AveToast

What?

In vista and xp, popup notifcation balloons look like this:

.

I think that's pretty ugly, especially on vista.

So?

I wrote a small application that replaces notification balloons in xp and vista with skinned ones.

Features

+ replace xp/vista's ugly balloons with skinnable ones

+ on vista, supports full DWM stuff: aero blur & glow texts

+ launch the app a second time to get the settings dialog again

+ small memory footprint

screenshots

Vista Beta1 Style

Longhorn 4xxx style

Download

http://mpj.tomaatnet.nl/glasstoast.zip

Anyone want to make an Aqua style one?

#440692

Sweet Jesus...

EDIT: Well, first I tried thinking of a program that creates these messages. And then: "Oh, Windows Messenger" It displays that "Windows Messenger is still running" balloon. So, opened it, hit the close button, and:

No dice. After some tries, the little bit of "letter dust" moves around the balloon, and it never focuses over the actual app. Windows XP Professional.

#440693

Segoe UI

#440699

Awesome. Just a comment: It may be nice to have a tray icon where the theme can be changed thru a "right-click" > "settings" options.

#440700

No.

#440721

No.

LOL

I agree... NO MORE TRAY ICONS!

Nice work as always.

#440726

Im off to try this

#440728

Started it but no balloons yet, now we need a program to create random balloons YAY.

thanks for this

#440818

Segoe UI

right, forgot i don't have it on this comp.

#440836

After fiddling around with this for about an hour trying to get it to work, and just about to give up, I tried moving the taskbar to the bottom of the screen. Lo and behold, it works!

Would be great if it could also work when taskbar is on the top of the screen (will have a more in depth look in the ini configs tomorrow to see if placement is hard-coded). Other than that, it looks like a great app.

Looks like I have to find an hour or two tomorrow and whip up an Ubuntu-like popup for my Tango-fied boxes. Thanks a lot. Looking forward to see some more development on this.

Edit: Would be super-awesome cool to have the same treatment done to the tooltips as well. hehe

#440851

Looking & working very good. Have to take a stab at skinning this.

After fiddling around with this for about an hour trying to get it to work, and just about to give up, I tried moving the taskbar to the bottom of the screen. Lo and behold, it works!

Thanks Sranshaft. Have no idea why I didn't try that.

#440878

great program Ave!

unfortunately I'm another one of those people who keeps their taskbar on teh top of the screen

I'm crossing my fingers for a Screen Position:Top compatible version.

Thanks for sharing! Testing it on XPsp2 now.

#440890

It was a quick-hack job. On top taskbar will require some more work.

#440903

No worries Andreas. Looking great for a quick hack job.

#440911

Great app, yeah I also discovered the hard way since on top taskbar was the norm...

#440913

Hehe, nice, imaginative app. Great job from the master!

-NC

#441030

I hope you are able to find a way to make this work with taskbar on top.

#441209

Nice app ave !

But it seems that I cannot run it under my iMac :/ (Immediate GlassToast windows error report)

I am running French Windows XP SP2, with mac drivers and MacDrive installed. Disabled all the explorer hook based apps that could be the cause but nothing can do

Seems that it runs on my friends' laptop with French XP SP2 too ... It makes him very happy

Thx for the hard work

#441465

I hope you are able to find a way to make this work with taskbar on top.

yes, i hope so too

please, please, please

#441473

just wow, your amazing =]

#441523

Ave, On my XP box the text has no colour. is there an alpha problem? i get the same as alpha2zulu's screen above. I changed the ballon background to black and i can now see the text but the text is see-through and so becomes hard to read.

example:

[ATTACH]9514[/ATTACH]

ave.bmp

Attachment: ave.bmp

#441958

I think I found a little bug.

It’s a custom skin I was working on. Just a 60% opacity rounded square with a white border.

#442227

The masks do not work.. i have been playing and they make no difference at all..

Help Andreas...please

#442443

i thought this was a burning program by you (Toast on mac, Avetoast on windows). Maybe you should add that to avedesk though. Nice, touch on the balloons.

#442450

Neat app, only issue for me is the command swtiches don't work.

Under Target I have: "C:Documents and SettingsErtai88DesktopAveToastglasstoast.exe" -auto

But when I start it, it starts and gives me the "Ave's Glass Toast has been started." balloon.

#442475