Titan Network
Community => City of Heroes => Topic started by: Ex-calibur on June 03, 2008, 07:22:54 PM
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I've written some useful (?) desktop widgets for City of Heroes/Villains players. They currently run in the Yahoo! Widget Engine, which is free and spiffy.
I'm porting them to Apple's Dashboard and Google Desktop as time permits.
Check them out at: http://www.pobox.com/~chrish/widgets/ (http://www.pobox.com/~chrish/widgets/)
CIT Avatars displays a City Information Terminal icon (either the normal one or the signature one) of your choice:
(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=www.skoroworld.com%2F%7Echrish%2Fwidgets%2Fcit-avatars.png)
CoH All Servers displays the current server status for all of the City servers in North America and Europe. You can shut off the ones you're not interested in:
(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=www.skoroworld.com%2F%7Echrish%2Fwidgets%2Fcoh-all-servers.png)
CoH Servers displays the current server status for your favourite City server (pick it in the preferences). You can pick any of several icons (hero, villain, origins, archetypes) to represent the "Up", "Down" and "Unknown" server states:
(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=www.skoroworld.com%2F%7Echrish%2Fwidgets%2Fcoh-servers.png)
Suggestions, complaints, etc. are welcome. ;D
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Is this so you know when you're online or is it for your friends? ???
Having access to the server status makes sense, but if it's gonna show you your own avatar when you're active/inactive, what would be the point? If you could add some sort of friends list to display when other people were on, that'd be great! It'd be like a Co* iChat without the chat windows. :)
I'll definitely check this out when it's ready for Dashboard.
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We have been in contact and are going to work on a way to display your friends.
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Sweet!
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i'd like to see it in my Vista SideBar :)
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i'd like to see it in my Vista SideBar :)
That would be nice!
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Is this so you know when you're online or is it for your friends? ???
It's more so you can see how many badges you have; if you right-click the widget, you can pick any of your characters from the menu, or you can scroll through them using the next/previous icons.
Like Voltaic Shock said, I'm going to make another one that displays your friends CGT status so you can see when they're online, what server, etc.
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i'd like to see it in my Vista SideBar :)
I don't have a Vista system handy for development or testing; is there an adapter to pull Google Desktop widgets into the Vista sidebar? That's how Google Desktop widgets work on Mac OS X... they're actually run in the Dashboard via some sort of trickery.
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googled for 30 seconds:
Amnesty Generator (http://www.amnestywidgets.com/GeneratorWin.html)
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It's more so you can see how many badges you have; if you right-click the widget, you can pick any of your characters from the menu, or you can scroll through them using the next/previous icons.
Well, that sounds handy. Will it tell you specifically what badges you have, like if I need to check real quick if i have any of the prereqs for an accolade?
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Well, that sounds handy. Will it tell you specifically what badges you have, like if I need to check real quick if i have any of the prereqs for an accolade?
No, although I should let you click it to pop up your City Information Terminal details page for that character... next version, I suppose.
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I've been using a couple of your wigets since i saw this post the other day. when i first downloaded them they both woked fine, untill i Did a reboot, now the one that shows my cit sigs and avatars is fine but the other one that shows a single servers status and shows your char avatar in the dock is now looking like this
(https://i87.photobucket.com/albums/k153/hellaid/wigetbug.jpg),
I've tried removing and reinstalling it to no avail.
[Edit] Just fiddled with it and by changing the icons and server it seemed to have fixed it, just hope i don't have to do this each time
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I've been using a couple of your wigets since i saw this post the other day. when i first downloaded them they both woked fine, untill i Did a reboot, now the one that shows my cit sigs and avatars is fine but the other one that shows a single servers status and shows your char avatar in the dock is now looking like this
(https://i87.photobucket.com/albums/k153/hellaid/wigetbug.jpg),
I've tried removing and reinstalling it to no avail.
[Edit] Just fiddled with it and by changing the icons and server it seemed to have fixed it, just hope i don't have to do this each time
You shouldn't have to, obviously.
The little icon in the top-left of the widget in your screen shot is the "trying to communicate with the server" icon. It's possible that the status couldn't be read from the server (server was down, network problem, whatever).
If this happens again, try clicking on the icon; whenever you do that, it refreshes (that is, it will try to contact the server status web page again).
What sort of system do you have, and what kind of Internet connection? The widgets assume you're already connected, but I could imagine a scenario where you've got DSL or a VPN or something and the connection isn't active yet when the widget loads and tries to find out the server status...
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Ok this has happened 2 days on the trot now, reset it again by changing server (went from union to training room back to union),
If this helps i'm running latest yahoo widgets, windows xp sp2, ADSL via Router which is on before I turn my computer on
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Ok this has happened 2 days on the trot now, reset it again by changing server (went from union to training room back to union),
If this helps i'm running latest yahoo widgets, windows xp sp2, ADSL via Router which is on before I turn my computer on
Hmm, I really don't have a clue what's going on. :-\ Does clicking the status icon make it refresh or do you absolutely need to change servers? Which server are you using?
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i have to change server each time, so no clicking it doesn't help, As stated I'm using the EU Union Server
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i have to change server each time, so no clicking it doesn't help, As stated I'm using the EU Union Server
Hmm, you know, I haven't tested it much with the EU servers, and the use their own style of status reporting... I'll try to track down the issue over the weekend. Thanks!
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i'm on Union too (and Prov is on Defiant)
so Prov and i can test it on the EU servers if needed
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OK guys, I've put a debug version of the CoH Servers widgets here: http://www.skoroworld.com/~chrish/widgets/debug/CoH%20Servers.widget (http://www.skoroworld.com/~chrish/widgets/debug/CoH%20Servers.widget)
Looks like I wasn't checking the server response status (d'oh). Please give this a go and let me know if anything odd shows up in the widget console... you're looking for "Error loading server status" sort of message, and the code.
Thanks!
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Actually, I think I found/fixed the bug, so give it a try. ;D
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right just restarted wigets with the new coh server widget installed, seems to work fine atm, will let you know what happens on a full reboot later
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seems to be working fine here as well
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Just done a reboot, working fine
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Just done a reboot, working fine
Excellent! It was a dumb copy/paste error. O.o
I'll put up a new version some time this week. Thanks for testing it!
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great, using 2 of the 3 widgets now ;)
just 1 small typo tho:
in the Preferences of the All Servers widget, u typed Zunkunft
instead of Zukunft :)
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great, using 2 of the 3 widgets now ;)
just 1 small typo tho:
in the Preferences of the All Servers widget, u typed Zunkunft
instead of Zukunft :)
Thanks, I'll fix that in the next release!
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oh, found something else too:
cuz i just selected Union and Defiant, i got to see this:
(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=img263.imageshack.us%2Fimg263%2F196%2Fsomethingpoppingoutrk1.jpg)
so i decided to uncheck every server
and this is what i got:
(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=img111.imageshack.us%2Fimg111%2F6219%2Ffroomyo6.jpg)
maybe u can implement some standard image, when no server is selected ?
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so i decided to uncheck every server
and this is what i got:
(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=img111.imageshack.us%2Fimg111%2F6219%2Ffroomyo6.jpg)
Hmm, that's a good idea, I didn't think anyone would do that. ;-)
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i'm an experienced beta tester ;)
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You're the master beta-er
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You're the master beta-er
Joke stealer! ;)
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Hi all, new user to Titan and very addicted to what you all are doing. ;D Keep up the great work!!
The OP says it will eventually be ported to Google Desktop? Is that tough to do or should I go get the Yahoo widget thing?
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you can get the Yahoo one, untill the Google one is released
and then you can still decide which one to keep
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Wow this is great, I like the clean look of it better than the Google one anyhow. :P
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I'm using the Vista SideView thingy. If you ever create a widget for the Vista SideView thingy, I'll be more than happy to install and run it. :-)
Looks nifty.
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Wow this is great, I like the clean look of it better than the Google one anyhow. :P
Glad you like it! As it turns out, Google Desktop is a huge pain in the butt to develop for... but I'll keep slugging away.
As for Vista, I've actually got a Vista image installed in Virtual PC at work now, I just have to figure out how to make widgets for its sidebar. ;)
I'm updating the CIT Avatar widget right now (literally right now, it's open in another window) to work with the new site.
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And that means I need to get the service done that you use to get the data - :P
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And that means I need to get the service done that you use to get the data - :P
I could switch it to use the "private XML feed" instead (I think), that's already available...
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I could switch it to use the "private XML feed" instead (I think), that's already available...
It's up to you, that might work better for some users, but they would have to input that information. I guess it's no different then them putting in their login information.
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As for Vista, I've actually got a Vista image installed in Virtual PC at work now, I just have to figure out how to make widgets for its sidebar. ;)
I do this too, I have an XP and a Vista system in VMware running on an XP box.. sssllllooowwwwww lol
As for the google/vista widgets - yeah once you got me using Yahoo I'm hooked on it. There are so many more tools and cool features to it, I wouldn't even worry about the google one. Vista is a tough one to make widgets for too, and Sidebar users can just use the htmlview gadget to load a specific page.. make their own little status page based off the feed - I used to do that when I played EQ2 to monitor my DKP. :P
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I have tried to download your lovely widget but all I get is this............
An invalid character was found in text content. Error processing resource 'http://www.skoroworld.com/~chrish/widgets/CoH%20...
wdgt
elp!!
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I have tried to download your lovely widget but all I get is this............
An invalid character was found in text content. Error processing resource 'http://www.skoroworld.com/~chrish/widgets/CoH%20...
wdgt
elp!!
Works fine for me... I just downloaded all three from my office to test. Try again?
I just tried with Internet Explorer 7... it is, of course, broken. Right-click and choose Save As instead of just clicking. You'll also have to rename the file from .xml to .widget after IE is done downloading it. That's two different IE7 bugs, if you're keeping track. :-\
I'll update the web page to remind people to right-click/Save As... on the files.
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Got it now, it looks very neat thank you
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Just how complex is the source code. I am using Linux and both Gnome and KDE now have widgets.
Would be nice to see if i can port to these enviroments. (I am not a coder, but it could be easy to add a wrapper around your app)
Darryl
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It's pretty simple JavaScript/AJAX; the hardest part of porting them to another widget platform is the UI bits (assuming your widget platform can do XMLHttpRequest() and uses JavaScript). They're using XPath, too... it's built into Yahoo! Widget Engine and it's so very convenient...
I'd have them ported to Apple's Dashboard (for example) already, but I'm having trouble with the GUI bits (mostly because I haven't had time to concentrate on it for more than bout 15 minutes at a go).
Yahoo! widget bundles are just zip files named *.widget, go ahead and unzip them to see the scripts and whatnot inside.
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Cool, I'll have to go check this out when I get home.
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As for Vista, I've actually got a Vista image installed in Virtual PC at work now, I just have to figure out how to make widgets for its sidebar. ;)
I worked on a Vista server monitor a while ago.
download (http://sites.google.com/site/fleetingrepo/r1/CoXServerMonitor.gadget?attredirects=0)
Originally, Kitsune on the official forums made it. But it was ugly, and didn't work 100%. I made some changes to it, and made it prettier, though I stopped working on it before I fixed everything. To my knowledge, the only problem with the current version is that if you lose your internet connection, the gadget is unable to re-establish the connection.
After installing, you should have a new folder:
C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Sidebar\Gadgets\CoXServerMonitor.gadget\
gadget.xml: Gadget specification
Monitor.html: Gadget display (specified in gadget.xml, in the <base> tag)
ServerMonitor.js: JavaScript to pull information
You can use System.Gadget (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb508511(VS.85).aspx) in the JavaScript for additional functionality, such as options settings (System.Gadget.settingsUI), or flyout windows (System.Gadget.Flyout.file)
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This might sound dumb. But im new to the whole widget's thing. What exactly are these widget's used for? And when i try to download it, I cant get it to install. It save's the file, but does not let me run the setup or even get it into my yahoo widget's. Please if anyone has any idea's let me know.