Franks Gadgets

[AdmiralAlkex]

Let me present to you: "Franks Gadgets"!!

I have been working on this for periods for almost a year but thought it was time to show it to the puplic now, so I created a project on Sourceforge to put a basic webpage and files on.

FAQ

What is it??

A widget engine written in AutoIt which sits on the side of your desktop and runs "gadgets", similar to Microsoft's Windows Sidebar or Apple's Dashboard.

Any details of the development??

It has gone through around 3 major rewritings and started somewhere around 18 Jun 2007. Current development is on AutoIt 3.2.10.0 and SciTE 1.75 running on WinXP SP2.

Why should I run this instead of Windows Sidebar, Yahoo! Widgets, etc??

For one thing it's pretty easy to make your own gadgets, look at Counter.frank (gui) or MiniAntiVirPopupKiller.frank (non-gui)

What was that talk about non-gui??

Gadgets don't require any gui at all and can be run completely invisible, in fact there are very few restraints at all. You can even create a different file for every part of your gadget.

(Please note that it's an alpha for a reason, bugs are common and will be seen)

Read more/download

[gseller]

Way Cool!! I Love it!! Thanks for sharing...

[XxCOOLxX]

Very Very Cool.. I luv it!

[AdmiralAlkex]

Great that you like it!

Feel free to come with suggestions on new features or gadgets you want to see

[Brickoneer]

Amazing. I love it.

It seems a bit buggy and a tad slow, but overall it is a GREAT start.

Is there any way to make the thing where it "pushes" all the windows out of the way optional?

From what I've seen the widgets/gadgets only display when the desktop is being viewed... that might be a good feature to emulate. (even if its optional)

Or you could even emulate a mac by having the gadget bar appear when the mouse is less than X pixels from the right side of the screen... or have everything be extremely transparent until you move your mouse over it? That way you don't lose monitor "real estate".

It doesn't seem to remember what gadgets I have in my settings. If I select 3 of them, then 2, on a restart it brings back all 3. I select a new 3rd one and it restarts with 4 gadgets.

Why does the whole thing refresh when you click on the gadget bar? From what I can tell clicking doesn't "do" anything, so why refresh the gadgets?

The background color only worked on the first launch... the second launch it was the default "gui-background" color and stayed that way even when I tried to change it. It started working again. :-/

Maybe you could have a little splash loading box for the time when the app is busy. Playing with the settings it had some lengthy pauses where I was left wondering "Is it doing something?" Maybe clicking the "save" button closes the settings gui and displays a little splash "loading..." message in the center of the screen while the sidebar rebuilds? The same goes for the initial startup.

That reminds me... the initial startup launched a blank bar and I have to restart the gadgets for them to display.

Also, the clock leaves images of itself behind when you drag it. And if the appbar is opaque then you can "see-through" the clock while dragging it.

The slideshow doesn't drag correctly. It drags the outline and when the next pic is put in, then it updates the pic location.

I'll take a peak at all the includes and such, but is there an easy way to develop our own autoit gadgets? If so, I'll use this a LOT.

Those are my first impressions. You have a GREAT tool here with a ton of potential. After the kinks get worked out, I'll almost definitely use this 24/7.

Hope that helps!

Brick

[edit] Sorry for continually adding more... I just keep noticing things as I play with it. If I have time I'll play around with it myself to try and save you some work.

This is an amazing tool.

Edited April 6, 2008 by Brickoneer

[gseller]

alarmclock, application launcher... Yeah! I know, I am lazy.. LOL Just suggestions...

[Achilles]

Good work so far! It works fairly well... I have one problem though, the widget sidebar is doesn't seem to cooperate with windows toolbar. Consequently your script will go on top of the windows toolbar sometimes and then windows will eventually get back on top. I suggest making the GUI only go down to where the windows toolbar ends.

[AdmiralAlkex]

Sorry for late posting but my life outside AutoIt has been taking more and more time lately.....

@Brickoneer (wow that was a long post)

I like the idea of a loading screen. That will be in the next version.

I am also aware of the graphics-"problems" you are speaking about but I don't know how I should fix them, I simply suck at making GUI's.

alarmclock, application launcher... Yeah! I know, I am lazy.. LOL Just suggestions...

I like youe suggestions, I will try to build them if i get time.... If I only didn't was so lazy

Good work so far! It works fairly well... I have one problem though, the widget sidebar is doesn't seem to cooperate with windows toolbar. Consequently your script will go on top of the windows toolbar sometimes and then windows will eventually get back on top. I suggest making the GUI only go down to where the windows toolbar ends.

I understand your problem but I dont have much (if any?) control over the gui since it is a AppBar created with the appbar udf.... If you look at other AppBars like Windows Sidebar you will see that they work in the same way.

I just remembered one thing, summer is soon here and I will be very busy so it will take time before I can update it, sry....