"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote

|Then wasn't
| sure how to run it, but double-clicking on the .hta seemed the best
| guess

Woops. I guess I should make that more clear in
the readme file. I don't know why I didn't list the
actual file name.

| It closed, and I saw ytdlsets.dat
| appear. I opened it (incidentally, do you know how to stop "Always use
| the selected program to open this type of file" being pre-ticked when
| you click an unknown filetype? I usually try a text editor first, but
| don't want that associated. Someone told me how under XP, but I've
| forgotten and it's probably different for 7 anyway).

I don't know if there's a specific setting to do that
for all unknown files. I don't deal with it much. I like
to have "Open with Notepad" and several other similar
options on right-click, so I use those. I almost always
expore an unknown file with either "Open with Notepad"
or "Open with HxD".

| It (ytdlsets.dat)
| contained three CRLF pairs (I checked with a hex viewer). I opened ytdlh
| again, and it hadn't remembered (.exe or download locations). OK, I
| thought, maybe I have to actually use it to make it remember, so I found
| a short one to try - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85DQB0C_eZY -
| pasted that in (having also refilled the other two), and clicked Get
| File. Error sound and "Youtube-dl.exe not found." popup. Checked: it
| _is_ there. Tried it the old-fashioned way - still worked. (Didn't we
| accept grotty video 37 years ago!) Closed and reopened GUI - all boxes
| empty. The .dat file timestamp had changed, but still only 6 bytes big.
|
| What am I doing wrong?

It's saving the settings file but doesn't have any
settings to save.

Note the browse button. When you browse to select
the file/folder it confirms it's valid then stores it, for
use in the program and to be saved at close. If you just
paste in the path the program doesn't know you did that.
There's no "Save Setting" button.

It's interesting how my preconceptions always turn up
when people try software I've written. I think the first
such revelation was the first time I asked someone to
try a program and they crashed it by clicking every
button multiple times. It had never occurred to me that
someone might do that! But many people just keep clicking
until they see something happen. So from then
on I had to make sure that the code for every button
could deal with multiple clicks.

My idea here was that it's cleaner and simpler not to
have a "Save Setting" button. It's designed to be as
easy as possible. But I didn't account for people pasting
in a path when they can browse to it instead.

Why would it need a Save button, you might ask?
To not have a Save button and not require the Browse
button would mean I don't know when you've entered
text that you want to be the setting value. I'd have to
check and confirm the validity of the text in those
textboxes every time you click "Get File". That would
be very sloppy. Or I'd need to constantly monitor
changes to the textbox. That's inefficient and prone
to possible errors. Or I'd need to make the settings a
separate window so that I'd know when you entered
a new setting. It's just an HTA. I wasn't getting that fancy.
Sorry, sir, you'll just have to use it the easy way.

What's with the exclamation point? That's allowed?
I've never tried it before.