[BETA] Neowin News Tray

July 13, 2003

It consumes right around half the memory, right around 5-6MB, as the original app. It's written in C/C++ and requires that MSXML3.0 be installed. It is my understanding that Windows 2000 SP3, and Windows XP both come with the dll by default. Obviously, if not, please let me know. I am going to make an effort to use Apache.org's Xerces XML parser to see if it solves some memory issues if I can get the damned thing to build on my machine.

I have no idea if this will work on 9x machines. Frankly, I'd rather not worry about it, but if there is an overwhelming demand( yeah, right! ) for it, then I'll try to fix what I can. Please note that I don't have a 9x machine to test on, nor a 2000 machine, but I will do my best.

In the app directory, there is a file called app.config. It is a simple XML file that can be modified to your desires.

There are currently only 3 settings that can be modified.

&lt;appsettings&gt;
  &lt;add key="TimerInterval" value="1200" /&gt;
  &lt;add key="CurrentFeed" value="Games" /&gt;
  &lt;add key="BalloonDelay" value="10" /&gt;
	&lt;/appsettings&gt;

TimerInterval is the amount of seconds until the app refreshes the news. CurrentFeed is the news feed that will be used at startup. The app saves the last feed state at exit. BalloonDelay is the balloon tooltip that popus over the trayicon. The default is 10 seconds, and it can't go any lower. Sorry, that's a system limitation, not mine. It can go as high as 30 seconds.

I plan on making a the things that can be configurable just that. A few things that are going to be configurable are as follows:

All options will be configurable through a GUI.

Timer will be optional - a.k.a. manual refresh.

News items will be either displayed at the top, as it is now, or as a submenu of the feed.

Animated icon when getting news... maybe. It happens so fast, it may not be worth it.

... it's late, I've forgotten what else I had in mind.

Anyhow, if you have any bugs or suggestions, please don't hesitate to post 'em.

I'm definitely going to try and get memory consumption lower. It will be difficult since XML is kinda bloated.

And now... think link:

http://opticverve.netfirms.com/zip/NeowinN...ewsTrayBeta.zip - 3.5MB download.

Time for sleep... :moon: :pc:

<crosses fingers and hopes the thing actually works> ;)

July 13, 2003

good work. I've browsed around and it looks like everything is working. Running Win2k3

July 13, 2003

i got an error as soon as i tryed to open it.

it said

runtime error

this application has requested the runtime to terminate it in an unusual way

July 13, 2003

Got any screenies of it? :)

July 13, 2003

I'm downloading it now to give it a try. I might post some screenies :o

July 13, 2003

Here's one

July 13, 2003

Here's it when its right clicked (note theres a bug with it parsing HTML code)

July 13, 2003

maybe if it updated everytime new news was posting. That would be sweet

July 13, 2003

Last one, showing the main news. Not a bad script, but for me, its a bit too much, I want to actually browse neowin in its website state and check out other stuff as well. :)

July 13, 2003

maybe forum posts :yes:

July 13, 2003

Good work (Y) You are doing an excellent job! (Y)

July 13, 2003

agree code_monkey - forum posts :)

anyway,great app,keep up the good work...

July 13, 2003

Thanx im downloading it Now. BTW can this be adapted to other sites. ??

July 13, 2003

I'm definitely going to try and get memory consumption lower. It will be difficult since XML is kinda bloated.

Are you using DOM or SAX2? In my experience, SAX2 consumes a lot less memory than DOM.

July 13, 2003

Mine opens, you click the balloon saying the program name, then the balloon including the icon simply closes. This needs to be fixed?

July 13, 2003

This is great! Maybe an option to display all sections (skinned) at once.. like in a window style 4 panes with each pane representing a section.

Great lil app (Y)

PS: Opening up a skin option will make more people turned on to making their own styles for it. Additionally you could look into a Office 2003 type "desktop alert" for new items.

July 13, 2003

Are you using DOM or SAX2? In my experience, SAX2 consumes a lot less memory than DOM.

I am currently using DOM, but I am going to use SAX. I know it will lighten the load significantly. I have never used SAX before, but it looks fairly straightforward.

July 13, 2003

Mine opens, you click the balloon saying the program name, then the balloon including the icon simply closes. This needs to be fixed?

As soon as I can figure out how to put hypertext in a balloon, that will no longer be the case. That is by design, according to MS. Actually, I was thinking about nixing the balloons altogther and go with a more MSN notification type of thing. But, time being my constraint, I may take some time to get it in there.

July 13, 2003

maybe forum post:yes:s:

I believe that is up to the folks at Neowin. I'm using their backend( hehe,:blush:h: ) to retrieve the XML that provides the feeds.

I would really like to be able to, first of all, get a list of available news feeds so I don't have to put them in a config file. Second, have the ability to get most recent posts from a certain Forum. I usually only browse this forum, Media Room, and Real World Issues, so it would be fantastic to only recieve notifications about those forums.

Skinning is something I'm looking into, tho, I admit, I'm not sure what all could be skinned. The menu of course, but until I change the notification balloon to a window, there really won't be much else. I guess providing custom icons for the tray and menu would be cool. I'll definitely look into it.

July 13, 2003

i got an error as soon as i tryed to open it.
it said

runtime error

this application has requested the runtime to terminate it in an unusual way

What OS are you running? Do you have MSXML 3 installed?

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default..../xmlgeneral.asp

July 13, 2003

maybe if it updated everytime new news was posting. That would be sweet

That would require something a little more complex than this simple app. It would require the server to broadcast everytime a new item was added. Then any listenters would have to get that message and perform and update. It is a good idea, but not a decision that is up to me. I think this would be better than polling at a given interval.

July 13, 2003

Thanx im downloading it Now. BTW can this be adapted to other sites. ??

As long as those sites conformed to the XML that Neowin uses, and used HTTP to get the XML.

July 13, 2003

i got an error as soon as i tryed to open it.
it said

runtime error

this application has requested the runtime to terminate it in an unusual way

What OS are you running? Do you have MSXML 3 installed?

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default..../xmlgeneral.asp

i am running winxp, so does xp come with MSXML 3

July 13, 2003

I'll see if I can duplicate it on another machine. Thanks.

July 13, 2003

nice app, i like although the mem usage is a tad bit on the high side

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[BETA] Neowin News Tray

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