7 replies to this topic

[oeed]

So, I haven't been particularly active on the forums recently. I've gotten a little tired of CC after spending about 6 - 8 months straight on OneOS and other stuff.

Amongst other things, I've been working on a project that's been in the works for sometime, but I started it again from scratch because the old one was hideously coded. In short, it's an app that allows you to put little, uhhh, things, on your desktop. If you've used GeekTool, it's similar to that. It also looks like Rainmeter might be a little similar, but I haven't looked at it. At the moment it's Mac only, but I might be able to run it on Windows.

The main difference that this will have over those and similar apps is ease of use (surprise, surprise ). With GeekTool everything had to be done through Terminal commands (and AppleScript as Terminal can call it). Needless to say, it wasn't pretty. It was painful for even the most advanced users, especially if you wanted something such as weather. I haven't used Rainmeter, but taking a quick look at the API makes it look like it's not much easier, or worse. My app is 100% HTML, CSS and JavaScript (and Objective-C) with lots of easy to use APIs.


Essentially I'm just wanting feedback from people about things they think I should add/change/remove, etc. I'm also looking for name idea, because I really can't think of a good one.

I'll add a more detailed description if people are interested, but here are a few screenshots of it. Do note that it is in fairly early stages, but a lot of the backend stuff is done.

Spoiler

At the moment I've only made two widgets, but I'll be adding more pretty soon. Most of the work thus far has been getting everything interlinking and working. You can easily move and resize everything. (Please note that everything is twice the size due to my screen). Oh, and the iTunes widget changes colour to match the artwork


As some Mac users (including myself, sorry about the oversized images) have Retina screens I've tried to make everything resolution independent by doing things vector based and avoiding raster images. This means you can do cool stuff like this... Not that anyone would, but, hey, why not?


Finally, as previously mentioned, everything is web based, which makes stuff really easy to make and debug.

So if you've got any name ideas or comments, let me know!

Edited by oeed, 14 September 2014 - 11:21 AM.

[Bomb Bloke]

Can it load actual OS X widgets? Like the ones Apple seems to want people to forget about, that is, the ones you use in the dashboard?

If not, how much tweaking would it take to port them over?

[oeed]

Bomb Bloke, on 14 September 2014 - 12:08 PM, said:

Can it load actual OS X widgets? Like the ones Apple seems to want people to forget about, that is, the ones you use in the dashboard?

If not, how much tweaking would it take to port them over?

Not too sure, I'll take a look in to it though. I have a feeling that it would possibly cause it to get rejected from the App Store though.

[Rectar2]

"Android Widgets: MAC EDITION"
Or, a better idea,
"Ultimate Desktop Customizer Tool" or "UDCT" for short.

[cdel]

Oh my god, why didn't I see this earlier. This is pure awesome, great job and are you still in need of name ideas? />

edit: when will this be released?

Edited by connordelaneyy, 30 September 2014 - 11:55 AM.

[oeed]

connordelaneyy, on 30 September 2014 - 11:53 AM, said:

Oh my god, why didn't I see this earlier. This is pure awesome, great job and are you still in need of name ideas? />

edit: when will this be released?

Glad you think it looks cool. Yep, still in need of name ideas.

It probably won't be fully released for a while yet as I need to make tons more widgets and do quite a bit more front end stuff. I also need to write a fairly extensive API documentation. Publicity is gona be a pain too. But I can probably send you/anyone interested a beta soonish. I'm taking a short break (1 week, just for the school holidays) from all coding stuff as I've been super busy and need to have time to do absolutely nothing, but I'll probably resume work pretty soon.

A week or two ago I got the settings stuff working, it's super easy to make your own customisable settings 'modules' such as the clock themes section, which will hopefully make third party widgets super easy to use.

Oh and I've also added snap guides, kinda like in PowerPoint, Keynote, Xcode, etc. They appear on the edges and center of the screen and others widgets, as well as a 20 pixel margin from the edges of the screen and other widgets.

Please ignore the 72s, they're just placeholder for now. I'll also be adding a timezone option, although I'm still thinking about how to attack that interface.

Edit: Oh, and it should say 'Clock' rather than Headspace. Odd....

Edited by oeed, 30 September 2014 - 01:16 PM.

[cdel]

looks great, and I would love to get a beta copy

[cdel]

oeed, on 30 September 2014 - 01:12 PM, said:

Edit: Oh, and it should say 'Clock' rather than Headspace. Odd....

Sorry for posting a bit late, if you haven't already got a name why not use Headspace?