A bit of fun for Christmas cheer! I want people to send me Christmas cards !!!!! I'm conscious that we have a great international community here so I think it would be fun to see how many cards I can get and where they come from. This isn't an ego trip, I don't want it to be a "send me a card if you like my widgets", if only because that sounds a bit wierd !! I just think it would be cool so if you do too then the address is as below. Martin Conroy 1 Halifax Close Full Sutt...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/click/rss/0.91/public/-/1/hi/technology/3974081.stm

Well, obviously the election is about to be decided and Europe will have to deal with either 4 more years of what we know from Bush, or build a new relationship that will apparently take us in a new direction. The fact is that in Europe we don't have an informed view unless we take the take and are sufficiently interested to understand all the U.S. domestic politics. Needless to say, most of us (including myself) don't care enough to do this. However, in a recent poll of citizens of Euro...

Last year the BBC had a wonderful series of programs called The Big Read which had the aim of identifying the most popular books of all time amongst the British public. Famous public figures from politics, music, film and TV eulogised about their favourite books of all time and then the public voted. One of the books which did very well is a series called His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman. These ranked 3rd of all time. Whilst it is to be expected that there would be a bias towards mor...

I'm about to get away for a week on vacation, but before I do I thought I'd leave some practical samples of the Common User Information file in the form of a calendar and weather objects. If you need a sample CUI file it can be found here: http://www.desktopx.net/standards/dxCUI.xml Once you have this, place it in your DesktopX directory and exit it to your details. The samples are here: Calendar Weather The Base Weather Template has also received an update in the DX O...

The proposed standards have been updated based on feedback and the proposal for Additional Object Information (AOI) storage has been outlined. You can get the draft document here: DesktopX Standards You can get a sample CUI file here: Sample CUI File You can get a sample AOI file here: Sample AOI File You can get a dxpack showing the basics of interaction here: Sample CUI access using DesktopX Note that the samples assume that the dxCUI.xml file is in your DesktopX...

In a drive to make DesktopX easier for both users and devlopers I am in the process of trying to develop some standards for DesktopX. These will only succeed with support and a critical mass of developers using them so I urge you to assist if you think this a a worth while cause. This first draft details proposed Common User Information, and outlines other plans for the standard. Your feedback is welcome. You can get the draft document here: www.desktopx.net/standards/DesktopX S...

As we all get more sophisticated in creating DesktopX widgets we are setting parameters. The issue with this is that, if these parameters are not organised in a consistent manner then where several objects need the same kind of information we will find ourselves having to configure these each time. Before this becomes too much of a problem I propose that we create some standards that users can set and developers can access. For example: Name information (title, forename, surname, suffix, ...

I have uploaded a new DesktopX weather object which is a good framework for new (and redone old) weather widgets. All the data from weather.com is exposed in easy to use variables including a 10 day forecast. The script including all the functions is designed to be self contained and can therefore be updated in isolation without impacting other elements of your objects. Full commenting available with the objects.

Today I finally submitted what will hopefully be the next substantial release of The Natural Desktop for testing. It's been a lot of fun so far and I expect there will be more to come so I created a small article on JoeUser briefly describing the process for those that are interested

On the occasional free second I have from now on I'm going to try to help making some more basic objects that people can take and customise to their hearts content. Sometimes the objects created can look really complex and intimidating, but the truth is that once they are made, if they are well made, then they are really easy to customise. The first in the series is about making a calendar. The link below will take you to the guide.

As soon as people say "scripting" people tend to run a mile if they are primarily "graphical" people rather than "technical" people. This is the reason that I personally believe that the graphical standards on DesktopX is relatively low. I can say this safely as I know that I am one of the worse culprits. I'm not trained in any of the packages and I tend to use whichever side of the brain is concerned with this stuff less. If you look at a lot of the Mac influenced widgets in Konfabul...

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 perf...

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 li...

The British Government has been making a lot of fuss recently about how it has spent £10million on a booklet to advise us Brits how to deal with certain events. Obviously this is NOT just due to terrorist threats because Mr Blair tells us so. Whilst I wait for this booklet to drop through my letterbox, and pray that that no emergencies occur that I am unprepared for, they have produced a website. Far more interesting than this is their neglect to register www.preparingforemergencie...