Recent Posts

2726

Living Room / Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works

« Last post by Ath on September 15, 2011, 01:44 AM »

I have to connect the mimo after everything else has finished loading in

-nudone (September 14, 2011, 02:17 PM)

Haven't seen that behavior here, but I do notice the horrendous flashing of the screen when connecting the MIMO to a running system, because of the DisplayLink drivers 'configuring stuff the right way'. If I leave the MIMO connected I don't see the flickering, not even during system startup or login. The systems I have used it on so far are rather high-end, considering current state of hardware, and Win7.
I assume you got the latest drivers from the MIMO & DisplayLink site?

Just took another swing at it and now I'm replying to you from the MIMO screen.

-cranioscopical (September 14, 2011, 04:36 PM)

Glad you rebooted just often enough to get it right

2727

General Software Discussion / Re: schedule emails

« Last post by Ath on September 15, 2011, 01:33 AM »

Isn't that called a Calendar?

2728

Developer's Corner / Re: Save 50% on Mono for Android

« Last post by Ath on September 14, 2011, 10:06 AM »

Mono for Android is 50% off in September:

-Renegade (September 14, 2011, 10:00 AM)

Off of what? Been unable to see the price on the website
That so p....s me off

2729

Finished Programs / Release: On Screen Button That Sends Keyboard Commands: WinButtons 3.4.2.3

« Last post by Ath on September 13, 2011, 03:45 PM »

I've been doing some more testing, mostly of WinButtonEdit as it had a few annoyances. Most of that is fixed now (what's not fixed, I didn't see or find ) And not unimportant, I added the missing .dcupdate files, for dcuhelper
Details are in the WinButtonEdit.readme.txt file, and WinButtons.au3 source.

I received a template from nudone, to be used with the touch-screen, and I modified and expanded it with some numkeypad samples (also in the zipfile).
Screenshots are in the release message.

Here's an update release of:

WinButtons 3.4.2.3

and

WinButtonEdit 1.0.3.3

Download available from the release message, linking to my DCMembers pages.

Any feedback is still welcome, as usual

2730

Living Room / Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works

« Last post by Ath on September 11, 2011, 01:34 PM »

I've released a WinButtons update today (here for who missed it), and just for the heck of it, I turned Off the 'return mouse to previous location after touching the touch-screen' option (conveniently called 'Anchor mouse' in the settings' Properties page, AFAICS)  (I turned it on earlier, to work in a configuration closely like nudone), to see if my CursorRestore feature works as designed, and I can report after about 1/2 day of use, it just 'feels right' (but I may be biased, though I try to avoid that).
I have not had the urge to turn that option back on in the touch-screen driver yet, so I guess it should work with most other touch-screens equally well, even if they don't offer a similar setting. Unless ofcourse their driver insists on moving the mouse to the touch-screen any time you bring your finger close to it

2731

Finished Programs / Re: DONE: On Screen Button That Sends Keyboard Commands

« Last post by Ath on September 11, 2011, 01:19 PM »

Maybe this kind of feature would lead to more confusion, though, as the button wouldn't reflect any program (Photoshop) state changes that were performed via menu commands or keyboard shortcuts.

-nudone (September 11, 2011, 12:48 PM)

I think this is the biggest disadvantage of a button/function like that. What if you changed it from the application menu, or using a keyboard shortcut? The state wouldn't be in sync with what WinButtons is displaying to you. Unless ofcourse there's a way to retrieve the setting from somewhere And if those states could be explicitly set, but lots of times it's a toggle, and not one menu-item for On and another for Off.

In fact, a toggle-button is currently possible, by defining 2 adjacent buttons with conditionmode set to 0 (or conditionmode 2 and arrangement 2) and having a reverse condition state. I've done so in the copymenu.ini example layout (it's an early version of a layout that is in actual use). But it requires the state to be measurable, as is a directory or file that exists or not, or set to a :varVariable:.
Hm, I have 2 more items for my todo list

2732

Finished Programs / Release: On Screen Button That Sends Keyboard Commands: WinButtons 3.4.2

« Last post by Ath on September 11, 2011, 10:50 AM »

After the generously receiving a 7" MIMO touchscreen from nudone I was able to do some real touch-testing myself. It's been real fun

I solved some issues with application focus, and added a few features, like getting program updates by selecting that option from WinButtonEdit (using mouser's dcuhelper),
and a feature I called FlipKeyColor, reverting the button colors on activation for at least 250 msec. to better indicate a button was touched effectively.

All this was on my (private) todo list (there's some more), distilled from these threads and PM's received , and improves the usability of WinButtons combined with a touch-screen, IMHO.
WinButtonEdit got a few bugfixes, all details are in the readme.txt files.

Here's an update release of:

WinButtons 3.4.2.2

and

WinButtonEdit 1.0.3.1

Download available from the release message, linking to my DCMembers pages.

Any feedback is still welcome, as usual

2733

Living Room / Re: Thoughts in remembrance of 911

« Last post by Ath on September 10, 2011, 04:20 PM »

Killing each other is evil, period.

-rgdot (September 10, 2011, 11:14 AM)

IMHO, that says it all.

2734

N.A.N.Y. 2012 / Re: NANY 2012: Promotional Videos (With Bonus Competition)

« Last post by Ath on September 10, 2011, 04:18 PM »

(Video Contains Sound)

-Stephen66515 (September 10, 2011, 03:48 PM)

The suspense created by that sound is awesome

I still want to enter a pledge, but I'm not sure what project to start as there haven't been many requests lately

2735

Living Room / Re: When you make your 100'th Post

« Last post by Ath on September 10, 2011, 08:57 AM »

I'm getting closer and closer

Last night I made my 900th post (and on a subject I like too):

2736

General Software Discussion / Re: Fairware: an interesting experiment in getting paid for Open Source

« Last post by Ath on September 10, 2011, 08:52 AM »

Hi there, the author speaking. I found this thread through my web server logs, and I love to discuss about fairware, can I jump in?

-hsoft (September 10, 2011, 08:11 AM)

Hi there hsoft, welcome to the site, and welcome to the discussion

2737

Living Room / Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works

« Last post by Ath on September 09, 2011, 04:52 PM »

Oh, and if you might also get a MIMO, do get the drivers from the MIMOmonitors support pages, don't use the CD-ROM delivered ones, these are a bit out of date, at least on the CD I got. The updates improve the overall behavior of the screen and the touchpanel.

And be prepared to some heavy screen on/off flashing and resolution changes during installation of the display-link drivers but it all works afterwards

2738

Living Room / Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works

« Last post by Ath on September 09, 2011, 02:30 PM »

Hm, that first picture hardly shows how I've positioned the screen on top of my keyboard:

2739

Living Room / Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works

« Last post by Ath on September 09, 2011, 02:24 PM »

I've received the MIMO Touchscreen, as ordered by nudone, today.

I've been a kid in a toy-shop ever since I unpacked it, it's soooo nice

Like reported by nudone, it works like a charm. I didn't release a new WinButtons version yet, but I've improved a few things already (last night), and I can now have a numeric keypad that sends it's digits and other keys to the active application

Made a few (not so sharp) pictures, to show what my first setup is.
It'll probably change a bit in the coming weeks, but I think I like it to be rather close to the keyboard, to be both easily viewable and hand-reachable.

This is the main screen, the MIMO and the keyboard (there's a second screen to the left of the main screen, but not on the photo)


And here's the layout nudone sent me, that I messed up for my own purpose, having a second layout of a numeric keypad (in green) on top of it. Just hidden under the NumPad Off button there's a NumPad On button, positioned exactly on top of each other. (The touchscreen is free-standing here, but I use it like in the other photo, resting on top of the keyboard)


I keep on thanking nudone for giving me this superduper gadget, but it's so awfully nice

2740

DC Member Programs and Projects / Re: Simple Text Verifier (Autohotkey script)

« Last post by Ath on September 09, 2011, 03:13 AM »

I can see a few use-cases for this, great

2741

Living Room / Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works

« Last post by Ath on September 08, 2011, 03:06 PM »

I got an exopc. The touch screen is sort of ok. I wonder if it could be used as a remote controller for another pc...

-urlwolf (September 08, 2011, 02:24 PM)

That thing is running Windows 7 Guess some sort of RDP/VNC/etc connection could, but that's not really convenient.

I've been thinking about some sort of (web)services 'interface' (for WinButtons), so I can use my remote Windows, Android or iOs device to display the UI, and have the service app send/execute the commands on the host. Couldn't get that to work easily (found a presumably dead Android project on Google code) so I kinda abandoned that, waiting for someone to re-ignite the idea. Would require a 'redo' in something different from AutoIt3 (again, it's on the todo-list), like the host in .NET and the frontend/UI in Java or HTML5+javascript.

2742

Living Room / Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works

« Last post by Ath on September 08, 2011, 05:28 AM »

^+1

Quote from Touchscreen pioneer "I've invented this brillliant touchscreen display - only one problem - it doesn't work."

-nudone (September 08, 2011, 03:56 AM)

2743

Official Announcements / Re: 2011 Fundraiser Giveaway Extravaganza - WINNERS POSTED

« Last post by Ath on September 07, 2011, 03:11 PM »

oh wow
those are beautiful

-tomos (September 07, 2011, 02:59 PM)

Hey, I was going to say that

2744

Finished Programs / Release: On Screen Button That Sends Keyboard Commands: WinButtons 3.4.1.1

« Last post by Ath on September 07, 2011, 03:08 PM »

Oops, so now I've found the bug that stopped WinButtons 3.4.1 from working properly

A quick update is available:

WinButtons 3.4.1.1

Please re-download from the original release thread

WinButtonEdit wasn't hindered by this issue, so wasn't changed.

I have a list of some feature requests, compiled from what was said in this thread and this 'praise' thread by nudone, but any other comment, tip or whatever is welcome

It was suggested (by PM) that a mouse-position-buffer wouldn't be needed if I kept the last position of the cursor outside of the WinButtons window, but I'll test with the touchscreen that is due to arrive, and eventually remove that code if it doesn't add anything useful.

2745

Finished Programs / Re: DONE: On Screen Button That Sends Keyboard Commands

« Last post by Ath on September 07, 2011, 02:27 PM »

I guess a "lock" template feature would be nice too, i.e. force a "group" template to appear all the time regardless of whether its related program is in focus.

-nudone (September 07, 2011, 01:57 PM)

Yup, that's what I had in mind.

2746

Living Room / Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works

« Last post by Ath on September 07, 2011, 02:26 PM »

This touchscreen system is working  f a n t a s t i c a l l y  even in these early stages.

-nudone (September 07, 2011, 02:04 PM)

I can hardly wait for mine to arrive

2747

Living Room / Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works

« Last post by Ath on September 07, 2011, 02:21 PM »

There is also a strange layout problem. My Photoshop specific "group" of buttons now is offset to the left by about 200 pixels and the background is bright orange - it was black before the udpate.

-nudone (September 07, 2011, 08:03 AM)

Both these settings I found in the Group settings for the Photoshop group. Select the group or one of the buttons of that group, then select the 'Group parameters' tab. The setting for Left is -135 (close enough to 200 ), and the background is set to red (0xff0000), but that might look like orange on the touchscreen, compared to your high-quality 30" monitor. On my medium-fi 26" Iiyama, it's a tad pink between the (black) buttons, and glowing reddish orange if I disable one button:



Edit:
Oh, and how to correct the strange behavior: Set Left to 0 (or empty), and change the color if you need/want that (it looks just fine IMHO, a nice contrast from the 'default' buttongroup)

2748

Living Room / Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works

« Last post by Ath on September 07, 2011, 01:48 PM »

One thing I'd like to point out that appears to be working very well is that the, original, "Restore cursor after button" feature provides a very nice "cosmetic" solution to MIMO's software failings.

-nudone (September 07, 2011, 01:40 PM)

Hmm, I'll probably revert to that method then, and see if the performance improvement I did, is also useful.

2749

Finished Programs / Re: DONE: On Screen Button That Sends Keyboard Commands

« Last post by Ath on September 07, 2011, 01:39 PM »

to make that simple I'd assume it to be the last active window

-nudone (September 07, 2011, 01:26 PM)

Haven't tried that (yet), but it would be a nice feature, expect improvements after I receive the touchscreen

display the more "generic" number keypad button layout.

-nudone (September 07, 2011, 01:26 PM)

A feature similar to that is on my todo list, I was thinking of a 'DisplayAlways' group, but temporarily hiding it would be useful too.
This can be nearly achieved by running 2 instances of WinButtons, one on the left or top half and the other on the right or bottom half of the TouchScreen. WBE has a feature to use current Preview location as Top/Left coordinates, so positioning would be fairly easy

2750

Living Room / Re: It's alive, it's alive!!! mwahaha! - WinButtons and 7" touchscreen works

« Last post by Ath on September 07, 2011, 01:24 PM »

What is the "Caption" for?

-nudone (September 07, 2011, 01:18 PM)

It can be used to have a button without text or image, just color, or to have a dynamically updated caption (displaying time for instance, see the examples for condition<n> in the WinButtons.Readme.txt file)