Published on August 10, 2004 By _Martin_ In WinCustomize News
Recently there has been a marked upturn in the number of people I have noticed getting involved in DesktopX and providing feedback. This is possibly because recently there have been same excellent objects made, and widgets are making things even easier.

Numerous comments come in saying how useful these things are and how great the ideas are, but some of us are running short of ideas! Now Tiggz seems to have the monopoly on combining great ideas with awesome graphics but I'm sure he like me can't keep coming up with new ideas all the time.

What do people want to see made in DesktopX? If you can't make some of these things why not come up with the ideas, and maybe we'll get a chance to make them come to life?

Looking forward to hearing ideas, now I'm off to open the floodgates!
Comments (Page 1)
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on Aug 10, 2004
Hi Martin,
this is stuff i would like to see more of for desktop x: http://konfabulator.com/images/Bottom_Part.jpg
on Aug 10, 2004
hmm... i dont know if it's possible, but i would really love an email checker wich works for hotmail accounts...
on Aug 10, 2004
How about one that shows a picture frame and allows you to add your own photos, and rotates between them at a set interval?

Or, one that tells how many emails are waiting, and with the click of a button, scroll thru the subject line of the email and open the email without going thru the email app?

on Aug 10, 2004
Kids desktop, hunts for installed versions of known educational software and makes large crayon like buttons for the kids to get to it easily. Also can include things like a large number calculator and shape/color/number games that play on the desktop itself.

Official skinz for upcoming game/movie releases. Easier said than done, but push on in this realm. Prince-O-Persia 2, SplinterCell3 and so on are all good candidates.

Sports Fans Desktop, hooks into live stats for the team ed durring install. Includes a scoreboard for any game currently being played.

Weather interactive desktop. Take the docklet a step further and have the rain leak onto windows and puddle up near the taskbar. Sunny days have the shadow drift as the day rolls on. Snow is pretty obvious. Heavy wind could have occasional debris fly by.

Desktop Background Task managment. All windows forms get a new button that turn the task into an IconX object and can be dragged into the 3D background. Blended into the background, hilight on hover, restore&focus on click. Think of a picture of a wooden desk, and your word doc shrinks to an icon that looks like sheets of paper you can place on the desk, and drag out later when you need it again. Nice animation when dropping the object onto the background.

Where windows only see's 2 layers of windows the background windows and the one focused window, have seperate windows able to reside in the same layer of space. So 2 windows not directly related can be set on the same layer and they effect each other. One window can "Push" the other around in the same layer, or have edges magnet-like that makes the windows lock together and moved at the same time. Also, when either window is focused, the entire layer is given focus.

** that's all I got for now, maybe post more suggestions later **
on Aug 10, 2004
Martin,

Off the top of my head I thought of something in the way of an address book that would consist of an image of a book (maybe 256 x 176?) which would act as a toggle for the display frame (small window of some sort) which would contain: Name, Address, Phone, E-mail.

It would need a next and previous search button as well as a reference for alphabetical search to speed up process.

A button or link for New, Edit and Delete entries (a right click context might work nicely to avoid defeating the simplistic object idea), or small colored buttons somewhere.

It would be nice to be able to change the color of the book and window frame, not sure how feasible that would be.

Also, the same idea which would link to Outlook for listings.

Perhaps a seperate professional contacts object which could list by company name?

I thought a smaller version of your appointment calendar would be nice. Maybe 1/2 the current size.

Also, zoomer calendars, clocks, media player objects?

Just some ideas on the fly.

Thanks for all the great work so far, I will attempt some entries of my own when I can find time outside of work.

on Aug 10, 2004
Hi,

first of all, I'd like if internet-aware widgets (weather, mail checker, news reader...) would be able to run behind a proxy, so that they could be run in a corporate environment as well.

I'd be happy with widgets like:
-A clone of MAC OSX's expose. See http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/expose/
-forum/artist watcher. I specify which wincustomize/deviantart forum or artist I want to watch, and a notification would pop up on my desktop even without visiting wincustomize.com or deviantart.com
-A newsgroup notifier. (not for RSS newsfeeds, but for news.stardock.* newsgroups) It would check, if there are new replies to watched posts in newsgroups. I guess some of the most used newsgroup apps should be supported.

will wrote more later
on Aug 10, 2004
How about a soud gauge? You now... that things that keeps going up and down following the sound that's playing.. just eyecandy...
on Aug 10, 2004
I love all the lovely widgets & objects appearing. I think being a newbie in this area with no graphical skills I rely heavily on the skills and willingness of all the developers spending the time creating the objects and widgets.

I love the weather, calendar tools that are created usually by Martin, I would like to see the objects have some sort of colour changing abilities & the ability to have it look part of the desktop rather than an object on top of the wallpaper.

Extra things for me are a small footprint windows media player object & a bluetooth type object to speed up the use of various bluetooth profiles on my Dell Axim & my Nokia bluetooth phone.

Also, I would like to see more system monitoring objects that can also have the colour changed or merged with the wallpaper.


Halluci mentioned an email checker, I think an object on the desktop that advises how many mails you have unread & can support multiple accounts including web based accounts would be beneficial. Hopefully utilising the same ability to change colours or merging with the wallpaper.

Sorry for the long post.

Regards

John
on Aug 10, 2004
I would also like a photoframe, customizable like the one for Konfabulator, it does it's job just like it should.
on Aug 10, 2004
I would love to see a widget based on the "ServerSpy" web site plug-in that would allow me to monitor a game server from my desk top. The ability to have multiple ones (or "instances") would be awsome!
on Aug 10, 2004
I would like to work DX but i can't find a User Guide to help me with the scripts thing, and the PDF files (DevelopersGuide.pdf, ScriptingGuide.pdf, UsersGuide.pdf) installed with DX are corrupted. I reported it at Stardock IRC channel to check if someone have this files but everyone that i asked got the files corrupted too.

So anyone have a good DX guide/manual to help me?

thank you
on Aug 10, 2004
I would like to see something that would/could take the place of Trillian and all it's glory. now that would be a DX widget!
on Aug 10, 2004
I would be happy with a email checker that can handle multiple POP 3 accounts and a internet based account such as Yahoo. Also, it would be nice to be able to have a help file that was not corrupted, (me too), or some form of documentation so that I could figure this program out, or at least try
on Aug 10, 2004
Speech Recognition (eg saying "IE" would launch internet explorer, "notepad" would launch notepad, etc.) would be awesome. I got my feet wet a while back trying to figure out how to do this in VB, but to no avail. Perhaps someone who really knows how to code in C or Java cold find a better way to do this. The thread I started on the subject can be found here: https://www.wincustomize.com/msgboard.asp?BID=WCS&id=170419#173127
on Aug 10, 2004
Another idea I had was to use real photos for the IconX part. Such as a photo of a notpad (clicking on it opens notepad), real photo of calculator, etc.
I always thought an icon theme built on that idea would be cool too, but since I basically suck at photography (i'm the guy who takes about a dozen pictures before he realizes the lenscap is still on) I wanted to toss this out to the artists...

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