[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???

[dirtwarrior]

I can get ROS to work but not by default. It is a cool, clean shell which I like very much. The best part is it uses much less ram than explorer.exe.

Anybody had much sucess of getting this to install by default?

[WildBill]

I've played with the ReactOS shell...it's definitely light on memory, but it also doesn't do all that much It would be good for running Win2k on older hardware, though, where memory and resources are at a premium.

Anyhow, I hope I'm not hijacking this thread by posting this (would a new thread on TClock3 be appropriate? Any thoughts?) but I figured I'd post another screenshot to show my progress. This one uses a slightly different skin (it uses parts of the WB VistaXP skin), and it also shows a shot of my replacement for the TClock executable). I have all of the major parts of the executable finished, and I was able to get it working from a bare install (meaning it makes all of the necessary registry entries itself). There's still a lot of i's to be dotted and t's to be crossed, but it's getting there now. When I release it I want the full skinning portion to use WindowBlinds-format images (in terms of how different frames are placed on the image) so no one will have to go through the pain of modifying skins to use with this.

Note the drop shadows under the text on the taskbar buttons. I will also do this to the clock as well, but haven't yet. The "force smooth text" option renders the taskbar buttons and text at 2x size in the background and then scrunches them down to the real size. The reason is that Windows won't anti-alias text when you're only drawing it at 9pt. It slows things down, but it's there for people with fast PC's to play with. The enable different alpha values setting is for semi-transparent taskbars (see a couple of posts above for a screenie), where you want different transparencies for different things (like having the selected task be opaque, or at least more opaque than the taskbar). It also slows things down (and isn't yet perfect).

There is still a lot of work left (and still quite a few visual glitches to fix), but it's definitely usable now in its present form. I have it running on a second box now where I'll let it run to see if it stays up...

Attached File(s)

•  TClock3_Clip5.jpg (142.16K)
  Number of downloads: 324

This post has been edited by WildBill: 27 November 2005 - 05:05 AM

[Gurgelmeyer]

Looks awesome

/G

[Targaff]

WildBill, on Nov 27 2005, 10:59 AM, said:

There's still a lot of i's to be dotted and t's to be crossed, but it's getting there now.

Centering the clock and tray on the taskbar, for example?

It's looking good, though, great to see.

[war59312]

Wow, awesome job!

Anyone know how to get T Clock Lite to display in 12 hour format instead of 24 hour format?

This post has been edited by war59312: 28 November 2005 - 12:21 PM

[Targaff]

war59312, on Nov 28 2005, 05:39 PM, said:

Anyone know how to get T Clock Lite to display in 12 hour format instead of 24 hour format?

By T Clock Lite do you mean TClock2? If so, it's in the Tclock2 Properties (right click on tray clock) under Format, check 12H.

If not, err, clearly I dunno

This post has been edited by Targaff: 28 November 2005 - 02:55 PM

[war59312]

I ment TClock Lite:

http://homepage1.nif...on/tclocklight/

There is no GUI. Just the ini file which has your settings. So what I'm asking is if anyone knows what I can add to the ini file to display in 12 hour format instead of 24 hour format.

Thanks anyways though.

Take Care,

Will

This post has been edited by war59312: 29 November 2005 - 09:00 AM

[-I-]

browsing the net, i stumbled upon a realy nice looking litle, app, called, desktop architect. - and to runs, quite well, way better than, for example,
windowsblinds (and stuf like that), witch is freeware, - so what im wondering , is if it would be possible, to install this (not as softwere) but as a windows service. - and change som regestry values, so in can completely replace the default (als in <rclick on desktop> and <config panel> (only ting is that we might also need a screenres tool now, or we wont be able to switch... ???

any way, its just a suggestion (in any one knows how this could be done, id love to have these kinds of features aval as, add-ons (for example, (instalable as either hotfix, or other AI.pachage.

[Gurgelmeyer]

Hi (yeah - I'm back!)

There's one thing that we need to consider when providing alternative desktops: will these have a bad influence on Terminal Services clients? Or generally put: should 5.1 EE be a Workstation-only USP?
As far as Window Blinds I love that product - but last time I checked (about 2 yrs ago I think) it wasn't very stable - has it improved?

Best regards,
Gurgelmeyer


PS - almost everything is "possible" btw

[-I-]

yes windows 2000 uSP-5 Xtreme Edition. should be concidered 'destop only'
(even though we may invite users to start a topic on a server project,
I'm thinking maybe we could start thinking of a single hotfix (or SP)
for IIS-related patches, to be slipstreamed after usp5.1)

yes windows blinds has inproved over the last year or so,
but I'm not convinced it should be intergated into the servicepack,
but rather as add-on (unattendedly installed as service)
it still bloated my system (1.7ghz celeron with 256rm ram) at startup.

but this probebly goes for all 3rd party add-one,
I'm voting for creating setup-packages and a configuration-file
(with the most tools and utills we want to have in uSP 5 Xtreme Edition)
and create 2 ways to install,
> A fully automated batchfile,
> And a Setup-selection tool.
and distubete it as a pre-build $oem$ folder.

This post has been edited by -I-: 11 December 2005 - 03:19 PM