matt.malensek

Still Alive...

2010-04-04T04:09:36-06:00

...and still dragging my feet, ever slowly, toward an alpha.

I have been somewhat productive lately, adding new "TileBar" and "NumberStrip" meters. I am going to get the tray icon code done, create a demo skin that includes all the new v3 bars, and probably send it out to a few testers. Settings GUI still not quite done, but the config file is fairly easy to understand.

I have fallen behind on responding to comments, I will read through them tomorrow and hopefully get a response up. Thanks and good night...! :)

Whoops.

2010-03-14T22:19:13-06:00

I seem to have gotten wrapped up in "real life" stuff lately and didn't get a chance to update my page... I will read through the comments from the previous post and get a response up soon. I see 3RVX was on Lifehacker, which is really awesome. I wish I had the new version finished before getting that kind of exposure... :). So, what have I been doing lately? Well, working on the bug pointed out by ale and javad: minimizing windows freezes the mouse cursor if you have window animations turned on (doesn't seem to happen if you use Aero on Vista/7, though).

Apparently this bug has to do with using a low-level mouse hook. A global mouse hook, on the other hand, does not cause this problem, but introduces some problems of its own. Global hooks need to be in a separate DLL and are more difficult on a 64-bit system because the hooks can only receive messages from 32-bit OR 64-bit applications, not both. According to Microsoft, the low-level hooks are the preferred method, so maybe I'm just missing an easy fix for this bug.

Right now I see two solutions: rewrite to use a global mouse hook and have two processes run on 64 bit systems, (ugh) or try to detect minimize/restore events and temporarily disable the low-level hook before the animations start... Which would probably also require two processes.

For now I am going to put this issue on hold and just make sure the hook gets disabled if it's not needed. I will certainly make fixing this bug a top priority, but I want to get the alpha done and in the hands of some testers before spending too much more time on it.

Other than the hook-related bugs, I have gotten a good chunk of the settings UI finished. It's been slow going as I don't have much experience with making UIs in C, and kinda miss having .NET do most of the thinking for me ;). But things are coming along.

New Skin Features

2010-02-17T19:11:05-07:00

So I finally got around to working on the skin format and features this last weekend, adding a new text mode display (that works a lot better than the old one, I think) and a bunch of new meters:

As you can see, the BarWithEndcap meter takes a lot of hassle out of having moving "endcaps" on on the ends of the bar. There is also a new meter that uses a small reference image and repeats it a specified number of times, making bars like those used in the default Mac-style skin a lot easier to make. The meter on the left (volume icon) is a standard bitstrip, but I wanted to point out that you can now have an unlimited number of meters on an OSD.

I also reduced the codebase by around 250 lines while adding these new features, so things have actually gotten more optimized.

3RVX Skins | 3RVX Languages | status page (updated)

Status Report

2010-02-08T02:12:43-07:00

It's been about a month since my last update, so I thought it would be a good idea to post and say that I'm still alive, and still making progress on the next 3RVX. :)

I just recently got the parts dealing with Aero glass finished and have most of the basic functionality down. The challenge now is getting all the different components talking to each other and create a GUI for changing settings.

Development has been taking a while, and I'm sorry that I'm not progressing very fast. On the other hand, I feel like the new version is much better designed than the last, and will hopefully be much less buggy than 2.5.

Last but not least, I have created a couple new pages: 3RVX Skins and 3RVX Languages. If you'd like me to include your language/skin, then upload it somewhere and post a link in the comments. Sorry it's taken so long to get these up (and I will hopefully have a little more user-friendly interface for it in the future!)

Edit: adding a link to the status page, which I will keep updating.

Edit2 (Feb 8th): Still chugging along, detailed update with screenshots tomorrow.

"Behind the Scenes"

2009-12-16T01:38:38-07:00

I wanted to post another quick update to let everyone know I'm still making progress on 3RVX. I just finished the new hotkey manager, which is much simpler and should be a lot less buggy (funny how taking a few minutes to come up with a decent design does that).

I don't have any new screenshots or something interesting to show for my work, thus the title for this post. But, thankfully, Jake has provided me with material in the form of a preview for a new skin (and an animated screenshot as well). Speaking of animation, I really want to see if I could allow for some basic animation in skins.

Finally, I just wanted to say that I will not be dropping XP support in the next release; around 50% of the people visiting this site use XP and I don't want to make them mad! ;)

Making Progress...

2009-11-29T17:54:11-07:00

Just wanted to post a quick update on the new version of 3RVX. First of all, I have created a status page to record what bugs need to be fixed and what features are being added. I will try to update it on a semi-regular basis.

As for the actual development of the program, I am making slow steps toward a working alpha version. Here's a screenshot of the 32-bit debug version up and running :). Memory consumption is looking promising so far.

At some point I'll take a break and set up an upload form so people can share skins and translation files. What I'd really like to do is have a GUI in the app for downloading new skins, but I shouldn't get too carried away with plans at this point... :)

And one more thing: thanks to everyone who has posted bugs/suggestions/comments!

News commenting enabled!

2009-11-09T21:03:47-07:00

Now when I offend people they can express their disdain using the conveniently-located comment boxes that I've just added. I still need to work out the formatting and update the page without reloading for javascript-enabled users, but it's a start. Progress is always good.

IE6 and 7 are ruining my day once again. At least they're consistent :)

News Navigation

2009-11-05T23:33:01-07:00

You should be able to travel forward and backward in time now by clicking the little arrows next to the date. Unfortunately, I haven't implemented time travel into the future so you're going to be relegated to reading old news.

I also did some more tweaks on the site, including bulleted lists. To celebrate, I present you with a bulleted list of things I still need to do:

News comments
Fill in those empty pages!
~~Cool prize giveaways for people who actually visit my site~~ (nah...)

Wow, that was epic. Back to work, I suppose. And by 'work,' I mean bed.

I have an Atom feed.

2009-11-01T22:29:10-07:00

I know that a few people wanted some way to tell when new app releases happen and other sorts of news, so I finally got with the times and now have an Atom feed. You should be seeing a nice, shiny RSS icon in your browser.

Next up: auto-update for my apps. I'll just stick that on my long to-do list... Actually, the next thing I want to get done is some sort of comment system so people can yell at me like before. And then I need to clean up these pages some more. Eh, it might just be easier to go outside :)

Note: permalinks to posts not working yet. They should soon.

Back, and buggier than ever.

2009-10-23T22:32:58-06:00

So, after a very long break, I'm back with a shiny new site on a shiny new web server (well, it might be shiny, I haven't seen it). I'm still working all the kinks out at this point, so not much works. But that will change. Sooner than later, I hope.

Updates? Soon. And by 'soon,' I mean 10-20 years.

Also, IE6 users: bear with me, I haven't tested everything on your browser yet!