MetalArend

1. Well, I'm looking forward to it. Until then, I will only try to help by testing the docklet... 2. The "add alarm" button is genious, but could it be a "manage alarms" button? 3. Is it maybe not quite strange if you actually went in the "add alarm" window, and there clicked "ok", that the alarm isn't set when I then click on the "red cross" to close the preferences window... Should we change that behaviour? (Asking the opinion of the community ) 3b. This doesn't happen if I "quick add" an alarm (from the right click menu). My opinion is that if you actually say yes to the "add alarm" dialog, that it should be set, even if the preferences window still stays open... Possible? 4. Setting the hour is still a little bit weird, as the buttons up/down are for the active part of the complete time... Split it up in an hours, a minutes and an am/pm part? 5. Opening the preferences window is not set to open only one time... When I open the preferences, forget about that window, and open it again, it will be active twice... As I was trying some stuff, together with the behaviour in number 3, I was really thinking that something was going wrong, as I was adding alarms in the window, clicking "ok", and waiting for them to become active (they also showed up in the docklet, but they did nothing, as there was still an instance open from the preferences menu)... As there was still that forgotten "preferences" window, nothing was happening. After some time I minimized all my screens, I came up to that screen, clicked ok, the next alarm came up, and the whole dock crashed... Trying to do it again... Did it the third time (deleted the second way to redo it)... Quite easy to do it again now: open the preferences, add an alarm, open a new preferences window (without closing the first), close this last one - crash! 5b. When I added some alarms, I'm deleting them, clicking ok on the preferences window, it will still not really update the alarms? 'cause when I deleted them all, clicked ok on the preferences window, they seem all to be gone... BUT when I'm then trying to redo the bug here above, to make the dock crash, and I restart the dock, all the alarms are still there? Other option: delete some alarms, remove the docklet from your dock, add it again, alarms will be there again... 6. Can only delete alarms from the list by clicking the "delete" button, the real "delete button" on my keyboard doesn't work... Expected behaviour? 7. And then there was this one time that I tried to delete some alarms, add some things, and somewhere in the proces I reopened the preferences menu, and there were those strange alarms with all kinds of chinese characters and so on... Can't redo it, don't know what happened, but I'm sure it happened :S X1. I removed my AppData/Local/DigitalClockDocklet folder, then added the ClockDocklet new to my dock, still a problem with my "next" icon positioning... Is there another place also where the docklet leaves settings behind? X2. You could make the preferences window able to keep it that full with stuff, but making it wider than it is heigh, as at least all the screens I know of are wider as they are heigh; basicly, set the preview to the right from the selection parts in the skin tab? *EDIT* X3. Adding some tab-index to the buttons on your windows, as for example in the alarms window it isn't going to the next thing logically when pressing tab? I'm stopping my testing, as probably Smaky is going to shoot me, and all the things I asked in this post are almost all from the same problem Waiting for the next version, trying it again (hoping for an easier way to manage my alarms *hint*)...

Actually, I'm since more than a year a satisfied Vista-user (and was never an XP user, 'cause it does too much for you, as seen by too many friends having problems with XP changing settings back, trying to optimize the system and so on), that has no problem with UAC, which - once you get used to it - has quite a similarity with the sudo-mentality from *nix systems... I'm just wondering what to do with this otherwise great applet... There is something I like about some applications, and it's having the choice to put files where I want them; if a program wants to clutter my AppData folder, I want to be aware of it. And going portable, as lot's of programs allow me to do already, this AppData-folder is just annoying, unless there is a way to disable this in the program itself... I'm always able to let a program run from another diskdrive, and manipulating an ini in that folder is also never a problem. But I'm also aware that for some programs it will have a huge impact on some coding involved in their project, so that it's not that easy to give the end-user choices like that. (Allthough, most of the apps could change this behavior by just adjusting the way the path is handled to the settings, by adding a changeable variabel in that path, that users could set: basicly combine %windir% %appdata% and so on with %userpath%). But I will come back later (for this little thingy), once this kind of usability is more commonly used! I'm going to work now, will test the alarms further once I'm back at my PC

Woohoow! *EDIT* "Add Alarm" is working like a charm! Thanks a lot! OK, I figured it out: there is an ini-file situated in my AppData-folder, instead of in my docklet folder. I have to say that I didn't expect a docklet to do such a thing... But then again, it isn't that weird. It only means that I would have to remove this docklet from the list I'm putting together to make a completely portable dock, as it writes its settings not in the folder from the docklet, but in the AppData-folder... Are there any plans to make it possible to change this behavior? RocketDock has an ini-file for example, when you set it up portable, it will write all the settings in this file, for the Dock itself, but also for the plugins. It's a nice thing Yes, the latter was just the thing I had in mind Thanks a lot! *EDIT* Working like it is expected to do, no problems anymore over here! *EDIT* Still the am/pm icon is coming up when I'm installing it from scratch. - Would it be possible to auto-detect if am/pm is available on a system, and if not, grey it out, and set it to "not 12" automatically? It just looks so *hum* amateur *hum* when there is sth showing up for a default install

Wow, been away from my pc for some days, lot to read here... 1. Nice! Ghostwalker, those rock! Especially the blue one, woohoow! 2. GUI settings: it wasn't for the show-menu-part that I was asking this, but for the quick access to the alarms... Because when you use Alarms, it's probably also handy to quick add one... 3a. GUI docklet: those Next & Back buttons in your screenshot are putting an image in my head that I like... Didn't know how to make the situation better, but this will do just fine! 3b. GUI docklet: in the screenshot, you can see that the placement of the buttons isn't correct. Can't figure out what is going wrong... 4. GUI settings: you ask, we try to please! 5a. GUI settings: Like already said by others, this is actually a problem with the settings on the pc. I use the 24-hour scheme in my Windows, so in my settings, there isn't something specified as AM/PM, they just are blank. It probably means that this will explain the bug I'm having with the placement of the am/pm symbol, and also still no am/pm in the "add alarm" screen. But isn't it easy to implement a button next to the time section in the "add alarm" screen, to permit one from changing between 24/12hour format in the screen itself, also making it just possible to set a time where the HH is higher than 12? 5b. GUI docklet: the am/pm icon still appears to sit in the left up corner of the docklet. It will disappear completely when I'm in 24-hour mode, it will sit in the left up corner when in 12-hour mode. 6a. GUI settings: I like the menu... Only enhancement could be to put the preview aside the other stuff, as the menu is too heigh for my screen 6b. GUI settings: when I go to a certain mode other than the "clock mode" in the preferences, the preview will update. Closing and opening again the preferences, the "clock mode" will be again selected, but the preview still will be in the previously chosen mode. 6c: GUI settings: would it maybe be possible to change the dock-icon also when clicking "ok" while selected another mode in the preferences? Also making the preview visible in the preferences menu visible when opening, could be the mode where the actual docklet is in at that moment? There are pro and cons for this idea, I'm aware of that

Jup, tried it. You're right, that works just fine. Is it also because of RocketDock that when I change the volume in vista itself, that it doesn't show in the docklet, until I click update now? (I actually think it's the only docklet that doesn't auto-updates that I know off, probably with a good reason )

Tested the latest version (from the first post). 1. Changing between tabs seems kinda slow. Don't know how performance could be optimized to change quicker... Actually, I don't think it has sth to do with performance. If I click on an icon on the docklet, it changes the background, but then takes a few hundreds of seconds to change the complete screen. Could it be better to let the screen change in another order: first hide all the stuff from the first screen, before starting to show the things from the new screen. This way you would never see a start/stop button in front of the background from the clock tab. It doesn't really boost performance, but it leaves out the bad impression that something seems to be going wrong 1b. Same for scrolling through the alarms and alarm-clocks; maybe first build the new screen, so it shows in one quick update? 2. Would it be possible to change the right-click menu? Just thinking that the Show-list can become very long, and that the alarms could become really important in this docklet (Well, personally, I'm probably never gonna use it though ) ### ### ### - Manage Clock... - Manage Alarms... (opening the preferences window in the alarms tab directly? possible?) - Manage World Clocks... - Change Skin... --- --- --- - Show/Hide >>> opens a menu-part Show Date, Show Hours, and so on... --- --- --- - Update Now... - Digital Clock Docklet Settings... - About Digital Clock Docklet... ### ### ### 3. As Alarms and World Clocks already have their own tabs in the settings screen, wouldn't it be an idea to put the show things in a separate Clock tab? That way the general docklet preferences and the stuff about the clock-format are not alltogether... Don't know if this would be better myself, though 4. Still can't set an alarm to 13:00... (As previous mentioned, no am/pm.) 5. I can scroll through all my alarms in the docklet, but it isn't that clear that actually something is changing. A scrollbar doesn't seem a good idea, but other ideas could be: a gradient behind all alarms, where the background behind the last alarm in the list would have a slightly other/darker/lighter color; the on/off button could have a slightly different color; the rows from the alarms could be lighter/darker, so that the even alarms would be slightly lighter from background than the uneven alarms (as in a table). I like the last option best, as that would mean that Ghostwalker could make easily one new lighter/darker image, instead of a gradient thingy, that could become not that clear with text in front of it. (What ya think, Ghostwalker?). Also, as it shows an uneven count from alarms, it would mean that with every click you see very clearly something changing. 5b. Possible improvements: I love the big on/off button in the alarms-tab, it's very easy to click on. But scrolling through the alarms is not that easy for someone with shaky hands, or so Would it be possible to make this area a little bit bigger (same goes for the world clocks)? 5c. Is there a quick way to scroll fast to the end of my looong alarm list (ok, again, I will never have a long list, as I hate alarms, but I'm sure somebody out there will have such a list)? Double-clicking to go fast to the end of the list? Another button to "go to bottom" (but where would you place that, without losing too much space for the alarms?)? 6. When I'm adding Brussels as a World Clock, it actually shows me another time as my computer gives me So when I'm adding Brussels or Paris as a World Clock, the UTC Offset is set as 2, where it actually needs to be 1. 7. But the best of it all is that it works here too! Vista is really not a problem, it just works! (As you notice, all the above are just minor things, as the functionality is there, and it works well!)

This is an example. As you can see, there's also a border, just to make sure that when you don't set the height and width right, you'll see it for sure in any preview! *edit* It's just a way of using images. When you only read this image once in memory, and then use it from there, it will make a big difference. But I don't know for sure if this will be usefull for the docklet, that something you have to test *edit* Answering Ghostwalker: it's actually up to Smaky to make the docklet as such that it is possible for the skinner to choose this. He already told us before that he is doing this, but I was only concerned that while he was implementing this easy way to make a skin, he would forget to actually make his first skin everyone will see coherent on this issue. iTime.zip

1. Same thingie as before: on one tab the title is a background, on the other a text-area... *slaps himself and whispers in his own ear "stop complaining"* But then again, it will be quite easy to add or remove the one or the other, so it's up to the skinner to make things the same allover the tabs. 2. Allright, put it on the some time in the future list maybe . What I ment with the shadow-part in that paragraph, was just that you can make a greyed-out-part in an image by combining white pixels with grey or black pixels, where those white pixels could be colorized by that neat feature, so you could have an image completely colorized, with gloss, shadow and so on still nice looking. 3. I was just thinking that all your digits have the same size already, so just putting them in one picture (first row 1 till 9, second row 1 till 9 smaller, and so on) would make the folder with pictures not that "full". I don't think it would limit the size of the digits, it only would need another way of showing them, as it means that you not only have to show the image, but also have to position it right. This could then be done: one picture with O-9 (normal version, shadowversion and c-version), and so on for the am, pm, and backgrounds... But it isn't that necessary While we're at it: am/pm icons are positioned strangely, but I'm sure it's just temporary 6a. This is solved already, as it is working in the new version! Woohoow... Adding the clock also works like a charm! You're my personal hero! *EDIT* Can you put some space between the day and the date?

Nice skin! 1. @ Ghostwalker: You can't do sth like that indeed. But then my only concern was that of you use an image on every tab, but not on the digital clock tab, isn't that a bit strange? With the new download this seems fixed, nicely done! I'm only annoying you with trying to think about the difference between text-parts, and image-text, 'cause they aren't really that different... 1b. Also the am/pm thingy is fixed! Woohoo! *EDIT* Still thinking that the am/pm part has more to do with the time than with the skin itself, so I think it should be white, with some partly greyed out parts for shadow, but not by using an opaque factor, but maybe using pixelating the color (one pixel grey, the one beside it white, so that colorizing it still would have a shadow)... 2. @ Smaky: Forget about the add button It was just sth that happens to happen by trying to make the mockup. It isn't important, and you're right on the fact that "regular" users won't ever use it, and skinners will manage on their own to add a new skin folder... 3. The hierarchy-thingie (let's call it that) would really make things easier, I thought. I think it's the only thing I would really love to see added to a new release... Doing this right, would make previewing different tabs much easier, and making text-areas or drawn digits much more logical. So when there would be one thing I would appreciate to think about by reading my last post, it would be all the parts about the hierarchy 4. The colorizing is a nice "side-effect" tough! Using it with care, as putting a flag for every element being colorized or not, it is a really nice feature with lots of potential! Nothing wrong with it, just giving some thoughts on it 5. I've been reading a lot of things about digital clock widgets, docklets and so on, and I don't remember if it was with this docklet, but it's sth that would be really nice: can I add this docklet twice, and make it so that I see the hours on the first, and the minutes on the second, so they make one big digital clock? Actually, the most should be done by making a new skin, but in the preferences, there then should also be an option added to show minutes or hours (there already is the option to show seconds). Maybe a good idea to implement this with a text-area in the preferences, where the user can add "HH:MM:ss" or so, making much more possible, without cluttering the preferences up with a lot of option-buttons (on the other side, it would demand to get into those things, but then again, we're talking about doing a clock, wouldn't be strange if you already looked into that, Smaky?). 6. Some things I was running into by trying this docklet, wherefrom I'm not sure it has to do sth with my installation: 6a. I can't click on the different fields to see on the actual dock the stopwatch tab. This is probably because I'm running RocketDock and RKLauncher, not Object Dock (you may shoot me for that!), so I didn't dare to add it before to my list. 6b. Is it supposed to show no background image when first added? (This is new to the last version, before it did start with the clock and so too) Again, on RocketDock, it shows the default "unknown"-icon as a background, showing only the date, but no time or anything from the skin. Actually, in the preferences it seems as the skin is not yet selected. When I select "icons" as skin, everything runs smoothly, so this could be an enhancement or a bug, just bringing it to your attention. If this is supposed to be this way, maybe adding the same "set up this docklet first" or so would be nice (the way it happens on the network monitor and the wifi info). Should give you this: never seen this quick acting on sth I said, wow, I could get used to this *EDIT* 7. I'm adding not a mockup this time, but a screenshot. As I said in 6b, I didn't have a background when I added the docklet to my dock. I went to the preferences, choosing "icons" as the skin did solve it. But now I saw that I'm seeing the clock on the stopwatch background... Worth looking into it? 8. @ Ghostwalker: what could be done to use one big png for the complete skin (or just a collection for all the numbers in one image, the images for am/pm in one image)? Using the position that shows up, like it is being used in the "animated shortcut" docklet? Just an idea...

So we agree Whick means actually that having a font part actually isn't a good idea, and it would maybe be better to do it all with images, where you only can choosse the size and the color? That actually makes the problem with the am/pm not being text obsolete, because the text parts from the design would be "hard-coded", not depending on the system, and looking the same way on every computer where you would use the skin with those settings backed up from your first install. Or it could mean that you're still going to use some text parts, and then it would be still a good idea to give the skin-builder the option to add to the skin a font he prefers, where the docklet can look for that font first, before going back to the default font? (While I'm writing this two paragraphs, I'm actually leaning towards the first solution, the hard-coded part, leaving the text to the skinner, not completely to the end-user... (Actually, I'm thinking on it while I'm writing this) *edit* Reading through this post will solve this problem eventually, by attributes for every element. The only thing then would be that the text-parts in the other tabs would be images, and the first tab would be real text? The longer I think about it, it would maybe just a good idea to delete the font option completely, using images for every letter maybe, just leaving the option to maybe sizing and coloring the images, so the top text on the four tabs would be same scaled, same colored, same "font", unless you would one by one "fonting" them differently... Let's say it otherwise then... In the world clock and the alarm part, you can add a new clock or an alarm. Copying those buttons to the skin-tab, for the sake of overal design, you would have a button to "create a skin". Actually, it isn't that bad as idea, to let a default skin come with the docklet, making it possible for users to not really get into everything "howto skin the docklet", but just making them work on a skinversion with just another name (new skin ), and add this one to the list of skins to choose from... I see that. Actually, I really do prefer those buttons under the preview, or the lists, for exactly the same reason. The only reason that I put it aside from the clock-preview, and not under it, was to leave the preview the size it is, and the window too, so it would not be too difficult to make those changes in the layout from the skin-tab, 'cause I think that it isn't that easy to resize the preview part Just wanted to make it not too hard to make those changes. Maybe ask the skinners how difficult it would be to make the text image-hard-coded? (well, I'm not good with designing. I'm such a guy too, trying to code some things, making things, and then not having the skills to design them well enough - it's annoying, really! But right now, I'm just annoyed by all the difficult to find well-built docklets, 'cause they almost always have sth that isn't... You know... Just seeing that you're opening you're development up every time in this forum way, just trying to think about things, and giving visions (some bad, some maybe good)) I was just thinking about a hierarchy... You have a skin, which means the overal layout; you have the tabs, like clock, alarm, and such; then in the tabs you have the different elements; then you have the font and size and position attributes for every element. This means that you can choose to quick preview not by choosing an element, 'cause that's too low in the hierarchy, but by choosing which tab you would like to preview (*edit* this was the main issue, just having a preview from the other tabs, it's possible, but in a strange/unlogical way: I choose another element, but the complete preview just changed ). By having not only the position and size from the element, but also a color and a font, would that be such a big difference for the memory? By writing this out, I'm just stating that when you would "font" the text-areas, it just is the same thing as giving a size to a different element, so it means that you could actually make it a lot easier... Give every element a color-attribute, a background/image-attribute, a width and height-attribute and a text-attribute... So a simple image element doesn't have a text or color, a text-element does not have an image, but a text with a color, or maybe a text with an image behind it... Maybe the image part could have the option to not specify an image, but a simple color too, and so on... This means (example): the skin defines the border ("iTime" part), the tab defines which part is inside this border (the clock, the alarm), the element defines the element ("am", "16:15", the background), and the attributes gives the possibility to place them, size them, colorize them, each individually, or globally for the whole skin by choosing "global setting" or so... Ah, I see. Sorry! It just were the only parts that kinda-like are text-parts, and then didn't colorize. It's just strange to have all the rest pink, and then those two text-thingies not pink, but flashy white. The way I wrote it in the previous post "Colorize digits", nothing wrong with the way it is said, just a real typo *edit* gonna take a look at the update, sorry, probably half of the text I just wrote doesn't matter anymore... Sorry for wasting the time to read it, you would better had it used to work on this beautiful docklet *edit again* I took a look, damn, quick change! 1. Just wondering, when I click "colorize digits", will it also change parts of the skin that the skinner wanted really "white-white"? So the per-element-colorizing wouldn't be that strange as solution? 2. Nice, the preview still that big, the buttons under it, the font on the same screen, just made the screen heigher. Why didn't I think of that! 3. When I choose "24 hour", should the am/pm not vanish?

Same thing as I posted 'bout the master volume docklet: it shows on startup the current state, but isn't updating :S

I tried this one, and hmmm... I don't know what is going wrong, but it basicly doesn't work for me :S Maybe the right questions to ask first, are "Should it be working in Vista, and should it be working on RocketDock?" I can put it on my dock, it shows the current Volume, but as soon as I change the volume, the icon just keeps showing the first value (I.e. not updating). Changing the volume doesn't work either; click the icon, use + or -, up, down, every other key on the keyboard, making the icon active in every single possible way, ain't working... Would love to be of more help, but I can say only this: it isn't working. If I can help by trying some things, to come up with more information, that's just the reason why I'm posting

I was looking into this new update... I LOVE it! Really... Nice... Work... :impressed: But as it is for now still a work in progress, now is the time to ask some thing, to change stuff and so on... Some thinking about the fonts & skin... 1. Maybe merge those two together? - When you add a skin, the font could be in the same package, 'cause a beautiful skin with a bad font would not be a nice thing Maybe make it possible to add some fonts to the skin, so you don't have to put a font-file in the skin-package, but the skin-maker can provide the user with his preferred fonts to use with this skin. - As you would do so, it all is one big "layout" thingy, so the preview from the font wouldn't matter anymore. - On the stopwatch part, the word "stopwatch" could be a text-area, so it would be colored too... Same goes for the Alarms and World Clock, basicly make a Stopwatch-title, Alarms-title, World Clock-title area... - You could add buttons to start an empty skin in the properties, so you basicly can make a new skin, based on an empty template or another good skin... Making this would make it easy for everyone to make a new skin... - Repositioning the buttons, as in screenshot, could be used uniform in Alarms & World Clocks design (yeah, too much information ) - I left out the "colorize digits"; if you make it an option to use a font globally or not (as the color you choose is for everything, or just text), it is the same as... let's see... You choose an element, and the font-part gets updated with the font that that element has to have. So every element could have a font, or could have the font-part greyed out, as it happens to be image only! Instead of "colorize digits", you could add a setting to have the font be global or not? - Colorize AM/PM, and other stuff like that? Or make it font-able? See also previous paragraph. 2. Colorize digits - typo *edit* 3. Could you add sth to simply quick change the preview for the different tabs? You basicly have an outline for four parts (clock, stopwatch, alarm, world clock), just a quick changer for those global parts of the skin? Maybe make it more hierarchical: "Skin>Tab>Element>Font" (hope someone understands what I'm trying to say here )

Two minor thingies coming after trying a few minutes (I guess I just stop before... ) 0. Add two stacks to your dock. (i.c. RocketDock) 1. Click on one stack, to open up the grid, then alt-click on the base from the stack again... As it should be, preferences open up, but the icon will not change back to the standard one... (I was reading the whole dialog up here, had to test this alt-click thing, now here I am ) 2. Change the settings from a stack to make some reflection... Restart the dock, everything goes fine, for both docks reflection is on! So far, so good. Click the stack again, to change the settings back to no reflection, and only the icon on which you clicked will remove reflection, although the other icon will give back the same settings. The thing here is: or the preferences are for all stacks the same, which would make it understandable to give a warning, and restart the dock after changing, or you can change it on a per-stack basis, and then sth is really going wrong! Btw: I'm running this beauty on Vista, and I like it a lot! You don't have to support it, as long as it works for me Nice work, love it, really love it! And to all the people out there complaining: big icons is just the way it works, live with it, or go on with your search for an affordable and nice looking docklet like this *mumbles* Windows users, always the same, they don't have stacks, complaining, they get stacks, still complaining...

Once upon a time, albeik made a docklet, named Power v0.2.0. So far, that's the latest version I found from him. http://www.dockex.com/items/17 http://www.wincustomize.com/skins.aspx?ski...ibid=29&c=1 After that, and even that post is going way back to 2006, Havell on WinCustomize posted his 3d Battery Meter Icons. It works with a power.dll file, and seems to do exactly the same as albeik's docklet. http://www.wincustomize.com/skins.aspx?ski...ibid=29&c=1 Right now is my question: I can't find anything about how and who the docklet was developed, nor can I find a battery docklet that's actually working as it should be without sysstats... What I'm asking is: anyone a clue what happened with the development, and where I can find the latest update? (Posting this in the Y'z Apps Forum, don't know if anybody is reading this anymore, but better trying, than posting this to another forum)