Skip to main content

A Plethora of Updates to the Site and the Tool

First and foremost, you'll notice that I've moved the tool itself to regexhero.net/tester. I've contemplated this move for awhile. On one hand, it was convenient that the home page contained the tool itself. On the other hand, it was a little slow to load for a home page, and a little off-putting for new visitors coming to the site who don't have Silverlight installed. The new home page is much smaller and faster to load to alleviate some of that first-load anxiety.

The other difference is that I now have a reference page. This should be handy to pull up in a separate browser while you're using Regex Hero and need a quick regex reference. It's pretty short & sweet right now, but I will be working to improve and expand this page to become a more complete reference.

As for the tool itself, I made some more improvements. I've made the auto-saving feature a little more aggressive. I was noticing cases where it wouldn't save. So when you close the tool and bring it back up again you lose what you were working on. I think I resolved that.

And then I've added a couple buttons to the top-right corner of the tool. You'll notice the "Generate Code" and "Full Screen" buttons. The Full Screen button is obvious -- it'll toggle full-screen mode. The Generate Code button is a more useful feature for those writing .NET applications. It'll actually generate a .NET snippet of code based on your regular expression, target string, options, and settings. Then you can copy & paste that code into your own application.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Installer for Desktop version of Regex Hero

As Firefox just dropped support for Silverlight I really needed a solution for Regex Hero. So I created an installer for it. It's still Silverlight, but by using the installer you can install it directly to your computer and never need to open it in a browser. If you visit regexhero.net/tester and don't have a browser that supports Silverlight (IE is the only one left), then you'll see download links for 64-bit and 32-bit versions of the installer. When you install it you'll see a link over on the right hand side that says "Activate Regex Hero". This process connects your desktop version of Regex Hero with your online account. So if you're a licensed user this is how you'll gain access to all of those licensed features. Note: Currently there will be a security warning when you try to run either one of these installers. I'm in the process of obtaining a code signing certificate and will update them as soon as possible. You may be wondering a...

Regex Hero Professional is Now Free

Regex Hero is now completely free!  I've been working on this tool off and on for the past 8 years. I spent a lot of time making it very powerful and easy for developers to create efficient regular expressions. Throughout most of this time it's been a paid product. However, with the added pressure of other free tools out there getting better all the time, I've finally decided to make Regex Hero free as well. Enjoy! Try Regex Hero at http://regexhero.net/tester/

Upcoming HTML5 / JavaScript Version of Regex Hero

In the next few months I'll be working on a JavaScript version of Regex Hero. The need to do this comes from the fact that Chrome has dropped support for Silverlight. It's also not supported by the new Microsoft Edge web browser. So the pressure is mounting. Forgive me for not doing something about this sooner. I've had a very busy and exciting year. Recently I moved to a new city and just a few weeks ago I got married. Nonetheless, my plans are to make Regex Hero better than ever and usable on more browsers and devices than ever. Fortunately, there now exists Javascript libraries that'll emulate the .NET framework (even the .NET Regex Class library). The Regex Class library is the main thing I really need to build Regex Hero in JavaScript. JavaScript wasn't an option 6 years ago when I first built Regex Hero in Silverlight. But now that it is, I'm excited about it. I will post updates on this blog as the new development progresses.