[adysoft]

Hi !

I don't know what you think, but for me, the Vista sidebar isn't that great as a gadgets host. It takes way to much space on my desktop, even if you don't need it. It's true you can hide it, but this solution still doesn't give me full satisfaction.
That's why I think the Mac OS X dashboard is way more handy. It is constantly hidden unless you need it. Just press the middle mouse button, and all your gadgets are displayed instantly in less than a second, and you make them go away as fast.

That's why I've decided to create my own dashboard for Vista, and to call it myBoard.
Here are a couple of screenshots.

My desktop without myBoard :



When I click the middle mouse button, the desktop gets darker, and all my gagdets come visible on top of it:




Just like the Mac OS dashboard, you can rotate gadgets on 180 °.





And as you can see I also integrated the dashboard widgets explorer explorer which shows up when you click on the little + button on myBoard bottom left corner :



Although myBoard shares many things with the Mac OS X Dashboard, it uses a different technology to handle gadgets.

As a matter of fact, all applications like this one uses Javascript based gadgets. myBoard is using real .NET 3.0/ 3.5 UserControls. So any developer willing to develop gadgets on myBoard (which are actually called magnets) will be using Visual Studio .NET and, de facto, have access to the entire .NET framework for his gadget. This is something really huge because we can then imagine all kind of incredible gadgets going from a simple mind game like Sudoku, to a Nintendo64 emulator.

myBoard in action
Official website.
Official forum.

This post has been edited by adysoft: 13 December 2009 - 03:07 AM

[mps69]

Very interesting. It's something, I believe MS has been missing.
Fingers crossed your building for XP and Vista.

Stick my name down as a beta tester when your ready.

[Jammy343]

That's awesome,

ill put my name down as a beta tester too when its ready.... if you make it for XP too

[adysoft]

I'm sorry, but myBoard is Vista DWM for transparency which makes it runable only on this plateform.

Thanks for your support !

[mps69]

That's a bit of a bummer....I'll not be upgrading to Vista any time soon.
oh well good luck with your project.
I'm sure the guys here will give you plenty of support and help.

[delta909]

This project looks amazing hope u follow through you can put me down as a beta tester if you like.... i run vista . Ill send you a mail .

[MC mac]

Cool! Place my name in beta testers please... this project look cool

[qwan]

MC mac;473062 said:

Cool! Place my name in beta testers please... this project look cool

The style liked it

[blaze]

Nice, put me up for beta testing. It looks like an interesting project

[adysoft]

Hi,

Thanks for your support, all of you !
I'm still working on myBoard and I wanted to know if any of you is (or know someone who is) experimented in .NET 3.0 WPF developpement ?
I'm asking because myBoard is basically just an empty application hosting gadgets.
I'm currently working on the hosting part, but it would be great if someone could start creating gadget meanwhile for myBoard.

If you can help, let me know.

PS : Only people sending me an email will be considered for beta testing.


Thanks !

[Wuzzie]

Will this use it's own myboard gadgets or be compatible with windows vista gadgets? If possible support for AveDesk/Yahoo ones would be good but that would make the project much much bigger (and for all i know that could have already been done... I don't use vista)

[adysoft]

No, myBoard WILL NOT support any other gadget.
All other gadgets like vista's or mac os's are very limited because they are based on Javascript. myBoard gadgets allow developpers to use the .NET 3.0 framework which is much more powerfull than Javascript.

[Wuzzie]

And less developers can make them.... perhaps have support for gadgets in different languages? I don't know if that's possible but it seems like a good idea to me. Javascript is fairly simple so it means people can just pick it up and start coding.
And I wouldn't exactly say the javascript gadgets are limited... There are some great ones out there... and you don't exactly need ones to replace programs and do big functions... just to make your life easier. What would be a useful gadget that could be done in .net 3 and not javascript?

[z-x]

Well... if this will be popular, there is no problem (I think so) to make a gadget to handle JavaScript in .NET.

[adysoft]

Wuzzie;473567 said:

And less developers can make them.... perhaps have support for gadgets in different languages? I don't know if that's possible but it seems like a good idea to me. Javascript is fairly simple so it means people can just pick it up and start coding.
And I wouldn't exactly say the javascript gadgets are limited... There are some great ones out there... and you don't exactly need ones to replace programs and do big functions... just to make your life easier. What would be a useful gadget that could be done in .net 3 and not javascript?

That's a hard question to answer if you are not familiar with the .NET framework.
Simply putted the .NET framework is a huge library of classes and function developped by Microsoft to make developer life a lot easier. It as all kind of advance features such as web services support, database connection, advanced object oriented features, polymorphism ect ...
The third version of this framework (.NET 3.0) comes with WPF which has an other set of advanced feature allowing the developper to easily create visual effects we see all the times on Mac OS X (scaling, rotation, 3D support, databinding, ect ...). You can even have access to DirectX 10 through HwndHost and create a 3D video game with shaders and stuff inside a myBoard gadget.
And you can do all these things very quickly in .NET 3.0 using tools like Visual Studio and Expression Blend. It would take much longer (sometimes impossible) to do something like this in Javascript.

z-x;473568 said:

Well... if this will be popular, there is no problem (I think so) to make a gadget to handle JavaScript in .NET.

I'm still thinking about that but there is a problem ...
WPF can host HTML/javascript code and show it in a control called Frame. So it theorically possible to host a Javascript gadget in myBoard using a Frame. The problem is that frames doesn't support transparency, which means that if I host a gadget in it, it will have a solid squared white background all around it which is ugly !
I only have a limited experience working woth WPF frames so maybe there is a work around for this. If I find something, I may reconcider adding external gagets support in myBoard. But so far, I have so much to do with the current build, I will have no time to investagate on that any time soon...

[BabboNatale]

Nice project

[adysoft]

Hi,

I'm still working on myBoard and I just finished my first gadget.
It's a simple port of the MacOSX dashboard widget called calendar. Here is how it looks on OSX :



And now here is the myBoard version :



As you can see, the font is not exactly the same, and I'm still looking for one which looks like the OSX version. But the gadget is 100% completed and operational.
It took me 8 hours to make it which gives you an idea of how fast an easy it is to create a gadget for myBoard.

Please feel free to make any comment on this, I'll be happy to answer.

[g510]

minor bug... you should use capital letters for your calendar..... nice btw.... too bad I don't have vista

[adysoft]

g510;474893 said:

minor bug... you should use capital letters for your calendar..... nice btw.... too bad I don't have vista

Humm that's strange, here is what the caldendar widget looks like on my Mac :



nothing is in capital letter.
It's a french OS X, I don't know how it looks on US version.
Can anyone post a screenshot where it looks different ?