It is not a mandatory field as you can change the path for each pack, but it's useful to have the right path as default (you don't have to write it down every time). The remove button does not delete any file, it only removes the entry from the database. To delete files, use the delete button in the packs group.
The pack buttons include the pack management actions, this is new, edit, remove, delete. When creating a new pack, you must set its name and select two folders. The first is the place where the files will be moved to, usually the path to the add-in folder. It will be already filled with the default folder of the group, but it's ok to change it. The second path is the temporary folder where you have the add-in files. The program will move the files, including folder structure, to the first folder, and include the files in the database.
The edit button will allow you to change the name of the pack and its folder. The remove button will remove the pack from the database but leave the files where they are. The delete button will delete the files and remove them from the database. Both these two buttons will affect only selected packs (not the checkbox, I mean, the entire row is selected).
The checkboxes in each row allow you to enable or disable packs, this is, if the checkbox is checked, it's enabled, otherwise it's disabled, and has been moved to the library folder. You can change the state of packs by changing the state of the checkboxes. Just remember to click apply to make your changes effective, before you do any other action or change group.


 

A few extra notes

The so called database is a simple xml file, so it is simple to edit manually, if necessary. Just take care, as some fields are case sensitive.
Your feedback is most appreciated, my e-mail is theflyingchariot@gmail.com.