New use for Active Desktop :)

[OutRigged.com 0]

http://www.outrigged.com/misc/desk/1-15-02.jpg

http://www.outrigged.com/misc/recycle.jpg

 

Spent a good 12 hours making this too, mostly researching how to do certain things.

 

On the left side, you see the icons, My Computer, My Documents, etc.. What I did, was extract the icons from the programs executable, or from shell32.dll, and converted them to bitmap images using Photoshop. The links launch the application using a combination Javascript/VBScript script.. The Javascript code, embedded in the page itself, loads a VBScript, that runs the selected application.

 

Might seem like alot of work for something so simple, but it works, and that's all that counts. The icons are dragable anywhere on the screen.. Which was a total headache to do, because each icon, and it's text, are two cells..

 

The Recycle Bin was particularily hard to do.. Instead of being a normal application launcher, the Recycle Bin link, loads a small page, that looks exactly like the Windows dialog. Works the same too.. Click yes, files are deleted, using a small bat file, that deletes all the files in C:\Recycler\, and closes the window.. Select no, and the window simply closes.

 

The Google search on the bottom is just the Link to Google code, from Google.com.

 

The news headlines in the middle, are iFrames. Each iFrame, leads to a PHP page, that formats the RDF files from Slashdot, Geeknews, and The Register. It's pretty simple code, that works good, and fast. The iFrames each refresh every 10 minutes, to catch any updates. I'd love to stick Neowin's headlines there, but they don't have a RDF headline page..

 

The Stats on the bottom right side, are simply CoolMon. I've actually got two copies running.. One for my local system, which displays most of the stats, and a second copy, that links up to my webserver, and gets it's uptime.

 

Finally, the clock on the top right corner, is a DHTML, Vector based, realtime clock.. Found it on DynamicDrive.com, and thought it'd be a nice little addition. I used the same code that I used on the icons, to make the clock dragable anywhere on screen.

 

I'd like your comments/flames/whatever on it.. Suggestions on how to improve it would be great too..

[clutch 1]

Looks cool, and seems quite functional. I also like the fairly simple layout of it. If you want to get even heavier into it, check into "Digital Dashboard" development at http://msdn.microsoft.com. You know the "Outlook Today" homepage? Well, that's a fairly simple version of what you can do with it.

[OutRigged.com 0]

That's where I got alot of my information from. Learning to launch programs using nothing but VBScript, and Javascript, was hard.. Especially trying to get around IE's security restrictions.

[Dirty Harry 0]

Cool work, outrig. Make it available for download so we can try it out, those of us who are lazy.

 

BTW, where did you get the clock? I've been looking for something like that.

 

H.

[Xiven 0]

Clock is: http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex6/analog2.htm

[OutRigged.com 0]

I also found the code to make the clock dragable there, lol

[clutch 1]

That is pretty cool, tnx for the link.

 

[OutRigged.com 0]

I released the Active Web Desktop (Creative.. Aren't I?).

 

You can check it out here: http://www.neowin.net/bboard/showthread.php?s=&threadid=10982

[Xiven 0]

I love it!

 

Only one thing though, those iframes have a minor bug that when they refresh, they refresh to the wrong url like this:

 

<META HTTP-EQUIV="refresh" content="900;URL=http://127.0.0.1:81/desktop/xml/slashdot.php">

 

Other than that, fantastic.

 

EDIT: Never mind, fixed it by pointing the iframes to the local copies rather than the ones hosted at outrigged.com

[OutRigged.com 0]

lol

 

That's not really a bug.. I just copied the version I used, and zipped it up.

[Xiven 0]

I've been having some fun modifying it. I've made it work in any screen res, added another news site (www.shacknews.com) and added some e-mail checking code. Thanks for the inspiration

[CrazyKillerMan 0]

hmm....all the links seem to be down...is there a mirror sit ethat you have it on? Looks really rad!

[clutch 1]

"Rad"

 

LOL, I haven't heard that one in a long time! Wasn't that a movie once? I think it came after a movie with Nicole Kidman named "BMX Bandits"...

 

[CrazyKillerMan 0]

LOL @ clutch

 

 

Where did u dig those links up? Very nice

[OutRigged.com 0]

Quote:

I've been having some fun modifying it. I've made it work in any screen res, added another news site (www.shacknews.com) and added some e-mail checking code. Thanks for the inspiration

Be interested in posting your code? I'd love to see the code for the e-mail checker.

[e2Genesis 0]

Awesome, sweet *** dude, extremely cool, hey, do you know how I can get motherboard moniter or something else to work in that too, to display system temps and stuff, thanx

[Xiven 0]

Quote:

Be interested in posting your code? I'd love to see the code for the e-mail checker.

Yup: http://stuff.xiven.com/activeweb/activeweb.zip

[Lactic.Acid 0]

Totally Tubular!

/L.A

 

:edit: So this isn't a totally dumbass comment, I may take this and work with it, possibly present it to my boss as a solution for our workstations...will depend on what I can do with it and how you license this, and how my boss feels about it =) :/edit:

[e2Genesis 0]

hmm, unfortunately, motherboard moniter can't detect my CPU temp and stuff in winXP, how weird, anyone else having this problem too? Well thanx, I have a Gigabyte GA-71X, slot A 800Mhz T-Bird

[Dirty Harry 0]

This one really made my day,about the coolest script out there. There is one thing I can't figure out though. Say I want to add a favourite site, like for example NTcompatible. How do I find out what the name is of the correct .php or .rdf file that the site is using for the news headlines?

 

Here I've tried all that I can spot, like article.php, index.php but not found the right one.

 

Anyone ?

 

 

H.