Archived News from Rob van der Woude's Scripting Pages, 2018 Q2

Home
News
FAQ
Search
Scripting Languages
- Batch Files
- C#
  - Getting Started
  - C# Code Snippets
  - Examples
  - Development Software
  - Books
- KiXtart
  - Getting Started
  - Examples
  - Links
  - Tools
  - Books
- Perl
  - Getting Started
  - Examples
  - Links
  - Tools
- PowerShell
- Regular Expressions
  - Getting Started
  - Expressions
  - Examples
  - Links
  - Tools
  - Books
- Rexx
  - Getting Started
  - Examples
  - OS/2 LAN Server
  - Links
  - Tools
  - Books
- VBScript & WSH
Technologies
- WMI
- ADSI
  - Getting Started
  - Links
  - Tools
  - Books
- Silent Installs
Books
Scripting Tools
Miscellaneous
About This Site
- Disclaimer
- News
- FAQ
- Search
- What's New
- Objective
- Advertising
- Privacy Policy
- Site Policy
- Credits
- The Making Of...
- Contact
- Failed Mail
- Donate

News Archives 2018 Q2

• Robert Van Etta notified me that Windows 10's CMD console has built-in ANSI features.
Those features were missing in Windows NT 4 through Windows 8.1.
Robert even wrote a demo batch file showing a "bouncing snake" to demonstrate the ANSI features.
This batch file uses FORFILES to generate the Escape characters, very smart!

Thanks Robert

• BirdName.exe has been updated: I had to adapt the regular expression used to read the list of supported languages from Wikipedia, to correctly handle Wikipedia's changed HTML source code.

• Besides 16 unwanted Silverlight updates, Windows Update presented 33 unwanted language packs too after my recent Windows Update crash.
So I took the code of DisableSilverlightUpdates.vbs and adapted it to create DisableLanguagePackUpdates.vbs.
Unlike DisableSilverlightUpdates.vbs, DisableLanguagePackUpdates.vbs has an optional command line switch /X to exclude some language pack(s) from being hidden.

• I had to fix an error in Windows Update, resulting in all previously hidden optional updates being offered once more.
I had hidden all Silverlight updates, having no intention to use or even install it.
However, Silverlight comes in 16 optional update packages, each of which has to be hidden separately.
I'm lucky to have found a script to automatically hide all Silverlight updates by Tony Marques.
Tony's script was written in JScript, I translated it into VBScript: DisableSilverlightUpdates.vbs.

Thanks Tony

• I used to maintain several different custom search engines to search for scripts on my site.
They have now all been replaced by a single "scriptless" custom search engine, powered by StartPage.com.
The new custom search engine will display its query in the URL of the results page, so you can use that URL to save your queries.