[damian666]

@ wildbill, say mate... could you please make the next release a little more structered.
i mean, why do we get all the source files in that package, it is just space.
the most of us dont even now how to use that.
Cant you make two seperate packages?
one with the source and one smaller package with out the source?

damian666

[WildBill]

damian666, on Sep 24 2007, 02:54 AM, said:

@ wildbill, say mate... could you please make the next release a little more structered.
i mean, why do we get all the source files in that package, it is just space.
the most of us dont even now how to use that.
Cant you make two seperate packages?
one with the source and one smaller package with out the source?

damian666

Hee, hee. Sorry about that. I'll try to organize it a bit better. I hate having to maintain two separate packages, but I'll see if I can at least put the source in a separate folder.

[damian666]

thanx dude, thats really nice of you, any news on when you hit us with a update?

damian666

[WildBill]

Not for a couple of weeks at least, but I'm making good progress. I'm basically at the point of fixing bugs. Only window borders will be skinnable at first (and for some reason not every app gets skinned), but it's looking pretty good given the little time I've had available to work on it.

[damian666]

cool man, i wait with suspense to see what magic you did this time...

damian666

[Drugwash]

Don't mean to push, but I'm also waiting for some fixes regarding Win9x issues, especially the exit crash in Explorer. I sincerely hope it will be taken care of, as it'd be sad to drop support for 9x as many others do nowadays (see Winamp 5.5 beta).
I'm willing to test and post Dr.Watson crash reports, if helpful.

[WildBill]

Here's another progress pic...



It's really hard for me to test under Win98 as I don't normally keep a PC with that installed. I've made a lot of changes to this version around the shutdown code that might help under Win98 though, so there's hope with this one.

This post has been edited by WildBill: 03 October 2007 - 09:28 PM

[Drugwash]

Let's hope those changes will be of help.
Anyway, I was just thinking of you having Win98 installed under a virtual machine, as many other developers do.

[WildBill]

Drugwash, on Oct 4 2007, 04:56 PM, said:

Let's hope those changes will be of help.
Anyway, I was just thinking of you having Win98 installed under a virtual machine, as many other developers do.

Using a VM would be a cool possibility. Is there an easy way to do this? I have a spare laptop HD so I could load Win98 on it again, but that would take all day

I'm trying to get the next TClock3 ready and I'll release it as soon as I fix these last few bugs. One thing I'm considering is dropping support for importing WB skins. I found that skin files have some text at the top that prohibits using them with anything other than WB. Personally I think there's zero legal force behind it, but I might drop it just to avoid the fight. I've been refactoring the heck out of the internal code and at some point I plan to totally redesign the TClock3 interface to make it a lot easier to set up a skin, to the point where importing might not be necessary anyway. Of course, their files and mine are both just .INI files, so if there was demand for it I guess it wouldn't be long before someone wrote a converter anyway. If anyone has an opinion on the matter, I wouldn't mind hearing what you think.

This post has been edited by WildBill: 10 October 2007 - 08:10 PM

[Drugwash]

To be honest, the skinning feature kept me hooked to this project. I haven't had a look at the skin files, but if that's true, then I see little point to fighting for it to work under 9x.
For most users, creating own skins instead of comfortably importing already existing ones would just be a turn-off. Tihiy's Revolution Pack already does skinning - and in a more advanced way - and Stoic Joker's version of TClock works fine without crashing on exit, at least on my machine.
At this point, I dunno what to say... Let's hear other opinions.

[WildBill]

Well, I'm not sure what I want to do re: WB importing so I decided to upload what I have at the moment. This has some internal registry changes and WILL be somewhat incompatible with current installations (meaning you have to go in and set some things). Overall, though, it's a much better program internally and will enable some more features in the future.

Known bugs:
- Quitting TClock3 can crash some programs. My Palm HotSync Manager doesn't like it when I quit TClock3, for instance.
- Halos do NOT work correctly. If you import a skin that uses them, make sure to turn halos off.

I edited the top post with the new download link (0.3.3).

This post has been edited by WildBill: 13 October 2007 - 07:56 PM

[damian666]

well first of all, i think going with selfmade skins is much better then wb skins, imho.
The wbskins come with more then tclock needs, so its big, when there is no need really...
i will look at this new release, thanx again man.

oh btw, did you see you got a sticky now?
i thought it was appropriate so i asked for it! hahaha

now i dont have to search anymore for your posts.

damian666

[Drugwash]

Limited tests on my Win98SE quickly revealed two major issues, that weren't present in previous builds:
- 100% CPU usage all the time
- quicklaunch icons were all shifted to a clickable menu, while their original taskbar space was empty and not skinned, except for incidental bitmap overlaps.

Systray icons still hidden, still crashes on exit.

I reapplied the BoostMauve theme, as some elements were not skinned anymore due to changes between versions. No start menu skinning, no advanced skinning like halos, etc.

Currently I'm sick, can't test more thoroughly, sorry.

[damian666]

sorry wildbill, but i have to agree with drugwash...
you broke something i think.
or could you please post your theme and ini file as a startpoint?

damian666

[Tihiy]

Well, WildBill, if you're creating TClock for community, and not just for yourself, then i have an advice...
drop all features and code you don't need or want!
That's how i usually do. Don't listen to anyone whining.
Release really stipped down version which is stable and only then start adding features.
As a programmer, i can say that your TClock3.dll code is insanely **** overfilled with features and API which:
0) Don't have sense under Win2000.
1) Duplicate functionality is already present in Win32 API.
2) Don't make sense at all. Let me explain:

try
hDC=GetWindowDC(hwnd)
....
finally
ReleaseDC (hwnd,hDC)
end;

How can this code fail? If NT user32.dll is trowing exception at GetDC(), it means your process is extremely badly corrupted and you should just fail hard. If you're tough, check it for <>0 and that's it.

Personally, i believe object-oriented code is harder and worser to manage when you're dealing with hooks.
Wrapping everything in try..except is a bad idea (in all means), better, rewrite main things in flat non-object code, you'll gain speed and simplicity.

I'll suggest you rewriting your code and splitting it into several pieces:
- TClock3Test.exe: why 2,6 MB has to be loaded always? You need just hook loader and icon in system tray (or clock hooked). Split them into TClock3Loader and TClock3Settings.
- TClock3.dll: well, split it at least into 2 dlls: one which gets loaded into explorer.exe only and other into all processes.

Get rid of hooks if you can safely hook API.
Some boasting maybe, but that's how LameSkin is used:
- 30 KB for skin loader, loads bitmaps into shared memory(only startup process);
- 60 KB for shell hooking (30% of its code is actually for taskbar skinning);
- 32 KB for process hooking (15% of its code is actually for window skinning);
- 52 KB skin metrics/drawing API for every process;
- 24 KB for 32-bit icons (consider this as an equivalent for font smoothing) for every process;
So, it is 32+52+24=108KB and PB compiler sucks. Usually with loaded skin memory usage increase is under 2MB.
You can do the same! If you don't want WB skins, use Windows XP msstyles format (it is FAR better than WB ones in terms of simplicity and standartization, and i believe it can't be restricted to Windows XP) or extracted bitmaps with ini file like i do.
You can read a bit of LameSkin skin format if you like:
http://tihiy.ahanix.org/lame/
Note it does not contain advanced taskbar skinning features

[damian666]

well, i think i have to agree with tihiy on this, not that i know anything about this stuff, but hee...
it sounds like reason.
and i do think there are to many features in tclock3.
cut it down, really man do that

damian666

[CaptainStacks]

I just downloaded this and ran the .exe

I didn't notice any type of installer open, although I walked away for a minute.

Now my clock has dissappeared, and I'm thinking a restart will get it going.

[WildBill]

Uploaded version 0.3.4 and updated the download link. There is nothing new for Win9x users yet. I've started looking into shared memory but I haven't yet settled on an appropriate architecture.

[damian666]

thanx for the update man.
will report on monday what the findings are.


damian666

[heffalump]

This looks like a very nice thing to add I'm wondering if you have any ideas how close/far you are to an non-beta release? Do I need to do much configuring or is this simple plug and play? Does it play nice with games?