Aqua-Soft ForumsOriginally posted by JMB1984+Jul 9 2004, 08:23 PM-->QUOTE(JMB1984 @ Jul 9 2004, 08:23 PM)What you are claiming is that the idea barrows off of another, either purposfully or inadvertantly, which is completly unfounded in both regards. There is absolutly no basis for any claims to be made that the flyout menu idea has any form of similarity to any other already made, one main reason for that being noone has seen it in operation!i can't say it's unfounded. simply because whoever brought this similarity up was not me. i came to hear about this from other people.
there's absolutely no need to see it in action to confuse both. had the idea been patented, such confusion which was caused would be enough for a patent suit (yes i did research)
Originally posted by JMB1984@Jul 9 2004, 08:23 PMI have however, and can assure you the concepts are completly completly seperate.
i guess i'll just have to trust your word since i positively won't buy ObjectDock plus.
Originally posted by JMB1984@Jul 9 2004, 08:23 PMOrbits barrows of of the traditional radial menu design (see http://anny.kinjo-u.ac.jp/~houser/pie/ for an example, there are plenty active javabased demos out there just search),
the concept is the same. but orbit makes a different use of the concept.
Originally posted by JMB1984@Jul 9 2004, 08:23 PMwhereas ObjectDock Plus's menus, as you will see, operate only in a 3/4 portion of a semi-circle, and rotate like a dial when arrows on either side are envoked. When opening, the final effect i went with out of the bunch i had is that they will fly out from the center as one then fan out.
funny... in orbit you can make them work in any fraction of a circle you want...
funny again: in orbit, the icons rotate just like a dial when needed or when the user spins his mouse wheel.
all you did differently was an animation which really, is innovation...
Originally posted by JMB1984@Jul 9 2004, 08:23 PMI definitely am not claiming I 'invented' anything.
"currently working on the slick looking flyout menu technology - an ObjectDock original"
"I have something more creative in mind: flyout menus. Completly original, I wonder how long it'll be before someone else is ripping it off"
hmm... that seems claiming invention to me.
Originally posted by JMB1984@Jul 9 2004, 08:23 PMI'm saying the style in which my menus operate is original from anything I've ever seen before, and that no ideas were directly barrowed in any shape or form from existing software.
not saying you borrowed it from anyone. just saying that it's been done before in just the same way... thus, give credit.
Originally posted by JMB1984@Jul 9 2004, 08:23 PMI don't want this to turn into a yelling match, I just am a little upset that you haven't even seen the menus and yet are going around saying they're similar to something else is all.
i haven't seen them. but now i have a description of them from the author himself. and from the looks, it does:
1) shows the contents (files and folders) of a folder - check
2) opens that very content in a circle/semi-circle fashion - check
3) the circle list behaves/animates in a very similar fashion to the already existing idea - check
c'mon. just admit that the innovative idea isn't innovative. it's just the same use of an existing idea in a different piece of software.
and i'm not turning this into a yelling match. i'm being faced with facts and exposing more facts and just requesting that you do not claim that you re-invented the wheel.
[link] Object Dock 1.02 Relased!
how i wish i could close this thread 
i don`t want to see pple fighting :cry:
i have few question for Jeff about OD+:
is it possible to skin the tabs?
and is it possible to put tabs on bottom, instead on top?
thanks
Menge,
ObjectDock's fly-out menus are original. There's nothing else I've tried that is quite like it. It's original.
Until you've used it, you're really not in a position to comment. No one is claiming invention here in the same that there's something to patent. Jeff is correctly pointing out that his fly-out menu implementation is an original creation by him.
I would never pay for something that ugly 
:blood:
hah heya unbeliever:
> is it possible to skin the tabs?
sure is. There are a couple nice looking defaults available thanks too Paul Boyer (Mormegil), but also I've written up a skinning guide for ObjectDock skinning in general, from Backgrounds to Tiles to Tab skinning, with all the little tweak tabs inbetween (oops forgot to mention foregrounds in it, but oh well). When skinning tabs, you must create a background to go with them. Currently, you can have backgrounds without tabs (in which case the default tabs will be used), or otherwise backgrounds can come with their own custom tab set which can be colorized by ObjectDock 
Since I neglected to drop the text file into the backgrounds folder for this first release as I had intended to, I'll post it up here right now!
> and is it possible to put tabs on bottom, instead on top?
Sure is. Give the properties dialog for the tabbed docks a good lookdown... theres lots of little fun things you can mess around with in there! The specific thing you're looking for you'll find in 'Appearance'
-Jeff
thanks for the info Jeff!
while we are at it, will OD+ be a part of object desktop 2004 or will it be an extra ?
Hrm. Honestly, no idea at this point. Usually though those packages are only made up of apps that are on ObjectDesktop Network however, which OD+ is not.
Am I the only person who understands the phrase "no idea's original"?
For example, from what I've read/seen of OD+, the way Jeff's doing the flyouts is very similar to menuing systems in games.
Orbit, on the other hand, is almost identical to the menu system in Neverwinter Nights, as well as the countless other radial menus used in games and in other pieces of software (for example, Logitech used to provide one with their mice). The ony real difference is that Orbit is a DX9 radial menu that's used to launch programs, as opposed to an in-game radial menu to use skills or whatever, or a GDI radial menu.
For what it's worth, when I was thinking of projects for my final year of uni 18 months ago, I came up with many of the ideas in orbit completely on my own, without having heard of orbit at that time. If I had released what I'd made to the community, would I get accused of ripping off menge? Of course I would? Had I, though? No.
If I may quote a conversation I had with a member of this very community last night, you may well understand my point of view more... Admittedly, this was referring directly to Konfabulator, but still.
Stevie says:GUI-based file browsers...
Apple made the first GUI file browser.
Do you see them getting all antsy about the fact that every ****ing GUI-based system in the known world uses their design for a file-folder interface metaphor, or a trash can?
No.
A-SMember says:
yet, you see Apple getting annoyed when Konfabulator claims Dashboard was a rip of itself
Stevie says:
Because Konfabulator guys are doing exactly what Apple didn't do to everyone who copied their ideas.
A-SMember says:
sorry my head is exploding I cant take this information overload
A-SMember says:
I have like 20 people iming me lol
A-SMember says:
and im trying to code
A-SMember says:
"Because Konfabulator guys are doing exactly what Apple didn't do to everyone who copied their ideas." < i dont understand what youre saying here
Stevie says:
I'm saying that Apple never *****ed when people copied their ideas (yes, I know they shut down iApps and Y'z Dock, but they were creating application clones, not copying individual ideas).
Konfab, however, are doing just that - they're going "oh poor us - Apple stole our one good idea, so we're gonna milk their using our idea for all we can".
A good coder/designer would be proud that someone like Apple used their idea, and move onto the next, but the Konfab guys are obviously too much of a bunch of one-trick ponies to do anything else.
A-SMember says:
but the thing with Konfab is that apple are bankrupting them practically
A-SMember says:
theyve put hard work into an app that will no give them no return
A-SMember says:
now*
Stevie says:
Rearrange these words into a popular phrase:
eggs all don't basket your put one into[
Menge, I'm not getting at you, bud, but your argument is pretty much the same as that of the Konfab guys.
I believe I saw the first flyout menus in a book about user interface design
from 1982, with some black and white screenshots (taken with a camera!)
from the ingenieous Xerox Parc technology demos back in 1968, where they
"invented" the mouse, graphical UI, the concept of browsing and hypertext, menus
and simply everything we take for self evident in user interface design today.
(Yes, I also specialize in IT-Archaeology and proudly own a user manual for the
IBM/3 and placed a bid on a PDP-11 manual...)
Funnily, a company that inherited some of the stuff tried to sue all the majors
about 1988 - they claimed they owned the File menu and wanted a share
on every program that had a file menu on its top left corner. Even then,
it was a ridiculous idea and failed utterly.
If some idea's time has come since technology allows it, be sure there'll
be legions of lightbulbs flashing on top of legions of developers heads, like
my accidental invention of the fullerene during a chemistry course in 1987,
while I was playing with Bohr models, very much to the teachers annoyance.
So, keep calm, it ain't worth it. Let the quality of your implementations
speak for themselves instead.
How about changing the font on the tabs? There doesn't seem to be info about that in the skinning .txt and I made my first OD+ skin last night.
Oh yeah speaking of tabs I had to put extra blank space in the tab when doing square tabs and set an overlap so the names don't get truncated too soon.
Originally posted by JMB1984@Jul 9 2004, 05:41 PMhah heya unbeliever:
> is it possible to skin the tabs?
sure is. There are a couple nice looking defaults available thanks too Paul Boyer (Mormegil), but also I've written up a skinning guide for ObjectDock skinning in general, from Backgrounds to Tiles to Tab skinning, with all the little tweak tabs inbetween (oops forgot to mention foregrounds in it, but oh well). When skinning tabs, you must create a background to go with them. Currently, you can have backgrounds without tabs (in which case the default tabs will be used), or otherwise backgrounds can come with their own custom tab set which can be colorized by ObjectDock
Since I neglected to drop the text file into the backgrounds folder for this first release as I had intended to, I'll post it up here right now!
> and is it possible to put tabs on bottom, instead on top?
Sure is. Give the properties dialog for the tabbed docks a good lookdown... theres lots of little fun things you can mess around with in there! The specific thing you're looking for you'll find in 'Appearance'
-Jeff
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Menge is not a dock developer.
so, for those of you that have tried out OD+ is it good? is it worth the cash, over just plain OD? i'd love to have it, but unless its just.. alot faster, alot better, than OD, i'm going to stick w/ that.. b/c $20 is a good bit of money to me personally. lol
Originally posted by Holocaust@Jul 11 2004, 03:15 AMYou know what is hilarious, dock devolopers arguing about "original ideas".
<{POST_SNAPBACK}>
its true