Devious Journal Entry

Wed Dec 19, 2007, 8:54 AM

Hmmm, realised I should make use of this Journal feature instead of posting messages to myself !

Spent this week learning about Visual C++ and learning about writing docklets for ObjectDock with a view to releasing them on deviantArt ... watch this space

Ok, initially this went well, found out how to use Visual C++ to interact with the ObjectDock SDK and the limitations imposed - in particular realised it was almost impossible to capture the mouse in the way I wanted to use it. Learnt about gdi+ and implemented a clock which behaves in exactly the same way as the one supplied with ObjectDock. Now I'm ready to try writing some useful docklets I have in mind

however things have stopped atm, what with work and the run up to xmas.

Update (13th Jan) : Ok now XMas and the New Year is done and dusted, and I seem to be recovering from Flu

I'm going to make a more concerted effort to get back to writing some docklets.

At the moment I have ideas for 3 or 4 docklets that I would find useful, but if anyone has any ideas for others then please feel free to offer suggestions and I will consider them.

Update (31st Jan) : Hmmm, took me a lot longer to recover from the flu than i expected and then I lost my motivation. Come this weekend I will definately continue working on my docklets (if I can remember where I got up to!).

Update (6th Feb) : In response to Nokadota request for some info on what I'm developing I've decided to update my Journal with some of the ideas for docklets I want to write. Basically, if there is anything that I can think of that will improve the usability of my system that I'd like, then I'm going to write a docklet for it and release it - perhaps others would find it useful, perhaps not - it will be interesting to see I guess

Ok so far written a clock docklet that can be custom configured with an image (just like the one that comes with Object Dock), however, it also acts as a countdown timer firing an alarm off after x minutes - great to act as a reminder to take food out of the oven, and I've been using it for some weeks now on pretty much a daily basis

It works quite well and is simple to use, but it's a little rough around the edges atm and I want to possibly add other features to it (eg, a stopwatch, maybe setting alarms, etc...). The only problem with adding more features is it complicates the UI significantly given the limited screen area available in a dock item, and I want to make it as user friendly and as simple to use as possible.

Another idea is for a docklet to interact with iTunes - I know there is at least one out there which is quite good, and which I'm currently using, but it is lacking certain features that I'd really want, and I'd like to simplify the UI and make it a bit more friendly to use for me.

Yet another idea is to have a docklet to provide system statistics - again I know there is the systats thing but I'm not keen on that - I feel much more comfortable messing around in c++ than dealing with the config files (I had a look at the config dialog for SysStats and just found it confusing as hell). I also have some ideas of how the UI will behave for this but I want to give it some more thought.

There are probably a load of other ideas I could think of if I just thought about it for 10 minutes or so but that's certainly enough to be getting on with for now.