Author Topic: Desktop widgets (Read 28005 times)

Ex-calibur · « **on:** June 03, 2008, 07:22:54 PM »

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/

CIT Avatars displays a City Information Terminal icon (either the normal one or the signature one) of your choice:

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:

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:

Suggestions, complaints, etc. are welcome.

werewriter · « **Reply #1 on:** June 03, 2008, 07:28:32 PM »

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.

Voltaic Shock · « **Reply #2 on:** June 03, 2008, 07:30:03 PM »

We have been in contact and are going to work on a way to display your friends.

werewriter · « **Reply #3 on:** June 03, 2008, 07:31:11 PM »

Sweet!

Shades29A · « **Reply #4 on:** June 04, 2008, 11:11:20 AM »

i'd like to see it in my Vista SideBar

Voltaic Shock · « **Reply #5 on:** June 04, 2008, 11:12:05 AM »

Quote from: Shades29A on June 04, 2008, 11:11:20 AM

i'd like to see it in my Vista SideBar

That would be nice!

Ex-calibur · « **Reply #6 on:** June 04, 2008, 02:59:25 PM »

Quote from: werewriter on June 03, 2008, 07:28:32 PM

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.

Ex-calibur · « **Reply #7 on:** June 04, 2008, 03:01:05 PM »

Quote from: Shades29A on June 04, 2008, 11:11:20 AM

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.

Shades29A · « **Reply #8 on:** June 04, 2008, 03:20:33 PM »

googled for 30 seconds:

Amnesty Generator

werewriter · « **Reply #9 on:** June 04, 2008, 04:36:56 PM »

Quote from: Ex-calibur on June 04, 2008, 02:59:25 PM

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?

Ex-calibur · « **Reply #10 on:** June 04, 2008, 05:47:01 PM »

Quote from: werewriter on June 04, 2008, 04:36:56 PM

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.

hellaid · « **Reply #11 on:** June 05, 2008, 12:03:10 PM »

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

,
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

Ex-calibur · « **Reply #12 on:** June 05, 2008, 03:24:12 PM »

Quote from: hellaid on June 05, 2008, 12:03:10 PM

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
,
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...

hellaid · « **Reply #13 on:** June 06, 2008, 12:53:48 PM »

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

Ex-calibur · « **Reply #14 on:** June 06, 2008, 04:01:22 PM »

Quote from: hellaid on June 06, 2008, 12:53:48 PM

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?

hellaid · « **Reply #15 on:** June 06, 2008, 05:20:07 PM »

i have to change server each time, so no clicking it doesn't help, As stated I'm using the EU Union Server

Ex-calibur · « **Reply #16 on:** June 06, 2008, 06:22:00 PM »

Quote from: hellaid on June 06, 2008, 05:20:07 PM

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!

Shades29A · « **Reply #17 on:** June 06, 2008, 08:07:53 PM »

i'm on Union too (and Prov is on Defiant)
so Prov and i can test it on the EU servers if needed

Ex-calibur · « **Reply #18 on:** June 07, 2008, 12:20:40 PM »

OK guys, I've put a debug version of the CoH Servers widgets here: 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!

Ex-calibur · « **Reply #19 on:** June 07, 2008, 12:26:45 PM »

Actually, I think I found/fixed the bug, so give it a try.

News:

Author Topic: Desktop widgets (Read 28005 times)