Well, a mixed bag of comments which is what I expected. Let’s go through the general issues before getting onto any specifics.
My initial feelings were one of dismay. Why did the first response just have to point to a bunch of Konfabulator widgets? Now don’t get me wrong, these widgets are great, but the fact is that there is nothing on that page that doesn’t already exist on numerous forms in the DesktopX libraries. OK, so the to-do list isn’t quite the same, but we have DX NoteIt which performs a similar task. Same goes for things like the Photo frame mentioned. Maybe it’s time people just reminded themselves about what already exists for DesktopX.
Imagery is superficial. Most people will acknowledge that my DX objects are not the best visually unless I have graphical assistance from others, but that doesn’t matter because people can easily change the graphics. There was a time when there was nothing appearing on the libraries but variations of calendars and weather objects and it drove me nuts!
As for “Official skinz” as one comment called them, for movie and game releases. Now there is one big issue on this – copyrighting. This realistically puts this out of bounds for those who care about such things. Believe me – obtaining copyrights is a nightmare!
Color changing. This is a good point and I welcome the opportunity to go into this. It is very easy to implement this in scripting so I too would be glad if developers would do this more. I will upload a generic color changer that people can use in their objects.
If developers don’t provide this then as a user the main issue is typically a “background” or “frame”. Therefore, look at the properties for that object, and go to the “States” tab. The “Color” subtab of this lets you adjust the hue and other colorization elements. Have a play with these until the developers catch up.
Documentation PDFs. Yep – there was a minor glitch in which the PDFs were actually installed as DOCs by mistake. The latest are here: http://www.desktopx.net/resources.asp
Another issue is that some of the requests are very hardware or software specific. This in turn raises two issues. The first is the developer having access to the hardware. I don’t have anything with Bluetooth, I don’t work behind a proxy, I don’t have a TV card and that makes things difficult to develop such apps. The second issue is the size of the audience. I have even restrained working on some really cool Outlook stuff on the grounds that not everyone can use it. The proxy issue is being looked at again however. My understanding was that as long as IE is set up to work with the proxy then DX should have no problems, but as I say, it’s being looked at again.
Scripting lessons – well I’m no expert, but I can help with most things DX related. Do people have ideas of what they’d like to see? I don’t really want to do a “How to use vbscript” as this can be found elsewhere, but I can try with other stuff if I know what you want.
OK now on to the specifics.
DX Functionality Ideas
Ability to change label backgrounds. This is relatively easy to do via script, but yes, I’d like this as a feature in DX for tooltip background images and the ability to colorise them.
Place an image behind IconX images, yes I think that’s quite a cool idea.
ObjectDock functionality? Never going to be possible to replicate in DX, but I really would like it is there was a DX class that could call upon OD+ functionality assuming it is running – like a flyout menu etc.
Menu builder. Yes, I’d kind of like this functionality, especially if we could use it to edit the right click menu too.
DX Object Ideas.
Mail checkers. Yes, I acknowledge that the current checker is limited. I’ll see what I can do. It may require a third party OCX if I can find a free one.
More dramatic weather on the desktop – keep watching for an upcoming premium theme
Address Book – Yep, I like this – this is something I’ll definitely take a look at. It will be Outlook based, because that’s what I have!
Sound gauge & visualisation – not sure if this is possible without a dedicated plugin, but I can certainly have a look at it.
Speech recognition – yeah this is definitely doable assuming the right MS Speech components are installed. I’ll see what I can do on this.
Chat etc - IRC – Definitely doable. Will look at this. MS Messenger – I did something for this for v4.6 of Messenger, but after that they really locked it down so you can’t access contact info etc via scripting. As such this is unlikely to happen. As for other chat clients I don’t really use them.
Countdown – easy to do. Will create soon.
Framed video clip – yes easily done. Coming soon.
Framed Image slideshow – yep, I’ll do this based on the contents of a specified folder.
Invisible screensaver – not really dx territory, but a Lock PC object should be easy.
Send to – Yep, should be easy enough too.
Magnifying glass – this is plugin territory – beyond me
Stardate calendar – is this Trekkie stuff? If so how would this work as it appears that dates are relative to the year 23somethingorother?
Alarm clock – yes I can do this.
Task Managers/Expose clones – This isn’t really that practical, especially as a lot of it would be repetition of the WindowFX “Tiles” functionality. There ARE limits as to what DX can hook into. Remember it’s not designed as a shell replacement.
Media Players – there are already comprehensive solutions out there for WMP and iTunes. What more is needed other than some different graphics?
Zoomers – What is meant by “zoomer calendars, clocks, media players”? Do people just want an object that zooms and then pops up these objects when clicked?
Forum/Newsgroup watchers. Not sure how practical this is, but I will look into it. The biggest difficulty is trying not to make the object too specific and inflexible.
Sports fan desktop – yep – possible – it’s just a case of finding a source for the data for the specific team. Any suggestions?
Sketch pad – I think you’re looking for a TabletPC
Screen capture – looked into this a while back. Think someone would need to write a plugin.
Clipboard manager – not sure it’s possible
Search bar diversity – not sure I understand this – what’s the problem with the existing search objects?
Media Centre Theme – yes definitely doable. Just requires some expansion of the media player objects as basically WMP could be used to control all of this.