We sincerely apologise to anyone who may have been a victim of the phishing site. All of our passwords have been changed, and our site appears to be secure. We are possibly going to implement a system which informs us if our site is compromised in the future, but this task may not be possible for us to perform.

Our site was put back online approximately 8 hours ago. We have performed tests on it to ensure it was functioning correctly, and everything appears to be working as it should. However, if you find any problems, please do not hesitate to inform us by emailing kraniem@kraniem.co.uk.

Once again, we offer our deepest apologies to anyone affected by the phishing site.

- Samuel Cordner-Matthews, CEO of Kraniem Software

- Samuel Cordner-Matthews, CEO.

We have been working very hard indeed on the latest release of Cedar. Things are coming along very well indeed, so well in fact that we are almost able to use it as a full-time replacement for Windows Explorer! Recently, we have been working very hard to implement some very key features, such as:

• Power Management (Battery percentage and AC Power status
• Infinite users
• AES hashing for passwords
• A new login screen
• Third-party applications
• (Planned) Network Connection Center
• Notifications
• The new UI (which has been re-implemented for usability and looks
• (Planned) Automatic Updates

But we do have one more thing that we’re very excited about:

The port to C# and open source release of the VB.Net version will go ahead as planned!

Due to the way that C# handles the opening of new windows, we decided to cancel the port a few weeks ago. But, the new UI has forced us to switch to the method that C# uses, so we can’t see any harm in us continuing with the port. The port will be started once the full version of Cedar is ready for release, and when it is finished, we will release the source code to the VB version of Cedar as open source on our under-construction Open Source page. The C# version will be optimized and released as a final version.

We hope that you’re looking forward to receiving these new features!

-Samuel Cordner-Matthews, Lead Developer of Cedar and CEO of Kraniem Software

This is the main Cedar desktop. It looks rather empty at the moment, as we haven’t started designing it yet. The new notifications area contains updates from features that we do plan to implement in the future, such as a Twitter application, updates and media player.

The new login window has not been designed yet, so we have drawn a quick mock-up of what we plan to make it look and work like.

Now, obviously this isn’t the actual login screen! It will look completely different from this, and will also look much better. This is just a basic idea of what it will look like. The layout will remain basically the same, however the design will match most of the other windows. We are also contemplating adding a second layer of authentication for administrator accounts, but are undecided on this, as we feel it may slightly decrease usability for an unnecessary security measure.

We haven’t got a clue when the final release will be around, but we are planning to release it some time in the near future.

-Samuel Cordner-Matthews, CEO and Lead Developer.

We will keep the main codebase in VB. That’s the GUI and all of it’s features. The extensions, however, if we develop them, will all be coded in C#.

That’s it for what’s under the hood at the moment. However a lot has been taking place on the outside…

Cedar has a brand new look! As we create more of the new style, we will release some screenshots of it. We have decided to move away from the default Windows forms, and we are designing our own. The design looks rather good. The functionality of the forms isn’t exactly the same at the moment but we’re working on that. Soon we’ll have it the way it was before but with a great new interface.

We’ve also fixed the flickering bug. All of Cedar’s forms are now double-buffered.

We also plan to redesign the login window. The entire logon algorithm is going to be re-written, and we’re keeping your security in mind by using AES encryption for your passwords. The new algorithm will also allow individual user preferences, avatars, and hopefully Documents folders. Additionally, due to the way that we plan to structure the new algorithm, you will also be able to create as many users as you like. We’re also working on speeding up the logon process.

We’re not entirely sure when the new release will be out. Hopefully it will be in the near future but we really can’t tell right now.

Thanks for taking the time to read this.

-Samuel Cordner-Matthews, CEO and Lead Developer

I also did a review about it, which you can find by clicking here. The review is for the beta version, so it has a few bugs. Nevertheless, I can guarantee that the final product will be amazing.

Also I plan to translate Cedar in Italian, with the help of the developer and CEO, Samuel.

Well, this should be enough to get to know me a bit.

We hope you enjoy Cedar as much as I enjoy showing it and we enjoy developing it!

This means that all future versions of Cedar will be in C#. This also means that once we have gained our footing with the new language, the older Visual Basic versions of Cedar will be released as Open Source Software. Our former plans for the VB.NET versions will be brought forward to the C# version.

The graphics contained inside the GUI will be removed, so it will look rather bland, but all of the functions present in the current version of Cedar will also be present in the open source version.

This decision has not come easy for us. I mainly chose to continue forward with C# as it is a much more functional, and more complex and interesting language. VB.NET is a very basic language (the clue’s in the name!), and is mainly used by developers who are starting out. I’m past that stage now, and want to move forward with my skills.

A very old version was released as open source to SourceForge about a year ago, while I was still a freelance developer, learning VB.NET and developing Cedar mainly as a hobby and as a practice application. My stance on programming has changed dramatically, as I now pursue software engineering as a future career.

I have also been starting development with the XNA Framework, using tutorials by Riemer Grootjans (found at http://www.riemers.net/) as my guidelines. I will soon start to develop these independently.

I look forward to the next blog post, once the transition to C# is complete. Thank you all for your time.

-Samuel Cordner-Matthews, CEO and Lead Developer.

This is because we have been working incredibly hard, trying all sorts of different solutions that aren’t working at this moment in time.

We are trying to make our products as visually stunning as we can, but we are running into some obstacles.

Our aim is to have a new release of Cedar out soon.

Thanks for your co-operation thus far.

As soon as our internet connectivity problems are resolved, this brilliant update will be released.

The taskbar feature has also been implemented, however it is also disabled as the buttons do not currently work, they only create themselves and refresh their names, clicking on them currently has no effect.

1.1 will probably boast the long awaited “infinite users” patch. 1.2 will follow with a new-look login screen. We hope to introduce some sort of extensions manager, and a word-processing facility by the time Cedar is released.

However, spreadsheets and presentations will be very tricky to implement, if at all attempted. Presentations will be slightly easier to do, however will most likely be incompatible with the Microsoft Office line of products as they will use a new, independent format.