Avedesk 1.1 released

[acedriver]

AveDesk 1.1 features incredible resource usage improvements, support for future, advanced desklets (via the new AveDesk SDK), new user programmable attention effects and new graphics engine. AveDesk will be followed with the release of some new and to this day unsurpassed desklets. It also continues docklets support for ObjectDock and has legacy support for AveDesk 1.0 desklets (even though the full extent of AveDesk 1.1 updates will be best perceived with the new, updated desklets).

Link: Avedesk 1.1 released thread

Edited July 25, 2004 by acedriver

[AndreasV]

Ha, you beat me to it. I was actually planning on making a release-thread here too, but I coulnd't find out where it should have been posted :blush:

AveDesk 1.1

desktop enhancer +

AveDesk 1.1 is the successor of AveDesk 1.0 which was launched in January 2004. After 6 months of hard work, a new version of AveDesk was born. Keeping the feel of the application the same, much has been improved.

Graphical Improvements

Dropshadows are now looking better than ever. Real time created shadows of your icons is available to you with a wide range of options to set for the actual dropshadow. With one click, you easily give your favourite desklets a pretty dropshadow.

Colorizing is a totally new feature. Where AveDesk 1.0 only had an option to grayscale a desklet, AveDesk 1.1 offers to modify both the saturation and the hue of any desklet. You can quickly make all your icons match one color-scheme.

Desklets can and will easily do nice animations. For example, when you are preparing to drop a bunch of files on a folder desklet, the folder will morph from an closed folder icon into an opened one, indicating to the user that the files can be dropped onto the desklet.

Another addition is that hidden labels will fade in and out on mouse over, making it more pleasant to look at.

With a good looking dropshadow under your icon, the labels text couldn't stay at the old shadow: Labels now have highly tweakable dropshadows, which will give numerous possibilities for the label to look.

Another option is to make the label be in 'Top Down'-style, which is handy for Asian characters.

from left to right: icon with dropshadow, icon with glow, icon with colourization.

Better Functionality

AveDesk 1.1 will come with a default set of highly usuable desklets: For every type of shortcut, there is a special, optimized desklet. There is a regular , a folder and a drive -shortcut. Each type of shortcut will show different information and act differently. The regular shorcut can show a preview of image files it points to for example, while a drive shortcut has the possibility to be hidden when the drive is not mounted.

The notes desklet is another nifty widget that comes with AveDesk 1.1. It will allow you to quickly make little notes all over your desktop. Simply drop text on it and drag it into a document to quickly access the notes texts. If there is more text on the note than can be showed, the text will automatically scroll when you hoover the mousecursor over it.

To make it look like a real stickie - you know, those you put on your fridge-, there are a lot of options available like rotate text or a bounding rectangle for the text.

Besides those 4 handy desklets, AveDesk 1.1 will feature enough other desklets to have fun with, to make your desktop look pretty and to boost your productivity.

All desklets are interact better with each other too. With the addition of full drag-'n-drop ( desklets can accept all kinds of drops and are able to be dragged), removing a certain desklet is just as simple as dragging it to a Trash desklet and dropping it: voil?, it's gone.

More Information>

While the regular labels also give a lot of information, AveDesk 1.1 has seperated the available information. Besides the interactive icon of each desklet, every label will now be seperated into two parts: The caption and a sublabel.

While the caption can totally be defined by the user, the sublabel will show extra information under the caption. A drive desklet will show the amount of free space left on the particular drive and a shortcut desklet will show additional information about the file it points to.

This additional information in the sublabel is configurable by the user or can simply turned off with one click.

Effects>

Something totally new to the concept of AveDesk is the effect. Effects do cool things to your desktop. The Shake Effect will make your desklets shake on mouseover, the glow effect will give your icons a nice pulsing glow. The possibilities are endless.

Effects can easily be added to AveDesk. A simple scripted file is enough to act as a powerfull effect.

Matrix Effect by Kerin.>

Better User Interface>

The tabbed user interface is ofcourse still there, but the tabs are reorganized to provide a more cleaner look and to make working with the interface easier: Colors can easily be set through the use of dropdown-color buttons.

Everytime an icon can be changed with a button, the user can also easily drop the icon/PNG file onto the preview pane.

And on popular request: the tray icon can now be changed or removed in the options settings.

Under The Hood>

The best changes are under the hood though. The core of AveDesk is still the same, but has been extended a lot.

A new C style API is present with a whole new way of handling images: Each desklet exists of several layers, where every layer will have its own rotation, alpha level, hue, saturation and more. All the programmer has to do is to set the properties for a layer and AveDesk 1.1 will make sure the desklet is rendered.

Drag-'n-drop has been fully implemented to both ways. The desklets programmer gets an easy way to implement drag-'n-drop for its desklet. AveDesk 1.1 will handle all the d&d and gives a more friendly version to the desklet.

AveDesk 1.1 now offers a more Windows compliant way of handling propertypages.

Kudos and thanks>

- Mikegraphik for being the gfx-teammember

- Herd, aka mr. COM. The whole COM implementation was done by herd! Big kudos to you Sir!

- Judge, for numerous hints, snippets and ofcourse SysStats 2.0

CoLLumBus for maintaining the supportDesk:((:(

- Unbeliever for the moral support thru chat

- All beta-testers for their valuable reports, bug noticing, hints

- Ji Eun for having his KDX server :naughty:

- All people who donated some $$$ to me, because it really helped me spend more time on this.

- Al, for being Alilm:))

HINTS>

-To drag a desklet rather than to move it, first hold SHIFT.

-Set the shadows alpha to something like 800 to make it bigger.

-AveDesk can be accessed thru VBScripts, I will release some more info on this pretty soon, along with the AveDesk SDK.

Other>

Releases will follow a bit quicker now, starting with a 1.1 on icon-steroids.

You can simply update your old version, by first backing up your theme.ini. This release includes a sample theme.ini.

Also, a desktop plugin that will convert your desktop icons into desklets at real-time, will come pretty soon.

Notes>

THANK YOU BUTTON

Download>

Installer: http://mpj.tomaatnet.nl/AveDesk11.exe (thanks to theunknown )

ZIP files:

http://www.avedesk.com/AveDesk11.zip

http://mpj.tomaatnet.nl/AveDesk11.zip

http://seph.ws/ave/AveDesk11.zip

[acedriver]

It's a great app AndreasV, thanks for all the works you've done..

[JohnO]

very sweet

how do you make the icons smaller?

[AndreasV]

A picture says more than a 1000 words so :D :

[CeruleanCowboy]

can someone please tell me what avedesk is/does? i already checked the homepage. it's under construction =/

[tekno]

Avedesk is a desktop customizing tool. Basically it lets you add Desklets to the desktop ( like add bigger icons, or add an icon which displays the space left on the hdd ). That way you have more control over desktop customization.

[futb0l]

Wow! Avedesk 1 is awesome enough!! Bu this new one is amazing!!

[CeruleanCowboy]

Avedesk is a desktop customizing tool. Basically it lets you add Desklets to the desktop ( like add bigger icons, or add an icon which displays the space left on the hdd ). That way you have more control over desktop customization.

gotcha. thanks a lot :) i think i'll give it a try

[Rudy]

looks similar to desktopx

[jymi]

Wow! Avedesk 1 is awesome enough!! Bu this new one is amazing!!

took the words strait out of my mouth, excellent stuff Andreas

[imtoomuch]

I haven't tried this since the original release so I guess I'll try it again.

Edit: The last time I tried AveDesk it was RC1. It was cool before and now it's so amazing. I love this app. :woot: I don't know if I'll be running it fulltime, but I appreciate the app and the efforts that went into it. Great work.

Edited July 25, 2004 by imtoomuch

[Soviet]

Woooohoo been waiting for this to be released.

yay :D

If it had a weather desklet I could get rid of kapsules.

Mmm 520K Mem Usage

[deadzombie]

This is what DesktopX should have been - and this is free. :)

[imtoomuch]

Woooohoo been waiting for this to be released.

yay :D

If it had a weather desklet I could get rid of kapsules.

Mmm 520K Mem Usage

It is possible to have a Weather desklet. Go to DockEx and download the weather plugin. I used the ObjectDock Weather docklet. I'm not sure if the Y'z Dock docklets will work with AveDesk because I haven't tried them.

[insanekiwi]

awesome program (Y)

[futb0l]

This is what DesktopX should have been - and this is free. :)

yupp

i also like the way it can support docklets :)

[deadzombie]

yupp

i also like the way it can support docklets :)

No kidding... a quick trip through WinCustomize gave me SysMon CPU/ Memory meters, a variation of the Object Dock weather Docklet, a calander and a clock, all running on my desktop under Avedesk 1.1.

Except now I can resize these docklets, add shadows to them, colorize them, control their transparency, add shortcut links to them, adjust previously unadjustable images and tweak their readouts.

Did I say AndreasV kicks ass? :woot: :woot: :woot:

[insanekiwi]

when i finished my exams next wekk i'm gonna startsorting my 20.000 pngs and select the ones i can use with avedesk :rofl:

[AndreasV]

FTP Droplet UPDATE

This one can do directories two, confused two different versions in the final compilation :rolleyes:

http://mpj.tomaatnet.nl/FTP.dll

Stop AveDesk, replace Desklets\FTP\FTP.dll with the file above and you're good to go.

he main mirror ( http://mpj.tomaatnet.nl/AveDesk11.zip has been updated, other mirrors please update your file too. Theunknown, would you be so kind to rebuild that installer for me :)

[cmove]

Great news

That's a nice little software

[amanechoir]

I love the speak effect when you hover the desklet. Is there a way to replace Sam with "Samantha"? ;)

[Tai]

this is a really good app :D :D .me likes :wub: :wub: :wub: :wub:

[AndreasV]

AveFocus

WOA!

Screenie

Not the widget, but the background...just read the description

Description

Suppose you are running AveDesk1.1 and you are having all your desklets set as a desktop icon, like me. Now, you are busy with a lot of stuff, lots of windows open, and suddenly, you decide you want to access one of the widgets on the desktop... you hit minimize all, find the widget, do your stuff, and unminimize all again. ****ty job do to that.

But now there is AveFocus for AveDesk1.1 : run the application and see an icon being installed in the system notification area. Now, when you want to access a widget that is on the desktop, simply hit the F8 key and they will all pop to front.

Hit F8 again or click the blacked out background to return to normal again.

Thanks

- Zillaland people for telling me to add some animation in it ^____^

- Duckie for his hints

Download

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

[XanDaMan]

NICE!!

If only I knew howto make these widgets, i'd dump samurize in a heartbeat because of that feature...

Any Adreas...check you emails...please?