DevBriefcase was originally designed to provide Software Developers a quick and easy way to back up their development projects. From that standpoint, the name DevBriefcase may tend to limit the perceived power and usability of the program. Although it has many features, which are especially valuable to the Developer, its functionality provides an extremely powerful and automatic method of saving any type of file or directory of files at pre-scheduled intervals.

DevBriefcase was designed to make automatic, compressed backup of Projects, Files, or Directories as simple and flexible as possible. For developers (C++ and Visual Basic), a Project file or group file (.vbp, .vbg, .dsp, .dsw, .mak) can be selected, dropped, or pasted to DevBriefcase and it will automatically pick up all of the files that make up the project or group, regardless of whether the project files are found in the same directory as the project file.

DevBriefcase's Main Form is shown below. All of it's features can be invoked by Copy and Paste, Drag and Drop, Menu, Popup Menu, or Tool Bar Buttons.

Power Features

AutoSave
DevBriefcase provides a powerful feature, called AutoSave, that allows a user to set up a StackList of files, directories, and in the case of DevBriefcase, projects and project groups, for automatic saving. The stacked objects can be saved either by time interval or on shutdown of the program, which could be shutdown of the computer.

File Cycling
File Cycling means that the same file name can be saved multiple times by appending "[-n]" to the file name. ZipBriefcase creates Cycled Files like "Filename[-1].zip, Filename[-2].zip,.." The user can select as many cycles of a file as desired, to a limit of 999. The "[-1]" will always be the most recent save, "[-2]" is the next most recent, etc. Of course, all of the cycling is handled automatically by DevBriefcase.

Automatic Creation of Self-Extracting Executables
In addition being able to create a Self-Extracting Executable, DevBriefcase and ZipBriefcase can automatically create the S. E. Executable, as a by-product of creating a Zip File. The dialogs, from which zipping is set up, contain options that allow you to create either a Zip file or Self-Extracting Exe., or both, obviating the requirement to run a separate program to create the S. E. Exe.

Automatic Attachment to Email
After creating a Zip or SE Exe, the files can automatically be attached to Email, simply by clicking the Email Option when selecting the output file destination and options. Checking this option will display your Email Dialog, with the files already attached, once the files are packaged.

Show History
ShowHistory is a feature, which allows you to quickly see the history of changes to a file, from all of the zip files in your Default Zip Directory Structure.

Zip Manager
Zip Manager is a feature, which will be available in DevBriefcase, which allows you to view all of your archives, in an Explorer like window. From this window, you can run reports, delete, move, copy, rename, peruse, freshen, and exercise many other features on your archives. Zip Manager will be released in DevBriefcase 1.03 in late April, and will be a free upgrade to all current users of DevBriefcase

Monitored Save
Monitored Save is one of the most powerful features of DevBriefcase and ZipBriefcase. This feature provides monitoring of files and directories, and will save a file any time it is changed. Once the archive bit is set on a qualifying file, denoting that it has been modified, the file will automatically be zipped. Of course, file cycling can be used, allowing any number of cycles of the file to be saved.

This feature is especially useful where a user is updating a database file multiple times in a day and needs to ensure that the file is saved between major updates.

Auto Unzip to Zip File Directory
You can now have true, one click Drag and Drop Unzipping, with no further intervention. Set the Auto Unzip Preference, and Drag or Paste a Zip file, and it is automatically unzipped in the directory in which the Zip file exists.

Copy Files in Explorer and Paste to DevBriefcase
The user can copy files in the Windows Explorer to the Clipboard. Then the files may be pasted by a right mouse click on DevBriefcase's Icon or List View.

Launch or View Selected File
Unlike other compression utilities, DevBriefcase provides the choice between Launching, or Viewing, a file that is selected in the List View of the main form. Also there are several ways of Launching, or Viewing, the selected file, as enumerated below:

• Launch and View Toolbar buttons will respectively Launch or load the selected file into a Viewer.
• Right clicking the mouse on a file in the List View, will display a popup menu, which contains both the Launch and View options. Clicking the respective menu option will invoke the respective function.
• On the Preferences Menu, Launch or View can be set as the default option to invoke when the user double clicks a file in the List View. Once this preference is set, a double click on a file will invoke the preferred function.

Drag and Drop
Several types of objects can be dropped on DevBriefcase's Icon or List View. Once the objects are dropped, a dialog form will be displayed to allow the user to select the destination zip file and the compression options. The options listed below can be dropped.

• A Single File, such as a database (.MDB) file that is changed daily, can be automatically saved daily by DevBriefcase.
• Multiple files dragged from the Windows Explorer.
• A directory can be dragged from the Windows Explorer and dropped. This will cause DevBriefcase to save all files in the dropped directory, and optionally all sub directories under the dropped directory.
• If you purchase DevBriefcase, and develop software using C++ or Visual Basic, you can drag and drop a C++/VB project file (.mak, .vbp, .dsp), or a group file (.vbg, .dsw). If a project file is dropped, DevBriefcase will set up to save all of the files listed in the dropped project file. If a group file is dropped, all projects and their associated files will be saved.
• For Visual Basic Projects, if DevBriefcase finds that a file in a project, is not located in the same directory, as the project file, the file will be picked up, and a copy of the project file will be created, that points to the file as being in the default directory. This way, when the project is unzipped on another computer, the file will be found in the same directory as the project file. The new copy of the project file will have a suffix of "_u" (project_u.vbp) so that it does not overlay the original project file. This situation occurs, occasionally, when a file is saved, and without noticing it, the common dialog is sometimes pointing at VB's default directory instead of at the directory in which the project and all of it's other files are saved. Consequently, if only the project directory is copied, and moved to another computer, the file saved incorrectly in the VB directory will be missing.

Hide in System Tray
Since DevBriefcase must be running all of the time in order to Auto Save at timed intervals, it will normally be minimized. Minimized programs usually take up space on the Task Bar. DevBriefcase has an option (default), which can be turned on or off in the Options Dialog, which will place its icon in the system tray (right end of Task Bar) when it is minimized. Right clicking on the Icon in the System Tray will cause a Popup Menu to be displayed, which will allow you to Close, Normalize the program, or initiate AutoSave.