Winexpos�

[f000by]

Excellent! Eagerly awaiting the next few releases

[SirSmiley]

Nice work. This has brightened my week tremendously.

[firecracker6]

OK, just tested out the new release and wow..

you've accomplished what no other expose clone has yet to do (at least that I know of)

The user can now select their desired window at ANY TIME!! And your animation smoothly compensates Congratulations!

First Activation (expose) of windows is still a bit laggy but this is getting really nice!

P.S. May I suggest trying out TopDesk: http://www.otakusoftware.com/topdesk/index.html

for inspiration?

Also, perhaps before adding labels and other embellishments, could you focus on activation speed? I believe some of the other clones keep the window images uncompressed / buffered in mem to keep the window transitions smooth. (check out topdesk) This small factor would take WinExpose closer to a productive everyday tool... as with a large amount of windows open, it takes quite a while for WinExpose to activate presently.

Thanks for considering.

[Zaft]

Has TopDesk fixed that problem with transparent titlebars in WB5 yet? Also does it work with Style properly?

[firecracker6]

the answer is no to both... unfortunately Zaft, i think that unless Stardock reveals some of their apis to these other developers that getting the transparent titlebars to have their transparency 'handed' off to another app'll be difficult. I too really really wish it could be done. And I know that Styler does get handled properly, using a certain window capture method with Reflexvision (or entbloess) but with sporatic results. I really hope someone can figure out a fix or workaround for interoperability between these programs.

[mps69]

I uploaded new version (2006-10-03):

Current known problems:

- WinExposé doesn't survive hibernation (and worst of all, I can't reproduce the problem, works perfect in my computer and not at all in any other... *#$*f***ck!!!)

I don't know if this is the same thing, but I've started using your app at work. When we leave our station we lock our PC's, Ctrl-Alt-Delete, lock work station. When we unlock them the app has shut down, however the icon remains in the taskbar.

[Fosssi]

@matonga:

Great to see a new release!

Tried again with the hibernation bug. The "division by zero" error is gone. After waking up from hibernation a dialog box now says:

Die Anweisung in 0x00000002 verweist auf Speicher "0x00000002". Der Vorgang "read" konnte nicht durchgeführt werden. Press OK to quit the application or cancel to debug.

Trying to translate:

The allocation in [see above] refers to memory in [see above]. The process "read" could not be accomplished.

This is kind of a Windows standard sentence and I'm sorry that I can't provide the exact English translation for that (Perhaps a German user with experience with the English version of Windows can give the exact translation or perhaps you know what I mean (hopefully)).

Hope that helps. Besides this hibernation bug everything works fine for me. One of the best Exposé clones i've seen so far . Keep it up!

[gammarax]

hi matonga! Just wanna say first, great work!

Not only are you doing this non-commercially (as in, no payment), you're really updating it almost every other day! Appreciate that bro!

Oh, a suggestion for the program...in Mac, users can activate expose by clickin on the 2 buttons on the side of the mouse. Do you think you can possibly make that available for windows mouses with a scroll press?

What i mean is the mouse with a scroller that you can press down. I'm kinda lazy to press F9 or alt+tab all the time to activate expose hehe..so is that possible? (some ppl call this mouse click "mouse3")

Hope to see more of your work!

[GWing_02]

Fosssi: looks like a standard Access Violation.

[CK05]

Great program and I usually uninstall these things because they are useless but this is very, very good.

My only complain is that sometimes when you goto to click the Start Button it gets activated which gets quite annoying, is there a way to disable that corner only?

Many thanks Matonga.

[matonga]

@mps69:

The icon that remains in taskbar... does it disappear when you move the mouse over it?

@Fosssi:

Yes, it is an access violation error. And don't worry, my Windows is a spanish version! =X-)

@gammarax:

Indeed, the scroll press is just a middle button (remember those old mouse with three buttons? well, that third middle button has been replaced by the wheel click).

@CK05:

You can enable/disable any corner in the Settings panel. Just right-click the "e" icon, click Settings, in "Activation" tab click the corners you want to enable/disable (enabled ones are shown in blue or highlighted color), and then click OK, and that's all. But if such thing doesn't work for you, please post again and also tell me if you are using multimonitor or nVidia virtual desktops.

To all:

Anyone knows how to hook the API or some freely available code? I'd like to intercept GetDC, GetWindowDC, BeginPaint, UpdateLayeredWindow and some other APIs to try to write a sort of "mini-quartz" thing ;-) (which in term will probably be available under LGPL license).

[firecracker6]

@matonga.. there are quite a few talented developers such as yourself who frequent these boards.. I have always found Ave and Herd to be nice people and they might possibly give you some tips if you'd PM a request. I wish you luck as what you are hinting at seems quite interesting indeed.

[gammarax]

@gammarax:

Indeed, the scroll press is just a middle button (remember those old mouse with three buttons? well, that third middle button has been replaced by the wheel click).

Do you think you can make winexpose activate by clicking that?

[dudeicles]

this is an awesome program. Can't wait to see what else you can do with it. I have no complaints whatsoever.

[Gregor]

It is really great !

I have only one problem : I do not know how to add ESET NOD 32 Control Center to my Exceptions list (I tried to add a folder ESET & NOD Antivirus System, but no luck)

[Calric]

Nice prog! sweet and fast. keep u the good work =D

Openoffice 2.0 gets "black screen" when going to winexposé.

[tomenugen]

this is a very slick program. the only thing i can see needing work on is the initial expose speed. i don't know if this has been answered or whether it is a processor speed problem, but it takes about 1-2 seconds for the expose to initate.

[thy]

hi~

does anyone know how to turn off the window minimize effect that WindowsXP built in ? (the zooming square thing...)

because if I have any minimized window while "expose'" the windows

every minimized window will have to run through the restore effect before the "expose'"

that's really ignoring....

thanks ~ :-D

[matonga]

News:

- Multimonitor progress about 20%, got a sample from the DX7 SDK, had no time to study it's sources yet.

- Explorer bar now isn't hidden by WinExposé.

- Activation by middle mouse button (wheel scroll click) not implemented (yet), it's harder than I thought because I have to intercept mouse messages (I was using hot-keys up to now).

- Completely changed texture loading routine, so it may not work on some computers. Please post if it solves/produces blurry pixel problems and alike. Don't post if the window is too big and the texture looks stretched / cropped, as I already know about it but hadn't time to fix it. Please post if textures look tiled.

- Forgot where I left the smoothed icon, searching...

- Considering to implement an alternative software engine for the graphics, in case Direct3D doesn't work on target machine.

New version may not work, because of the new texture loading routine...

@tomenugen: this problem is because WinExposé doesn't implement pre-caching of windows (i.e. constantly make window screenshots, even while not in expose mode). Will be implemented soon (and you'll get a response time of about 0 seconds).

@thy: right click "My computer" icon on your desktop, select "Properties", select "Advanced options" tab, select the first "Configuration" button (don't know english name in Windows for "Rendimiento", maybe it is "Performance"), uncheck "Animate windows while minimizing and maximizing", then click "OK", then click "OK" in the My Computer properties dialog. My dad has an english version of Windows XP, I'll ask him for the correct names of these options.

Thanks to all by the feedback, please forgive me if I have no much time to get new versions and bugfixes.

I'm investigating about API hooking, very interesting topic, I'll try to make some kind of Mac OS Quartz thing but for Windows (no more PrintWindow calls, no more window screenshots, etc..., just "native" support and windows DCs as DirectX textures, I hope).

Greets,

Matías

[mps69]

Thanks for the update again

Just ran a few tests. Still as smooth on my PC, but you say the start bar should remain in Expose mode, for me it still disappears.

Personally I don't have a problem with that, but other might.

[virstulte]

Works like a charm!

Only one thing though...I'm using the Amora Blue WB5 skin, and for some reason, the titlebar on apps skinned with that disappears. I'm thinking it might be something to do with the built-in shadowing on the skin itself. No worries though, hardly a minor inconvenience, your work is beautiful.

I am looking forward to the mouseover -> display title of window feature ;-)

[Sranshaft]

Animations are smoother but now I'm getting a bug when exposing (See attached screenshot). Not sure if it's because of the changes to the texture mapping but...at least taskbar now doesn't disappear.

Really looking forward to further development of this. And perhaps even a sexier icon to go with such a babe of an app.

[Fosssi]

Just tried the 18th of October version and I get the same bug as Sranshaft (see above). Additionally, when hovering over the exposed windows, they dissapear. 17th version doesn't work either.

Great app anyways. Loking forward to the multi-monitor support.

[matonga]

(....) but now I'm getting a bug when exposing (See attached screenshot). Not sure if it's because of the changes to the texture mapping (...)

Yeah, hahaha, I really expected this would happen. Of course, now I'll have to spam you with lots of Private Messages each time I update the texture repaint/update code :-).

Please anyone who has this same problem post a message, I want to get this working as (AFAIK) the old method (BitBlt based) doesn't blit the alpha channel information... or did I make something really wrong? ,':-

By the way, new version:

- Got an improved version of the icon from Chris (not subscripted to this board AFAIK), ok the improvement is just some smoothed shadows but now the icon doesn't look creepy (indeed IMO it looks much better).

- Updated the upload texture engine. It'll still do the same error with Sranshaft PCs and alike, stay there for new updates and use the 2006-10-03 version by now...

Lots of things remaining, by now I'll try:

- Make texture upload routine more compatible.

- Test the texture upload routine in ATI, Intel and SiS cards (mine is nVidia).

- Write a software based engine, for users who have problems with the DirectX based engine.

- Remove WinExposé from Windows Alt+Tab list (yuk! and looks really complicated or I'm missing something!).

- Disable Windows minimize/maximize animations, at least while screenshotting minimized windows.

Later:

- Multimonitor support.

- Pre-caché windows screenshots.

- Write an installer (NSIS?).

- Write a bug report tool.

- Write a "check for updates" feature, or at least notify the user for new versions.

- Capture mouse middle button click for WinExposé activation.

- Allow the user to change transparency of exposed windows (by now they are all opaque, except minimized windows). Oh, and brightness also. Individual values for minimized and non-minimized windows.

- An icon contest for WinExposé?

- Write a Quartz-like library, intercepting all API calls related to screen related DCs painting and layered windows, and maybe putting video overlays as yuv textures, and maybe intercepting blits to primary surfaces on DirectX and maybe also OpenGL and, maybe, posibly maybe... but this is long enough for another project. And don't expect to get this finished in less than two years (i.e. everyone will be using Windows Vista by that time, and it is supposed to be capable of all these things or I misunderstood something).

@firecracker6:

Some time ago you mentioned TopDesk. Well... I have Beryl running under Ubuntu Linux. That's my source of inspiration, and of course, my motivation to make me want to write a Quartz-like lib. Check this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cv_GQxL3T2M (I'm at the university now and can't search for other videos, please forgive me).

Errrr..... nothing more to say by now. Thanks all of you for all this feedback, I wouldn't be able to improve this app without your comments.

Matías

[matonga]

@firecracker6:

This video looks better: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-MG5D9MtAo (about Beryl)