MorphDock

Thank you thewer

I am Morphdock's greatest fan and keep checking back for newer features and improved versions and so its obvious i would be the first to reply within an hour of your release

Thanks for sorting out the sometimes irritation small thingies and taking morphdock one more step towards perfection (that's me!)

#458927

Thank you for your comment!

Trying to keep it up... (despite a lack of time - hence the late reply, sorry)

#461426

Nice skin pack thewer. Congrats - i particularly like metal skin which exemplifies that in simplicity lies beauty!

Just two observations- (i don't know if this behaviour is pre or post skin pack or morphdock's last updated version or were always there and escaped by eyes)

- morphdock titles (names given to the various docked icons on tabs) do not react to changes in the margin settings of desklet properties > label > position and size / margin

is this a ixed margin for morphdock or is it just on my pc that this is happening. What happens in horizontal skins such as metal is that the title is displayed quite far from the dock itself. In the case of curved skin the distance (set-off) is less obvious i think as the size of the skin itself is 'larger' owing to the curvature perhaps.

- of late (i think post morphdock's updated version or is it the presence of several skins now in the folder) switching between skins often causes the tabs of horizontal skins to display the left 1/3rd or 2/3rd only of the tab. Closing and frestarting avedesk solves the issue though. Seems lke a drawing problem.

Morphdock is now more beautiful than ever

Thewer... try and see if you can make the titles compatible with backgrounds without refreshing problems mentioned by me in an earlier thread

#461518

Hi there -

Unfortunately (or fortunately?!) I don't experience these problems:

I still can control Label position/size and margins - it's something I don't influence with MorphDock so far. So if the Label is far away from the dock, you should be able to adapt its position via the desklet properties (tested with both AveDesk 1.3 and 2.0 Beta on different PCs).

Also the tabs images being cut off should be fixed with the latest version (it was a redraw error by the way). If theere still is a problem, these things should help, too (despite reloading AveDesk):

Reloading the theme, duplicating the dock or rightclicking it and choosing "Update settings".

The only bug I'm still experiencing so far, is switching from a dock with e.g. 6 Tabs to a skin that has only 5 Tabs (works) and then switching again: The "6 Tabs" value seems to be still hanging around for some reason...

#461526

I have now understood what is going on (read on....)

First sorry thewer, earlier i did not fully understand nor was i able to explain accurately he problem

Try this and you'll figure out why i was confused...then try solving/explaining the issue to me

Step 1 - call up curved skin. for more perceptable judgements deselect sublabel

Step 2 - Lock position

Step 3 - set position and size (uder desklet properties > label) to top with a margin of say 1 (this value should not be changed henceforward)

Step 4 - Observe the relative distance of the label from the dock (curved)

Step 5 - The width of this dock skin is 144 pixels (default call up)

Step 6 - Change to any one of the new horizontal dock skins aqua or metal

Step 7 - Now observe the relative distance from title/label to dock ?

Step 8 - The width of this dock skin is 250 (default call up)

The aqua and metal skins are NOT wider than he curved or wood skin - no chance - in fact hey are narrower. In other words there is some 106 (250 - 144) or more invisible width aded to aqua and metal skin at the top end making the relative position of the label too far. In fact the title/label is perfect and does indeed react corectly to changes in the margin

Now try locating the title (label) at bottom of aqua or metal skin and there will be no problems (probably becuase the extra invisible width is at the top end)

Now try left or right and you will notice that the titles (labels) are not in the centre relative to the width of the dock-(again i reckon due to the extra invisible width is at the top end)

Can you undertsand what i am getting at now?

It was after all an issue with the new skins or else i would have noticed it earlier given my sensitivity and sentimentality to this beauty and your baby - Morphdock

#461547

Hi there again -

I tried to follow these steps.

So switching the skins didn't produce any problems with the labels - what's different however (but can be adjusted), is the distance of the label.

What I mean is this:

The background pic of the skin determines the size of the desklet. The background pic of the Aqua and Metal skin is relatively high compared to the Curved skin (with a lot of empty space in the pic - I did so to make a high magnification of the icons possible).

So if you choose to set the label at the top, there's an empty space between the icon and the label.

If this annoys it can be fixed by choosing "desklet properties" and setting the label position/margin to (relatively) -120 pixels.

Another thing is the label size - the (invisible) field where the text is written into. It has a width and height, too - so if you set the label position, you have to take care, that the field is big enough. I e.g. could positon the label to the exact left and right of the "Aqua" and "Metal" bar by choosing the label to be at the bottom of this field with the correct height.

Sounds complicated, but overall it means, that it should be possible to make the label show up anywhere - if the text field is as wide or high as the dock...

#461603

thewer - is there anyway i can use some of your skins say aqua vertically without disturbing other elements of morphdock?

#465732

Hi there -

There are two ways of using the bars vertically, a quick and a "perfect" one:

Either just rotate the Dock via "Desklet properties".

Or - more complicated but better looking - "reskin" it:

Most skins (at least in my experience) and also icons which are made to look "3D", simulate a light source coming from the top left of the screen. So their shiny parts are also in the top left while they make a shadow at the bottom right.

This may sound very scientific, but the problem is, if you just rotate a dock and the shadows etc. of it appear different from the rest of the screen, your mind will instinctively see that and it will look strange or better "just crap"...

So this is the more complicated way (step-by-step):

- Go to the folder ...deskletsAveScripterMorphDockskins

- choose the folder of the skin you like to adapt

- copy the folder and rename it, e.g. aqua vertical - it will show up as new skin then.

- open a graphic program that can handle png's (e.g. Photoshop, XnView, Gimp, ...)

- rotate the images 90° and mirror them, so that the shadow is in the right place

(depending on which direction you rotated it it's either mirroring vertically or horizontally, if you use e.g. XnView=freeware, there's a multiple convert tool - so you can change all images at once)

- open the skin.xml in the new folder with an editor (I recommend notepad++, freeware)

Cause of the rotation you'll have to adapt the coordinates - but that's mainly swapping them, so not to complicated, just a bit of work:

- swap the values of "desklet_width" and "desklet_height"

- for all x,y coordinates (icon_0_x, icon_0_y, icon_1_x, ..., overlay_x, overlay_y, lab_1_x, lab_1_y, lab_2_x, ...) copy-paste the y-value in the x-value field, while (!!the complicated part) entering in the y-field "desklet_width minus x-value".

There's a bit of using the calculator but then it's done...

You can control your efforts by switching to the skin and rightclicking the dock and choosing "update settings" every time you did some change...

#465933

Sendme Link To Download Morphdock Zip Or Rar, Please, Please, Please, Please. Gracias.

Excuseme My English

#465964

Hi there -

http://www.deviantart.com/download/4511877...bdesign.aveinst

...the download button at deviantart is a bit hidden...

#465974

SHOW "The XML page cannot be displayed", I CAN'T DOWNLOAD.

PLEASE SENDME .ZIP OR .RAR OR FILE TO MONTESOFT@HOTMAIL.COM

#466255

Hi there again -

I think your problem is caused by the browser and quite simple to solve - so this should work for all downloads of aveinst-files:

I think your browser wants to OPEN the *.aveinst files (which is just a renamed *.zip file including an xml... So if you prefer a .ZIP, just rename it...) instead of saving it to your hard drive.

So all you have to do, is

right-clicking the link above and choose "save target as"

(or similar, depending on your browser) to save the file to disk.

If you need a detailed installation guide for AveDesk and the rest:

I did a quick guide now with the file description -

http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/45118777/

#466761

Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes.

Tankyou Friend, "gracias" From Colombia :-)

#467359

uh.. i cant seem to put any shortcut. or pic.. why is that?

#482389

Hi there -

This sounds like you just don't have the latest version of AveScripter (1.0.7.5), available here:

http://avedesk.org/desklets/engines/

If you have, please could you describe how you're trying to apply pics and shortcuts -

it should easily work the way it's described on the preview image.

Note, that ...

...Morphdock differs between shortcuts and pics - so if you drag a shortcut onto it, it will not automatically apply the default icon of the shortcut - default ones look crap in high resolutions. Instead, you can drag'n drop any PNG, ICO etc. onto it and it will be used as image for the shortcut, not as shortcut itself. This way is much faster than going to an "open image" dialog like with other docks (also you can do so).

...Dragging shortcuts has two (minor) flaws, due to MorphDock being written in VBS:

- Shortcuts can't be dragged from the start menu, use you're Program's folder/Quick launch/Desktop to drag shortcut's onto it.

- Sometimes there seems to be a bug in AveDesk/AveScripter(?!), that *.lnk files can't be started directly (some works, sometimes doesn't, couldn't figure it out). So I created an option to let you choose, if a dropped file should be saved as shortcut (*.lnk) or the information of the shortcut should be read out and saved as such.

Long sentence short: If you drop a file and nothing changes, activate the exe/lnk-switch in the MorphDock options and drop the file again... this time it should work!

#482401

Good Job i am impressed all i can write is weird programs not docks (i could if i really wanted to but nahhhh)

#493727

Hi thewer

How about releasing some vertical docks for morphdock. I tried reversing some of the dimensions of the horizontal docks but it never worked out

#500865

Hi perfection -

A vertical dock is in progress. I'll also fix some minor bug with the tab feature and add support for 'single tabs'...

Might need a few days so.

If you need a vertical dock quickly, you can always rotate a dock via desklet properties...

#501132

Hi' I recently started trying out Morphdock and I've been having prooblems using it. Whenever I right click on an icon in order to open the settings they wont open. I already have the latest version avescripter installed but nothing seems to help.

#501277

Hi there -

sorry to hear that. I can't say what's causing this right now - but maybe you can help me there:

After right-clicking an icon, can you open the desklet's properties (right-click anything else and choose them in the menu or open it via the AveDesk control panel). Within the properties dialog you'll find a tab called "AveScripter Error Log" - could you tell me, what's written there after right-clicking an icon?

Second question would be, if you discovered problems with any other (AveScripter) desklets when trying to 'flip' them (weather desklet etc.)?

#501311

The Avescriptor log shows me this:

429 Microsoft VBScript runtime error

ActiveX component can't create object: 'Scripting.FileSystemObject' Line:289 Column:1

#501561

Hi again -

did some research on this error code:

Actually it looks like this isn't a bug of MorphDock, but a problem of your PC with the so-called 'Windows Scripting Host' (or WSH or Active Scripting Host).

The WSH normally is already installed with XP or Vista and with MorphDock e.g. helps me to get a list of items in a folder (in this case before opening the settings).

Your PC seems to have problems to get access to the WSH -

this could be due to

- a program disabling scripting on your PC (antivirus like norton, noscript etc.

While disabling scripting when surfing in the internet might be a good idea, disabling scripting in generell and don't give users a hint like some av's do is a bad one).

- the installation of WSH is messed up in some way

- some registry keys regarding the WSH have been changed (Tune-up-utilities etc.)

Solutions:

- Disable script blocking if any. For surfing the internet, there are plugins like noscript for your browser.

- Installing WSH again (for XP: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details...&displaylang=en)

- With Vista some users experiencing this have solved the problem by registering the 'scrrun.dll' again via regsvr32.exe... (I attached some links with more information below)

Hope this helps...

Sorry that I don't have an easier solution, but it really looks like it's a problem with your PC. So a remote diagnosis is alway a bit tricky...

Links:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/311269/en-us

http://service1.symantec.com/sarc/sarc.nsf...pt.hosting.html

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/267279/en-us

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/249873/en-us

#501609

Thank you, I tried your advice and it fixed my problem.

#501788

Thanks for considering verticl docks for Morphdock

Rotating the dock somehow does not produce the same effect