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About DirectConsole

About DirectConsole
I got the initial idea for DirectConsole one day when I was visiting Grays Harbor College. I wanted to work on my website from a computer in the lab, but I found there was no way to access the command prompt. It had been disabled by the system administrator. All I wanted to do was use the console FTP program to do some file uploading. This was back in early 1999.

That's when I had the idea for DirectConsole. It would be a program that would look just like the command prompt. The only difference was this program would hold its own list of commands. It would be a Windows-based application that would not be restricted by any means or form.

The original log history from DirectConsole can be found here.

DirectConsole 2000
Much of the original DirectConsole coding had been sloppy and inconsistent. It was basically the program that taught me Windows programming. The new idea was to rebuild DirectConsole nearly from scratch. The second revision was started August 19th, 2000.

There were several changes to DirectConsole 2000. The command window was no longer the primary window for the application. In fact, it could be hidden completely to display a screen that was to become a chat window. Another addition to the program was an icon-based shell for the virtual drives. A user could now click his way through the drives in DirectConsole.

DirectConsole 2000 also made some improvements on batch file handling. IF, ELSE, ENDIF block processing was added. And just like the first revision, batch file functions were also supported.

Plug-in support was started for DirectConsole 2000, but it was never completed. Support for chatting was also never finished. DirectConsole 2000 was never officially shelved, but it faded into the background and finally non existence as the SimbeyMail E-Mail Server took off.

DirectConsole 3
DirectConsole 3 isn't the official name of the third revision, but it is DirectConsole number three. Like DirectConsole 2000, it is being written from scratch, only this time it's fully object-oriented in C++.

The focus of the original DirectConsole was on the command line. There were also tools included for modifying system policies. Newer operating systems have built-in security, so policy editing is no longer necessary. The new DirectConsole is all about providing the user with a set of command based tools in a virtual environment. Batch files will be much more powerful with plenty of ways to automate complex tasks both over the local file system and the network.

Some of my early design thoughts for the new DirectConsole included having an icon-based "desktop," similar to DirectConsole 2000. I was also planning on having multiple command prompt windows per application session.

Part of why DirectConsole 2000 never went as far as the original was that I tried taking it in too many directions. Alas, I am only one programmer, so I need to focus on one direction. Like the original, that is the command prompt.

The new DirectConsole is going to support all the commands as the first two revisions, and it's going to support a scriptable system. There are plenty of details yet to be worked out, so for now I'm focusing on getting the command processor up to speed!