ReadMe file for Windows Update Viewer


Introduction
============
Windows Update Viewer is an application that consolidates information about Windows Updates.
Windows Update Viewer uses the Windows Update API and event logs to display details of installed
updates. Event log entries are associated with individual updates by using the "KB" number. If an
update does not use a KB number, or it isn't presented in a recognized format, no event log entries
will be displayed. Windows Update Viewer can view the updates on the machine it is running from.
At the present time, it cannot connect to a remote machine. It cannot download, apply or remove
updates. The built-in Windows Update client does a respectable job of that.


Getting Started
===============
After installing Windows Update Viewer, launch it from the Start menu. You will see that the window
has a grid on the top and a details pane on the bottom. Select a row in the grid and details for
that update will be displayed in the details pane. The details pane can be closed and opened by
selecting Toggle Details Pane on the View menu. The details pane can be resized by dragging the
splitter up or down.


Navigation
==========
Use the navigation bar on the left side of the application to go to the settings or about pages, or
to exit the application.


Filtering the Grid
==================
There is a text box at the top of the main window. Typing in this box will add a filter to any of
the text columns in the grid. The Date column is not included. For example, if you only want to
see the updates for the malicious software remover tool, then type "malicious" in the filter text
box. The grid will update as you type. To see all of the updates, simply clear the filter text box.
The filter will be reset each time Windows Update Viewer is started.

As of version 0.5.10, starting the filter text with a "!" (exclamation mark or bang) will invert the
filter. The filter will then act as an exclusionary filter. The bang itself along with any spaces
between the bang and the first non-space character are discarded. If you wanted to quickly filter
for updates that didn't have "succeeded" as a result, you could enter "!succeeded" in the filter
box. The Escape key will clear any text from the filter box.


The Exclude List
================
To exclude updates without the need to type a filter every time, there is an exclude list. To access
it select Edit Exclude List from the Settings page or by pressing Ctrl + L. A small dialog will open.
This window is where you can specify strings to be excluded. When you first open this window you will
see that "Defender" has already been added. Consequently, any update that has the word "Defender" in
the update title will be excluded. Feel free to add any other strings to this list. For example, if
you don't want to see the malicious software remover tool you could add "malicious" to the list. The
words on this list are not case sensitive. Click OK to save any changes to the exclude list. The
exclude list will be saved and reapplied the next time Windows Update Viewer is started.

If you want to temporarily see all the installed updates, you can select Toggle Excluded Items from
the View Menu or by pressing Ctrl + E instead of removing everything from the exclude list.


Save to a File
==============
You may save the details for all updates that haven't been excluded to a text file by selecting Save
Details to Text File from the File menu. You can also save the current grid data to a CSV file.


Settings Page
=============
Other options on the navigation bar include the Settings dialog. You can select between Light,
Material Dark, Darker and System themes. You can select the accent color and you can choose from seven
size options for the app. You can choose from three options for row spacing in the grid. You can also
control the visibility of the Details pane and to show or hide updated that match items on the exclude
list. You can also choose if the exclude process looks at the KB Number and Result fields as well as the
Title. You can choose to have updates with the current date shown in bold. There are also options to
have WUView stay on top of other windows and you can control the detail level of the log file. The bottom
section of the settings page allows the language used in the user interface to be changed to one of the
defined languages. Note that changing the language will cause WUView to restart immediately.


About Page
==========
Selecting About will display the About dialog which shows information about the app such as the version
number and has a link to the GitHub repository. There is also a link to this read me file. You can also
check for new releases of this application by clicking the link at the bottom of the About page. At the
bottom of the About page there is a scrollable list of the people that contributed a language to help
make Windows Update Viewer available to more users.


Keyboard Shortcuts
==================
These keyboard shortcuts are available:

  F1 = Go to the About screen
  F5 = Check for new updates and refresh the grid
  ESC = Removes any filter (while on the viewer page)
  Ctrl + D = Toggle the Details pane
  Ctrl + E = Toggle display of excluded items
  Ctrl + L = Open the Excludes Editor
  Ctrl + R = Reset column sort
  Ctrl + T = Change the date & time format
  Ctrl + U = Navigate to the Updates page
  Ctrl + Comma = Go to Settings
  Ctrl + Numpad Plus = Increase size
  Ctrl + Numpad Minus = Decrease size
  Ctrl + Shift + C = Change the Accent Color
  Ctrl + Shift + T = Change the Theme


Uninstalling
============
To uninstall use the regular Windows add/remove programs feature.


Notices and License
===================
Windows Update Viewer was written by Tim Kennedy.

Windows Update Viewer uses the following packages and applications:

    * Material Design in XAML Toolkit https://github.com/MaterialDesignInXAML/MaterialDesignInXamlToolkit

    * Community Toolkit MVVM https://github.com/CommunityToolkit/dotnet

    * NLog https://nlog-project.org/

    * OctoKit https://github.com/octokit/octokit.net

    * VersionInfoGenerator https://github.com/notpeelz/VersionInfoGenerator

    * GitKraken was used for everything Git related. https://www.gitkraken.com/

    * Inno Setup was used to create the installer. https://jrsoftware.org/isinfo.php

    * Visual Studio Community was used throughout the development of Windows Update Viewer. https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/community/

    * XAML Styler is indispensable when working with XAML. https://github.com/Xavalon/XamlStyler

    * And of course, the essential PowerToys https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys

MIT License
Copyright (c) 2019 - 2026 Tim Kennedy

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and
associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including
without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or
sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject
to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial
portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT
LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT.
IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY,
WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE
SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
