[Targaff]

Crash&Burn, on Nov 15 2005, 12:42 PM, said:

Tclockex

I've still not found a convincing argument as to why TClockEx is preferable to TClock2. The latter simply does more things better and more efficiently; the only benefit I've found TClockEx to really have is that it plays nice with trays in XP, which is of course irrelevant here.

In any event... third-party apps are probably already straying somewhat from the thread's original intentions, but to stick purely to those that do improve functionality, I heartily recommend RBTray purely for its right-click on minimize function, which I can't live without. I also use PowerMenu, though its great extra functionality is somewhat offset by the fact that it makes the system menu really slow. I'd use WinRoll to replace them both, but I can't get along with the way it's set up and don't know any programming to be able to fix it.

[Crash&Burn]

Alright well I was unaware of Tclock2 A lot of apps tend to disappear or become shareware if you don't get them at the right time. Theres quite a few that are excellent, and if they had of been opensourced, memory conflicts/leaks could of been fixed. WatchCat is a good example of such.

Sounds like TrayMenu has some/maybe all of the functionality yer talking about in those other apps.

[WildBill]

Wow. TClock2 is amazing. It's only too bad that it hasn't been worked on in a while. I'm tempted to do some work with it to see what I can accomplish.

I did some quick playing and made this start button graphic for anyone to use with it (with permission from the original creator).

Attached File(s)

•  BlueCrystalStartButton.bmp (13.2K)
  Number of downloads: 175

[-I-]

Quote

In any event... third-party apps are probably already straying somewhat from the thread's original intentions, but to stick purely to those that do improve functionality

Valid point, lets remember that, 3rd party aps should only be default installed if,
they inprove in any way, the usability of the OS, should be intergrated as system resource (example: media codecs or runtime-enviroments), or are a great benifit in tweaking / administering the OS. or (as a last) replace some sort of default windows feature, with a better / more stable alternative.

i think, there are about a bilion smak apps that could bring one or more nifty features to windows 2000,
but i strongly feat it would be better to uses some sort of post-installation script to include those...

[Seppl]

@ Gurgelmeyer
Hello, any word about the USP process? How are u doing? Current status?
Regards
Seppl

[RyanVM]

fireinthedawn, on Nov 13 2005, 06:23 PM, said:

nuhi, ryan, and gurgle can feel free to slap me if they want.

Count me in!

*SLAP*

[Gurgelmeyer]

Count me in as well

@-I- - I agree - there should be no 3rd party alphas or betas in 5.1 EE. Any third party component must be rock solid.

@Seppl (@everyone actually) - USP 5.1 Basic Edition RC1 might only be three registry entries away... and I might finish it during the weekend. Yesterdays build 14 really looks good! MS URP1 is now popping up on WU (again! I just got rid of it a few weeks ago) - I'll need to look into that.

Best regards,
Gurgelmeyer

[Gurgelmeyer]

fireinthedawn, on Nov 13 2005, 05:23 PM, said:

Well, sense all the bell's and whistles seem to be done for now until Vista, I think Ryan, nuhi, and gurgle should team up and make it so their update packs can be tweaked too with nlite. It's the age of customization eh? That's just my idea, nuhi, ryan, and gurgle can feel free to slap me if they want.

*SLAP*

Six years back or so everyone wanted the latest MS OS release only. Today it's different. Maybe because releases are so far apart that we actually have time to get really comfortable with our "old" OS, maybe because newer MS OS'es are considered to be too DRM-friendly, maybe because a lot of people don't like WPA which could make pirated copies more attractive than legit copies to those. Maybe - with two years between service packs - you are really not very "up to date" anyway, even if you do run the latest MS OS. I don't know - but I still love my W2K - I actually got so much value for my money, that I'd hate to abandon it.

[WildBill]

I'm working on improving TClock2, and I have good news and bad news....

The bad news is that, no matter how hard I try, I can't get Visual C++ 6 to build it. After a few days of fighting with it I went to what I know, which was to port the C code to Delphi and work with that. So far I have 95% of the DLL ported over and it's working (the only stuff not ported is some Win9x-specific code). I called the new project "TClock3" to avoid any confusion. I haven't ported the executable over and only have a small test app that enables and disables the DLL for now.

The good news is that it looks like a fully skinned taskbar is possible. I have complete control over the taskbar size, start button position, start button size, and I have a skinned taskbar background and task buttons. I still have to work on repositioning and skinning the quicklaunch buttons, the tray, and the rebar gripper (and add support for vertical taskbars), but I'm making good progress. This is still a long way from being complete, but it's getting there.

Here's a small screenshot. Except for the Start button, I'm using modified images from a WindowBlinds skin, which I can't distribute without permission from the author (so dont' ask ). Developing this on my Win2k laptop, and the icons are from having XPize installed.

Attached File(s)

•  TClock3_Clip1.jpg (144.74K)
  Number of downloads: 263

This post has been edited by WildBill: 21 November 2005 - 03:33 PM

[-I-]

screenshot??????
explain: is this actualy on a win 2000 system??????

[WildBill]

Yes, it is. It's from my HP laptop, running Win2k SP4 with my hacked-up version of TClock2 (which I'm calling TClock3 to avoid confusion). I'm actually developing it on this laptop, so the screenshot is indicative of what it can do on a Win2k system. If you go to the XPize forum there's a thread on using XPize on Win2k with a screenshot on page 2 I took when I got it working on this laptop (with my IconViewer program), and that one shows the system specs.

[-I-]

could you post a screan-shot with,
'start menu' opened. and 'memory usage panel' opened
(select the tclock3 proces) and try enlarging it to be readeble please...

cuze the screanshots on the xpize forum kinda, disapeared..


// if this gets real, and cute enougth, we might just have to start ourselve a newfeatures-in-a-hotfix.exe to slipstream (as hotfix), after uSP5

This post has been edited by -I-: 22 November 2005 - 03:31 PM

[WildBill]

Here's another screenshot. I can't open the standard TClock dialog because I haven't ported it yet I've only ported the DLL so far, and the Tclock3test you see on the taskbar is a test .EXE that loads and starts the DLL (much as the TClock2 executable does). Tclock3test will eventually take the place of the TClock2 executable, but first I need to finish the DLL, which will take a while. This screenshot also shows the progress I've made on the system tray, where I made a .BMP for it. I'm currently trying to get the clock to display correctly -- for some reason the standard Windows clock keeps displaying no matter what I do (there's a bug in my DLL somewhere). Once I get that working I plan on adding some more options to control system tray size and painting. Then I need to move on to the QuickLaunch toolbar and toolbar grippers (they are still showing up gray because I'm not painting them yet).

The icons in the screenshot are XPized because I have XPize installed on this laptop, where the icons were "stenciled" by my IconViewer program to make them palatable to Win2k. The "Windows 2000" banner was originally the "Windows xp" banner that came with XPize, which I touched up to my liking The Aero-like skin is from a WindowBlinds skin (lh5203-blah-blah-blah), except for the Start button which is mine.

At this point I don't have transparency working for skin .BMP's, which is something I'll have to tackle soon, but not until I have the DLL properly skinning everything. For the moment it means that my Start button has parts of the taskbar background in the upper right and lower right corners, but once I figure out how to use transparency it won't be necessary anymore. There are a lot of other things that need to be added to the DLL, such as better support for stretching skin bitmaps, which doesn't work very well yet. What you see here is only the prodict of a week's work and it's still very much alpha software.

Edit: Updated the screenshot to show progress made since this post.

Attached File(s)

•  TClock3_Clip3.jpg (140.66K)
  Number of downloads: 216

This post has been edited by WildBill: 23 November 2005 - 04:47 PM

[Targaff]

Looks interesting, I'll be keeping an eye on it.

I do note (although this may be obselete with what you're doing) that the start menu banner isn't skinned the first time the start menu is opened (this is with TClock2 running as a startup app), and also if you open it the first time using the Win key rather than a mouse click, it is never skinned unless you restart the app. If these aren't already fixed/irrelevant, any chance you could look into them?

Cheers!

[WildBill]

Thanks for the tip. I haven't even tried skinning the start menu yet, though I knew that TClock2 was supposedly capable of it. It's definitely on my list. Since my last post I've fixed the clock problem, and I have it appearing properly now, and the system tray is nicely skinned. I also have support for 32-bit .BMP files somewhat working, such that taskbar buttons and the tray skin can now be alpha-blended with the taskbar background (I've learned that it's critical to double-buffer them to achieve proper alpha-blending). Next is to get proper alpha-blending of the Start button, and then move on to skinning the QuickLaunch buttons. In its present state it's certainly usable, though until I flesh out the executable it relies on registry entries that I've entered by hand. Last night I also got mouseover events working for the task buttons, and they highlight nicely when you move the mouse over them. The buttons don't have to have the same height as the default taskbar buttons either...I have logic which controls their width and height, based on number of tasks, taskbar size, and available rows/columns.

Edit: I can now skin the rebar grippers and rebar arrows (arrows appear when the bar is smaller than required to show all of the items), though I still have to implement mouseover support for the rebar arrows. Nevertheless, it's getting there. Toolbars might be a tough nut to crack, but I've already figured out how to set custom button sizes (MS's documentation appears to be *wrong* on that score), which is half the battle...

Edit: Quicklaunch buttons are now skinned, and it turned out to be pretty easy. All of the major components are now skinned, so now it's time to start optimizing it, fixing visual glitches, cleaning up the code, etc. Then I'll move on to Start Menu skinning...

Edit: Go up a couple of posts to see an updated screnshot...

Edit: I have much of the executable ported now, and it will soon be ready for the brave among you to play with. I've also added another screenshot here. Note the variable alpha...You can specify a transparency value for different parts of the taskbar, and different alphas for different circumstances:

- Clock/tray alpha
- Taskbar alpha
- Task button inactive alpha
- Task button active alpha
- Task button inactive mouseover alpha
- Task button active mouseover alpha
- Quicklaunch button inactive alpha
- Quicklaunch button active alpha
- Quicklaunch button inactive mouseover alpha
- Quicklaunch button active mouseover alpha
- Start button inactive alpha
- Start button mouseover alpha
- Start button active (pressed) alpha
- Taskbar gripper alpha
- Rebar gripper alpha
- Rebar arrows alpha

The taskbar alpha should have the lowest value (in this example, it's 64, and the inactive alphas for all objects is also 64). You should use higher alphas for other states, like mouseover, active (pressed), and active mouseover. Don't expect this to be fast, though I'm getting decent results without using any caching (and this laptop that I'm developing it on has crappy TwisterT shared-memory video). There is still a lot of work to do, as I get visual glitches when I resize the taskbar, but the basic stuff is working at least.

Attached File(s)

•  TClock3_Clip4.jpg (143.68K)
  Number of downloads: 123

This post has been edited by WildBill: 26 November 2005 - 04:09 PM

[-I-]

i wonder if this would work with ROS-explorer as well LOL -
could be Way to cewl..

[dirtwarrior]

Oh cool using ROS would definatly lower ram usage

[-I-]

or better yet. Ros-explorer with XUL skinning
d*mn that would be briliant....

[dirtwarrior]

I must admit this would defenitly be very cool. I will let you guys in on a secret if you promise not to tell.
OK
I dont know how to get the ROS explorer to work,
SHHHH

But if someone did get it to work on install this would definatly bring new life to legecy computers before they go to computer heaven.

[-I-]

have you tried lookin on voreck's site???