Try the VistaClock - Major performance update!

netmaestro · Post by **netmaestro** » Mon May 01, 2006 9:40 pm

This little companion will sit on your desktop and tell you the time tirelessly without disturbing your desktop (it's transparent!) and use no cpu time at all. Give it a try! A gift from your friend, netmaestro.

http://www.networkmaestro.com/VistaClock.exe

thefool · Post by **thefool** » Mon May 01, 2006 9:45 pm

Wow! Very cool

(a little feature addition: be able to resize it

or at least choose something like "50% size")

Killswitch · Post by **Killswitch** » Mon May 01, 2006 9:52 pm

That's pretty cool - although the transparency is a little laggy. If I jam the clock in the middle of my screen, then slowly minimise the windows behind it then you can see that the background of the clock is the same as a part of the last window. Apart from that it's quite nice!

netmaestro · Post by **netmaestro** » Mon May 01, 2006 9:54 pm

Ack I found a bug. A couple people downloaded this before I noticed it, but the clock was wrecking your clipboard. It was a debugging check I had in there and forgot to remove. Sorry!

It's fixed now, please re-download.

@thefool: Good point! I'll take a look at that.

rsts · Post by **rsts** » Mon May 01, 2006 9:55 pm

Cool clock.

Some nice coding.

cheers

thefool · Post by **thefool** » Mon May 01, 2006 9:57 pm

netmaestro wrote: @thefool: Good point! I'll take a look at that.

great

Psychophanta · Post by **Psychophanta** » Mon May 01, 2006 10:21 pm

I like it.
I guess the source is not very large.
Shoud be good to improve the dragging to be perfectly done

Inf0Byt3 · Post by **Inf0Byt3** » Mon May 01, 2006 10:38 pm

Very very nice... How did you make the semitransparent window, with #gwl_exstyle?

utopiomania · Post by **utopiomania** » Mon May 01, 2006 11:35 pm

Very nice! Just one request, can you make it tick like my wristwatch? That would have been cool.

netmaestro · Post by **netmaestro** » Mon May 01, 2006 11:59 pm

Fixed another fairly serious bug where the clock lost transparency after about ten minutes of running.

Latest version has this and the clipboard bug fixed, it is branded "Beta 2" in the About box. Please download this version if you have an earlier one.

mskuma · Post by **mskuma** » Tue May 02, 2006 1:17 am

Hi Netmaestro! Thanks for this. I noticed a couple of things. I had a regular folder window open underneath where it initially appeared. This seemed to cause some crazy flashing (clock would quickly appear then disappear) for about 15 seconds. If I started the app with no open windows, there was no problem. Then if I drag the clock around, it seems to take a snapshot of the area under the clock (also freezing the tick which makes sense) until I release the mouse when the clock is at the new position. Maybe this is to be expected. When the mouse is released, there was a flash (seemed like background repaint, white square fill, then clock).

va!n · Post by **va!n** » Tue May 02, 2006 2:08 am

very nice! but the clock using up to 15% of my CPU... as far as i can see, you did it all with some Win32 API and PB commands without any OGL stuff or that! respect! cool!

netmaestro · Post by **netmaestro** » Tue May 02, 2006 10:02 am

Beta 3 is the latest version, it's the best behaved so far. I'll be working on this again today, with the following features planned:

- able to resize
- drop shadows corrected for hands on the left side of the clock
- add alarms which will play sounds, show graphics, or run scripts on reaching the specified time
- performance improvements, if possible.

VistaClock is PureBasic v4.0 all the way, as it relies heavily on alpha layers rendering correctly. You could write something nice in 3.9x, but it wouldn't look the same. Long live the alpha! (snd)

Trond · Post by **Trond** » Tue May 02, 2006 12:53 pm

Displays absolutely nothing at all but uses 20% CPU on Windows 2000.

netmaestro · Post by **netmaestro** » Tue May 02, 2006 12:58 pm

Ah, interesting. Thanks for the feedback, I suspect the issue there is that it uses a windowed screen and sprite3d graphics, which requires dx7 or better to be available. I'll put cleaner code in there so it ends gracefully if it can't run. (I'm guessing no dx7 is the issue, anyway) The reason for the cpu usage will be that it can't verify the background so it's always trying to update it. Good one, thanks again.