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IDEA: Desktop progress meter
raybeere:
I don't know if this can be coded quickly or not, although the basic idea seems simple. I'm looking for something simple that can display a meter on my desktop. Specifically, it must allow for multiple instances / meters. This meter would have a text title, then a progress bar that would indicate a target and the amount completed. Ideally, there'd be a text line underneath with the completed / target amounts. Although I suspect others could use this for other types of projects, I'd use it as a word count meter.
I'd put up meters for every book, article, or story I'm actively working on, listing the title. The meter itself would show targets of, say, 12,000 words, or 90,000, or whatever my target for that work was. Then I'd enter a word count (total if needed, daily if it is easy enough to add this to the previous total) and the meter would display the result. Say, 3,000 words of 12,000, and the bar would be 25% filled. Below, it would read "3,000 / 12,000". Of course, most actual percentages would not be so easily calculated, but that's what a computer is for, isn't it? ;)
Ideally, if this isn't too hard to code (I shouldn't think it would be), I'd like to be able to specify the colour of the meter. If it isn't that hard, different colours for text, progress bar, and filled in portion of bar would be even nicer. In either case, the ideal would be settings for each meter, not just overall settings. (So I could make certain projects stand out, if I needed to.) Oh, and choice of fonts would be nice, rather than putting up with whatever MS decides is the default. But I have no idea how hard this stuff is: I know in HTML it is easy enough to specify fonts and colours, but selecting them from an app isn't anything I've tried playing with yet.
I have a feeling this might make it too complicated, but if not, the ability - just for the filled in progress portion - of being able to set different colours at different "levels" would be a real plus: say, for a particular work, any count under 20,000 would show up as red, any count under 45,000 would show up as yellow, and anything over that would be green. But with custom colour choices.
The idea is to have an easy way (yes, I know, if I go into Samurize and go through enough work - including editing every day when I need to update - I could probably get this) to list all my active projects, with a visual, easily updateable meter and stats on my progress on each. If there's no way around it, a simple pop up window with the information would be better than nothing, but I've found the ability to show something right on the desktop where I can't avoid seeing it at least sometimes to be very helpful. In fact, if it can't be on the desktop (I don't know how hard that aspect would be) the next best option would be to combine this with a routine to pop up the window at set intervals (user choice) headed by a customisable reminder / prompt.
One caveat: I don't want to mislead anyone. Right now, I don't have any spare cash to donate. I'd gladly hand some out to anyone who could do this - but I can't say how long it might take before I have the ability. I do know a lot of other people who could use this, and I'd happily point them to it, along with a plug for a donation - but writers tend to be broke, so I don't know how much result you'd see. Although we are good at understanding the position of others who are struggling to see some reward for their efforts. :) That may be why I think the idea behind DC is so cool. :D
mmdoogie:
If you are using Vista, you might try looking for a sidebar gadget that can do what you are looking for.
Another option is a Yahoo Widget Engine widget. http://widgets.yahoo.com/
These can be made to hide on a separate overlay pulled up with a hotkey, or can be forced to stay visible on the desktop.
I don't know if there is one that is directly what you want, but these are often fairly customizable with respect to colors and things as you asked.
--matt
raybeere:
If you are using Vista, you might try looking for a sidebar gadget that can do what you are looking for.
Another option is a Yahoo Widget Engine widget. http://widgets.yahoo.com/
These can be made to hide on a separate overlay pulled up with a hotkey, or can be forced to stay visible on the desktop.
I don't know if there is one that is directly what you want, but these are often fairly customizable with respect to colors and things as you asked.
-mmdoogie (April 07, 2009, 11:45 PM)
--- End quote ---
Thanks for the suggestions, but I use XP Pro, and although I can't say I've checked every Yahoo widget, I searched them pretty carefully and didn't find anything that was quite what I wanted. Word counters are actually not that hard to find - for the web. I have never seen anything for a desktop that was at all similar. The closest idea would be the meters in Samurize: the horizontal bar type meters are just about what I'm thinking of. The trouble is they require far too much effort to set up and to update the data. A system will not work if using it is too difficult.
On a side note, although I call this idea a word counter, it could be used to monitor progress on many types of projects. The visual feedback is helpful in getting a quick overview of things. A customisable label after the numbers (that is, for example: 27,253/90,000 words - where "words" is the custom label) could help if some wanted to use it to track different types of projects. The number could represent words, lines, pages, items, stages, messages - whatever the user wanted. I know I can think of many types of projects where such visual feedback of my progress would not only help me keep on top of things, but would also provide encouragement.
I understand the idea may be too much for a coding snack. I was hoping it was not, since Web meters (often code you can cut and paste, inserting your own numbers to update it) seem common. But if anyone can figure out a quick way to do it, it might even be useful for the Great Organisation Experiment, as they are neat little productivity tools. I won't claim they work for everyone; no tool I know of does that. But they do urge a lot of writers I know on when they're tempted to lose steam. I assume there are non-writers who could benefit from a more general version; if the idea suits your personality, any project with a goal that lends itself to a fairly accurate representation of percentage completed could be tracked using such a meter.
Sorry, can't resist the little 'plug' urging someone to see if they can think of a way to do this... ;D
mouser:
I posted a similar request recently and it was added to TopBar, a project by dc member jake78:
https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=13908.0
raybeere:
Hey, thanks! I'll go take a look at that.
The really annoying thing (to me) is that I suspect, from the ease of finding progress bars for web pages, it wouldn't be that hard to whip up what I want - if I knew a lot more about coding. I find learning never comes as quickly as I'd like it to. ;D Especially since I do have to do other things in the meantime...
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