[release] Orbit 0.3!

[mimeryme]

Felix, for the black screen, that's the default setting. You need to go to the preferences and enable transparency.

I'm having issues w/ cpu & mem consumption, but the previous version worked well. I must mention that I don't use Orbit though as I can't relegate any of my mouse buttons for it.

[castroman]

Good work, great app - thanks.

-Aviel.

[Menge]

hrm.... i'm going to post once again... to tell the people who couldn't read the previous posts.

the regular memory consumption of orbit is 7mb (although .Net always allocates ~27Mb). the people who are expriencing orbit taking up anything more than 30mb are suffering from an bug which on some machines is causing it to take from 70mb to 260mb of ram and making it run very slow. the huge memory usage is a bug and is being investigated.

for heaven's sake... i like developing for you guys, but please read the last posts before claiming an app IS slow (cause orbit is not, those who tested and had no memory leak know it) or complaining about anything else, specially when upon running on you machine, it has a memory leak cause that makes anything run like crap!

i'm tired... i've reviewed the source code twice now. and besides... i've NEVER seen a resource leak occur on one machine and don't occur on another (could anyone confirm if they've seen this?)

all the people who are having the memory problem, could you please e-mail me ([email protected]) your system config?

1 OS

2 CPU

3 Video Card

4 Qty of Ram

5 System mods (dll, resource replacement, if any - uxtheme.dll for instance)

6 any special info about your machine u'd consider important

[hispanicboy]

hey just so those browsing this thread don't get the wrong impression. many of us are having geat successw with orbit. i have used it for quite some time now and have had very little if any "issues" with it. thanks menge for the great app! here are a few screenies of my orbit in action.

[Tricky]

Oh My god! - Menge you are a master

It is I .. ScoobyDD (as I am known on Aquaxp - where this idea was created)... and I can't believe how great this app has become.

This is soo smooth and I have now stopped using Y'z dock once and for all! Keep up the good work - I will be watching closely

[Menge]

@hispanicboy, hey hey neat screenshots! your wallpaper gives it an extra touch! thanks for your cool comments, man

@DoubleD, how are you doing, for god's sake?? looooong time no talk to you! it's been quite a while since i last saw u online on msn dude i miss our chats! thanks for your support!

btw, for those who don't know, DoubleD was the idealist of Orbit. he was the one who posted the idea on AquaXP and me and alilm started doing prototypes. i went on and now we have Orbit hehe

i think i've fixed my memory leaking bug. i've sent a build to some of the people who were having it and i am currently waiting for a reply on it

[alilm]

Lets take a look at alilm's prototype of orbit...

[Tricky]

Originally posted by alilm@Apr 2 2004, 06:37 PM

Lets take a look at alilm's prototype of orbit...

hehe - them were the days! - but look at it now! its serious competition for the other docks - if you could add docklets Menge you would be a superstar!

[Menge]

Attention!

For all having Speed/Memory troubles with Orbit

With Orbit i bundled a CONFIG.INI file as default configuration. what occurs is the file had two settings that were REGIONAL DEPENDANT. Those settings are font size (some countries use a comma, some use a period - mine has a comma). That caused some of the period guys to have huge font sizes (2575 and 1425) thus making Orbit slow. i personally suspect that this would be the cause of the "memory leak". i sent yesterday a message to some of the people with it but got no feedback whatsoever. if the people with leaks could try this and give me some feedback, it'd be nice

How to FIX IT

to fix it is simple:

1) Go to the Orbit folder and remove the CONFIG.INI file.

2) Inside the Orbit folder is a folder called PROFILES and inside that folder is a folder with your Windows User Name. Inside that one should be another CONFIG.INI. Remove that one too.

this should fix the slowdowns for many of you (unless you have a TNT2 ). Also, the people with memory leaks, please tell me if this fixes the leaks for you guys!

The config.ini has been removed from the ZIP file as of April 3rd. so no one should have these issues.

Sorry for the incovenience!

[alilm]

Yay it works! Orbit's smooth

[lostspyder]

wow. it fixed it right off, the ini thing that is. Its amazing, now my only beef with it is

1) that it like 'overwrites' everythign with a black background for about 5 secs, then fades back to the desktop. Its causes by 'fake' transparency, but its too slow with real transparency.

2) it uses the middle click button, so every time i open a new tab/close a tab in FB it activates. would like it to apear on the desktop full time, just like anyother dock.

3) There arnt any exclusions in the task list, so it picks up all my AVE docklets

4) After i change tasks AVE desklets disapear and Y'Z dock turns into a big white thing, simmilar to the effect iExp without exclusions has.

5) its also running at like 30 meg of RAM now

If you get to all of these i will most defiantly use it as a full time thing i think. I cant wait till you do. Im realy getting excited about this app tho, it is realy nice.

[Menge]

@alilm, ye!!! great!

@lostspyder, great it worked!! ok now to your "beefs" lol

1) Yes, unfortunately, (for the fake transparency) either i make orbit black out and then put the screen on OR i make it take the screen and only then pop up (which would make it take 5 seconds to pop up :\). The real transparency is a shame tho... .Net + GDI+ can't handle it too well :\ they're too slow. plus, being round, it takes up more space onscreen than a regular dock, so that makes it EVEN slower for the cpu to handle. i have ideas on how to optimize this, but haven't put into practice. i'll experiment more.

2) This has been added as optional on the next release (thanks Ave!!!). The next release will use Win+W key combo and the middle mouse button can be disabled on the configuration (kinda glad i did this too)

3) Hadn't thought of that. i'll try to add it to the next release

4) That's not a bug with neither of these programs you mentioned. it's in fact a "bug" in a windows function called PrintWindow which Orbit and iEx use. if the a screenshot is taken of a widnow and that window is switched to at the same time, the window fails to draw properly. i'll look for a workaround for it

5) 30Mb is what .Net allocates by default for it from that, only 7~10 Mb tops is being used. if your computer needs the extra ram, .net will free it, so don't be scared

thanks so much for your feedback

cheers guys!

[wookietv]

great, it's now working superbly.

thanks for your efforts

[Tricky]

I deleted the 2 files and now Orbit wont run :S - its says "failed to load resources from resource file. Please check your setup."

Ok now it works - off and on - If I try to edit the config after I have already had orbit pop up then it gives me the error.... I'm so confused its seems so random :S

[omniiv]

thx menge. fixed.

[tarik]

I keep getting this error. what am I doing wrong?

[Menge]

@wookietv, omniiv, DoubleD, good you all got your probs solved now i'm happy (DoubleD got his solved via msn )

@tarik, probably one of the below:

1) you do not have a Direct3D card capable of running Orbit

2) you do not have its drivers and or DirectX set up properly

what's your video card, tarik?

[tarik]

Originally posted by Menge@Apr 3 2004, 05:13 PM

@tarik, probably one of the below:

1) you do not have a Direct3D card capable of running Orbit

what's your video card, tarik?

You are right on assumption # 1

I have the card that came with the pc 2 years ago. Its a dell graphics Card

Oh well may be I'll use Orbit when I have a better card someday

[swisher59]

has anyone tried running powdercleaner in conjunction with orbit? it seems to be keeping my orbit at 1.2megs-- LESS than my y'z dock... just a point of notification

[eiSi]

I think I just found a bug.. but forgive me if I'm wrong..

so: If I use Fake Transperancy (because the "real" one is very slow........), the labels are NOT shown... anyone else with this problem?

menge, a solution?

but anyway, real nice app!!!

[Menge]

@eiSi, hey! u brought this thread back from the dead lol

about the label not showing, the non transparent and fake transparent modes use a way for drawing the label which is not 100% compatible with all video cards... there's an alternate way of drawing those (which is 100% compatible), but for some reason Orbit isn't automatically switching to that. i'm currently lookin on this (since it seems to be a common problem) and this should be fixed on the next release

[angr]

Menge do you really need to use Performance Counters? Program can not be run with non administrative rights with this :cry: . Can you remove block of code that uses counters, or use alternative solution. And then this will be a very good app.