So! Start Back Working On Objectbar Or What?

Alright everybody, I'm about done doing heavy work on ObjectDock / ObjectDock Plus for a bit. Have new features and such in mind for several v1.x's in the time to come, but in the mean time, who says I get back to work on ObjectBar v2?

What do you guys think about...

1) completly redone configuration system, completly new UI with properties that now auto-configure themselves based on their content and the content of stuff around them instead of you having you set them.

2) inline skinning... want to change the background of a group? goto an element of the group and select a background. Skip the pain of skin editing!

3) slight breakup of features, seperating out the desktop right click menu so that its not lost within all the other features of the program.

4) perhaps adding in a better themeing system?

work is beginning again... thoughts?

-Jeff

#204759

I made a few comments about objectdock in the "Possible To Make The Tabbed Dock Longer?" thread so I think there are a few things that should be worked (at least to consider for later) on before moving on to another project but:

A better theming system sounds good. I know you can probably do this right now but it would be nice to have if you are making a certain style of bar like a finder bar the same bar and then easily install skins for that bar. In the skin it would specify which bar theme it goes to.

Inline skinning sounds real good too. It would go well with the above and then for it to allow you to save the skin in a pack so you can install it if you have the theme installed.

More important on the right click menu thing than seperating it is making it so it doesn't conflict with things such as IconX. At the moment to right click on a IconX icon I am having to remove the right click menu and then add it back afterward.

#204867

Are you bored with ObjectDock already?

I agree with smoke that you should concentrate on OD a little longer.

#204923

I hate to jump on the boat here, but I have to agree as well.

#204925

If and when you do start on ObjectBar again, I hope you can figure out a way to discover and implement the "menu items" on almost all progams and improve stability when catching those menus. May I suggest a plug-in or patch system wherein whenever a new program comes out with an unusual way of displaying menus, someone may try and figure out where it is and create an add-on to OB so that it would use that new program's menu and hide them from the main program window as well.

#205235

Nope, better keep the pace on ObjectDock, IMHO.

There's a lot of stuff that still needs to be done, the simplest would be

allowing multiline text when you hover on a docklet. Not just an

automatic line break to fit the space, but allow a Docklet to add CRLF at will,

iTunes Docklets and others would benefit from it.

Another issue is the ObjectDock SDK. It has the best position to become a

standard for Docklets, but AveDesk has extended it a bit to display ObjectDock

Docklets on the Desktop - so having a look at the AveDesk extensions should

be helpful, even if not all of its extensions make sense in ObjectDock, some of

them will and further add to the standard, making a backport Desklet to

Docklet easier. After all, we all want to be compatible, don't we?

I always wondered why it isn't possible to drag a DesktopX object from the

Desktop into the Dock and vice versa. This would be awesome.

Also I would like to ask for an extended OnSave API; Some Docklets need

e.g. OCXs or Fonts to be registered on the target machine and a simple copying

(in the context of themes) won't suffice. Of course, that's a security issue but

blindly loading an untrusted DLL into ObjectDock is already. I wish there was a

trust chain; signed themes, docklets and MD5 fingerprints - user trusts StarDock,

StarDock issues a X509 certificate to a trusted developer and countersigns

docklets developed by him (after review and virus scan) and allows user to load

StarDock trusted / approved docklets only. I may be a security paranoid, but

some malware is bound to infect a docklet sooner or later.

Hope this wasn't too much B/S to you,

wkr

herd

#205284

JMB1984, perhaps you could figure out a way when objectbar displays windows menus in its bar, to take out the _ from the menu items, like instead of File, you'd just have File, thats my only complaint.

#205342

Hah well not done doing all and any work, just not working on updates every day. ObjectBar2 has been just weeks away from a release for some time now.

Additionally, ObjectDock+ is going to be getting continual looks as time goes by in forms of free v1.x releases and new features: don't expect it to be a program that is continually just "happy where it is", nor will any serious bug issues be put off and ignored.

#206940

JBM1984,

For what I've seen of OD+ is that it has improved immensly since the 1ste beta I've seen. For now I stick with the regular OD, but if OD+ continues to improve I'd probebly swith to the pay version.

Good luck with your continuing improvements on that department.

We appriciate what you're doing. I also am gratefull for the fact that you still keep a free version of OD up.

#207183

I love to see a update for ob, have been usin it for years now :rock:

Peace

#207187

i'd love to see obar update... biggest thing for me would be if you guys could upgrade the menu grabbing so that it works with more programs (more 'non-standard' ones).

Another thing would be if you could grab toolbars that display on the standard windows taskbar and display them on a defined region of obbar (ie. samurize, min. windows media player, etc.). Don't know how possible that would be.

The general themeing upgrades sound like a good idea, as the ui is a bit messy for that.

#207190