[Windows Mobile Development and Hacking General] LordChaos:
** Update 3 **

There's another beta coming out soon, with lots of exciting new features.:

* The promised 'folder widget' - display the contents of a folder on your device in a virtual screen. I use this as my 'podcast folder' (inside a dock) so I can select one to listen to.

* Directly select a folder/executable on your device whilst in the designer. Obviously you have to have your device plugged in via USB for this to work.

* A QVGA example desk (previous versions only had VGA)

* Lots of bugfixes.

** Update 2 **

Still working hard to get a preview release to you guys. A lot of the current work is in making the PC-based designer as intuitive as possible - an important factor I believe - don't want any complaints about crashing, etc (I hate that the most - you put hours into something, and it explodes).

Anyway - Some of you have expressed concern that you won't be able to get to your today bar icons (the icons down the bottom of the today screen) - while HotDesk is running. The current solution to this is a context menu bound the the desktop click action - that allows you to clip the window to a certain (configurable) height, whilst simultaneously minimizing all other windows - allowing you to see the today bar behind.

This screenshot demonstrates:

Shot

I hope to have a preview release (that won't have all the features that the final release will have, but will still have lots of cool stuff) - to you by the end of next week. Features expected in the preview release:

* Desktop designer, allowing drag'n'drop drawing of all desktop widgets (of course)

* Background widget - set your background, per virtual screen, to an image of any format that PocketPC can read (png,gif,jpg,bmp)

* Picture widget - place a picture at any location on your virtual screens. Handy for non-active element theme customisation.

* Button widget - Define up/down state images, and an action for your buttons (Actions such as 'go to next/previous/specific vscreen', 'start program', 'show/hide dock window' etc)

* Today item Widget - place any today item installed on your system onto any vscreen

* Gauge widget - Text/Graphical gauges linked to system properties (battery,disk/mem free etc). Graphical gauges have customisable background images, and gauge-bar size/image/location.

* Directory widget - place an icon box of any directory on your PocketPC inside a Virtual Screen or Dock - I use this inside a dock, so I can click an icon saying 'My Podcasts' - and up pops a dock sub-window inside my HotDesk with an iconbox with an icon for each of my podcasts. Think of it as a mini-filemanager in a Dock.

More features to come in the final version - but I just want to get this out there for now so you guys can get the creative juices flowing.

More news soon.

** UPDATE **

Got some screenshots of HotDesk running on my JasJar.

A bit of explanation:

Shot 1: The main screen of the demo desktop I'm working on. Here you see 4 application launchers, 2 text gauges (time/date), and a graphical gauge (battery). The Gauge designer can be seen in the designer screenshot at the bottom of this post.

Shot 2: A 'dock' demo. Clicking the 'folder' icon triggers a 'visibility toggle' action on the dock window. The dock window is a Virtual Screen like any other - it just happens to be nested inside another Vscreen.

Shot 3: A demonstration of nesting Today Plugins inside HotDesk. This is more difficult to code than it sounds: essentially you have to reimplement all the message calls/events that the Today screen does. Surprisingly, this was one of the hardest things to code in HotDesk so far. As you can see, I haven't done background transparency for Today plugins yet, but that is coming soon.

Shot 1

Hi All,

I'm creating a new desktop design tool for WM devices. Its aim is to be both friendly to designers, and also to be powerful enough that it's a useful replacement for the today screen et al.

I won't beat around the bush: I *hate* the today screen. I won't launch into a religious argument about that here - I'm just here to show you the work I've been doing.

Announcing: HotDesk.

Hotdesk contains two components: A program that runs on your WM device, that loads '.desk' files - files which contain all the art, logic etc - of your custom designed desktop. The other component is hotdesk designer - an early screenshot of which I've attached to this post.

The designer will be familiar to anyone that has used any kind of vector graphics tool. You simply drag/drop/move - your components on the 'virtual screens' of your desktop.

HotDesk is based around the concept of 'vscreens' - a desktop contains one or more VScreens - that are tied to an orientation (landscape or portrait). Based on the current orientation of your device, the desktops you design for that orientation are displayed - and the user moves between them using buttons that are tied to the 'change vscreen' action.

I'm sure most of you have seen offerings such as 'Wisbar Advance Desktop', and others. Don't get me wrong - Chris does a great job with Wisbar/Desktop - but HotDesk aims to go far beyond products such as these - by creating a rich set of embeddable components that can be customised to your needs. On my PPC, I often find myself jumping between a thousand separate tiny little applications that perform a certain task, or display a certain device statistic - HotDesk aims to allow you to tie almost any action to a button - or connect any device statistic to a custom graphical gauge (as can be seen in the screenshot)

Current features:

Custom button launchers. Definable graphics for up/down states

Completely customisable gauges (gauge image, cursor image, data source)

Multiple virtual screens, and programmable screen change logic

Different screens for portait/landscape views

File list control - e.g. display files in a folder for easy selection (I use this as a popup from my 'podcast folder')

Embed today plugins - In my opinion, today plugins are generally memory hogs - but if you must, you must

Tab widget - have a tabbed dialog within a vscreen

This application is not yet complete, but I must admit I'm excited by what it does so far. I'll be releasing a beta soon - so watch this space. If you have any feature suggestions (e.g. something you've been aching for, not found in other desktop-type apps) - now is the time to speak up.

Oh yeah, here's the screenshot (sorry for the size):

Designer Screenshot

Alex.