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Last post Author Topic: New Program Idea: Cheat Sheeter  (Read 94634 times)

mouser

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Re: New Program Idea: Cheat Sheeter
« Reply #25 on: June 05, 2005, 11:53 AM »
in case i wasnt clear, im agreeing to set it up exactly as you say, with the additional option that you will be able to dock the main info window into the toolbar if you so desire.

Dragonrider

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Re: New Program Idea: Cheat Sheeter
« Reply #26 on: June 05, 2005, 03:12 PM »
Great! :) :up:  But do you mean toolbar (the area just under the menu bar inside the app.), the TASKbar at the bottom of the screen, a toolbar placed on 1 of the edges of the screen, or the TITLE bar which is the top bar of the window that usually states the name of the program that is running?  I see the toolbar inside the active program as a MUCH more difficult endeavor to encode.  It would mean integrating CS with the running prog. in some way, and dis-integrating itself from the inactivated program when focus is changed & integrating itself into the newly activated program in an extremely quick manner.  I think that CS would use too much CPU time & resources to accomplish this.

Whereas, attaching CS to the title bar is just CS keeping track of where on the screen (& how big) the active window is & placing itself (& keeping itself) over the top of the titlebar.

My view is to keep CS in the TITLE of the active window just to the left of the 3 control buttons.  This is an obvious place & I've seen a clock that does this.  Its out of the way of anything the active program might be doing, its as visible as a tool/taskbar, it would use up less CPU resources, wouldn't take nearly as much time for CS to put itself into the next titlebar, and its easier to code.

If I'm preaching to the choir, or talking too much, just tell me to cool my skids. ;)

Regards
Dragonrider

Dragonrider

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Re: New Program Idea: Cheat Sheeter
« Reply #27 on: June 05, 2005, 03:20 PM »
 :-[  After posting the last entry & THEN rereading the last few entries, I realized that you had agreed with everything I said & I was being anal.  Excuse my last post.  How do I delete something I've already posted so I can avoid being embarrased like this next time. :-[

Regards
Dragonrider

mouser

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Re: New Program Idea: Cheat Sheeter
« Reply #28 on: June 05, 2005, 03:21 PM »
no no, your idea is new, the idea of a "caption button"

i was actually thinking of it being in tray and not on screen until called up by a hotkey, or alse a bar docked to the side of a screen when you want help info constantly on screen but not overlapping other windows, BUT
your idea of a "caption button", in the window titlebars is a great one, especially since you could use a differrent color or something to indicate when there is a cheat sheet available for that app.  really nice idea.
also opens up other bonus things that could be put inside such a button; the menu for the cheat sheets could be put in there too, really nice idea.
ill add the first major functions first - and we can add this idea of captionbar button later.  definitely something that should be done.  nice idea.

mouser

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Re: New Program Idea: Cheat Sheeter
« Reply #29 on: June 07, 2005, 11:41 PM »
i'm working on this and hope to have an early alpha to test and let people make some "cheat sheets" by monday.

there are just so many things that can be added to this app that i think we are going to have a lot of fun with it - maybe even some contests/prizes for people who make good sheets to share.

it's definitely expanded from just provided a quick list of hotkeys to a way you can get various info, like hotkeys, or a page of urls that could be relevant (links to forums, both official and not, movies, howtos, etc.)

i think it needs a new, more friendly name.  any ideas?

i was thinking something with the word "Advisor" in it maybe...

like "Friendly Advisor" or "Application Advisor"


Dragonrider

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Re: New Program Idea: Cheat Sheeter
« Reply #30 on: June 08, 2005, 01:16 PM »
I for 1 IMHO happen to like the name "Cheat Sheeter".  It has become much more than just a hotkey displayer, but it also would even help someone who wants to remember the hotkeys, walk-thrus, CHEAT codes, etc. in a game.  My sons & daughters would probably use it if they could put all of their games info. into 1 place & display it on demand.

But if change the name you must (yoda talking here), then what about "InfoAdviser", or "I. Advise" (for information advise). 

The mention of my sons & daughters brought to mind another thing you might want to think about for CS.  That is to have user profiles.  This would allow for different sets of favorites & notes.  This could be done by checking the user id.

Regards
Dragonrider

mouser

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Re: New Program Idea: Cheat Sheeter
« Reply #31 on: June 08, 2005, 01:58 PM »
i too was thinking it would be smart to build in support for user profiles.

ovehal

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Re: New Program Idea: Cheat Sheeter
« Reply #32 on: June 08, 2005, 07:02 PM »
I've got this solved with shortcuts and the WinKey - R shortcut.
It allows me to do WK-R ie www.donationcoder.com Enter to open internet explorer with donationcoder.com.
Or the most used one WK-R gt <search term> Enter to google for the <search term>(gt = Google This)

If I forget what the shortcut is I have made two scripts to look it up:
WK-R find <program> Enter: Lists shortcuts for <program>
WK-R hlp (Help is taken by windows...) Opens ie with a list over all the shortcuts with description.
I've got tons of neat shortcuts and vbscripts, current shortcut count is 220.

The best thing is that adding a new shortcut is as simple as creating a shortcut in a predefined folder.

I'll polish my shortcuts and scripts and zip it and post it here in a more decent hour, now I'm heading off to bed.

WK-R lo   (log off ;))

Ove B-)

mouser

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Re: New Program Idea: Cheat Sheeter
« Reply #33 on: June 09, 2005, 12:53 AM »
sounds cool ovehal, i look forward to hearing more about your system;
sounds like the kind of things that it might be useful to implement in find+run robot.

mouser

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Re: New Program Idea: Cheat Sheeter
« Reply #34 on: June 10, 2005, 11:43 AM »
i'm looking for small clipart images of keys, for use in making hotkey lists.
images like this:
http://www.seoconsul...tips/windows-key.htm

if anybody finds any, let me know.

nudone

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Re: New Program Idea: Cheat Sheeter
« Reply #35 on: June 11, 2005, 02:57 AM »
you could try here, mouser...

www.techonthenet.com/clipart/keyboard/

 :( just be carefull of all the popups whilst you are at it.

(just clicked on the link myself and no popups appeared 2nd time around ????????)
« Last Edit: June 11, 2005, 03:00 AM by nudone »

ovehal

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Re: New Program Idea: Cheat Sheeter
« Reply #36 on: January 14, 2006, 03:38 PM »
sounds cool ovehal, i look forward to hearing more about your system;
sounds like the kind of things that it might be useful to implement in find+run robot.

Ridiculous late answer, but I should just make it a little better and just translate it and just...:-)
Anyway check out Wis Shortcut at: http://www.wis.no/freeware.htm

Best regards
Ove

Jimdoria

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Re: New Program Idea: Cheat Sheeter
« Reply #37 on: March 16, 2006, 04:36 PM »
Cool idea, mouser!

May I suggest an enhancement, possibly for version 2.0?

The company I used to work for made a toolbar component for programmers to add toolbars to their applications. Part of the design-time interface for this component was a "menu copier" tool. You could point it at an application and it would "walk" the app's menu structure, duplicating the layout of the menu items and sub-items in the proprietary format used by the component.

Maybe it would be possible to add support for an "auto cheat sheet builder" using similar functionality. (This is kind of similar to reading the application's INI file that was suggested, but goes in through the front door instead of the back.) The util could walk the menu structure looking for any stand-alone letter (such as O for Open) or group of letters beginning with "Ctrl-" or "Shift-". It could then build a basic cheat sheet that contained the menu text plus the hot key.

Just my 2 cents. Keep up the good work & thanks! I'll definitely be keeping an eye out for this one!

PS - I hope you keep the ability to use the Win key as part of the hotkey combo to display the cheat sheet. It is under-used, and less likely to conflict with either an application or system-wide hotkey than a Ctrl-Alt or Ctrl-Shift hotkey would be.
- Jimdoria ~@>@

There are two kinds of people in the world: Those who divide everybody into two kinds of people, and those who don't.

nudone

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Re: New Program Idea: Cheat Sheeter
« Reply #38 on: September 09, 2006, 05:01 AM »
hello, hello. anyone there?

i'd like to remind everyone - or introduce you to this thread.

cheat sheeter still remains a brilliant idea - yet to be fully realised - so let's see if we can get things moving again.

COME ON!!!

CodeTRUCKER

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Re: New Program Idea: Cheat Sheeter
« Reply #39 on: October 05, 2006, 11:15 AM »
Perhaps if someone could make a dummy image mockup?  That might give a better framework for us to craft helpful ideas.
« Last Edit: September 02, 2010, 06:58 PM by CodeTRUCKER »

nudone

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Re: New Program Idea: Cheat Sheeter
« Reply #40 on: October 05, 2006, 11:24 AM »
yes, an image would be nice to see what you mean (i think i know what you are describing).

CodeTRUCKER

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Re: New Program Idea: Cheat Sheeter
« Reply #41 on: October 07, 2006, 01:06 AM »
APIWATW ("A picture is worth a thousand words").
« Last Edit: September 02, 2010, 07:00 PM by CodeTRUCKER »

JavaJones

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Re: New Program Idea: Cheat Sheeter
« Reply #42 on: October 07, 2006, 03:08 AM »
I don't know exactly what happened here but my guess is this project collapsed under the weight of its own feature creep. When I read the first few posts here I got an immediate (and I must say very attractive) picture of the workings of the app in my head. Just about everything I read afterward went against that, over-complicating (IMO), adding unnecessary (IMO - at least for now) features, etc. It'd be great to have every feature suggested here... *eventually*. But I say start small, get the thing out there, get people putting together "cheat sheets", and then see if it's popular. If so build it from there based on real-world feedback from real users. A lot of the things suggested in this thread just seem to defocus the core, original objective.

So here's my particular vision, take it or leave it.

1. Presentation is separate from content, period. This is the biggest problem I saw in the ideas being proposed - that people would make their own custom sheets, people would have multiple sheets, etc. This seems silly to me. An application only has one set of default shortcut keys! Multiple people making multiple lists is fairly useless. What you want is people having the ability to change the presentation of a list, not the list itself. So you store the list separate from the template and people can just edit simple CSS files (highly structured due to the structured nature of the content) to get fairly dramatically different looks. This is basic "skinning"/templating and would be ideally suited to this app.

2. Shortcut lists are plain text, or close to it. No need to use an HTML editor to create them, that's overkill and fairly senseless IMO. Presentation is separate from content and most people will not care to change presentation (provided the default is good enough and enough alternate styles are available). They will want to change/add content. Making this as easy as possible is paramount. All that is needed is a simple text parsing system with very, very basic rules. For example, 1 line per shortcut, title/function first, key sequence 2nd (with semi-flexible rules for defining them perhaps), and so on. You could even have a veeery simple shortcut list maker with a small virtual keyboard, you press the key sequence you want (either on real keyboard or by pressing it in sequence on the app mini-keyboard) then type a name in the name field at top and hit Add. Repeat, etc. Very simple. Doing it text-only also allows for easy import/export - you could potentially even import existing shortcut lists and parse them. It would also be good to allow simple divisions/grouping of shortcuts, possibly with an optional "priority" assigned - higher priority groups/shortcuts would be listed higher in lists and shown with more priority in minimized view.

3. Make a very simple but nice-looking default CSS theme. I'm seeing grey, rounded keyboard icons with a non-serif, perhaps rounded-letter font, that highlight orange to show example key-presses perhaps. Maximized version shows an on-screen keyboard below and a list of shortcuts above, minimized version is just a list of actions with a small area below to show keypresses on mouseover perhaps.

4. Allow themes to change the size of presentation, but create an immediate small/large (maximized/minimized) division in skins to act as a guide. People can still make smaller "mazimized-style" skins, or make larger "minimized-style" ones, but the general convention will be to create two stiles for every skin. Look at it like Winamp - by default you have the usual theme with full control sizes, song list, visualizer, etc. But if you double-click the titlebar it shrinks to just a titlebar-sized area. This should be done similarly in this shortcut app. A skin designer would create two CSS files of a specific name which would be switched out by a custom button in the app, possibly similar to the double-click titlebar that Winamp has (or a hotkey :D).

Bottom line I think it makes way more sense to start small and grow from there. Add image and video support and all that later, sure. But what people want most in applications - normal people I mean, not hackers and heavy tinkerers - is applications that "just work" and look nice out of the box. Some people (the skinning crowd) want themable, highly customizable apps, and you can serve that market fairly well even with simple CSS theming. Some people do want massive customizability and for the app to do tons of things, but often times you're better off just pointing these people to a different app that does more of what they want.

What you want to create is a simple, easy-to-use, "set it and go" application. You want to look at the existing possible solutions out there and do it better and easier. If someone can already edit HTML they can easily just create web pages that show shortcut keys, make a directory full of them, and use FARR or another system to setup custom shortcuts to them and basically get the same thing being proposed here. The difference is the integration, ease of use, ease of manipulation (even an HTML-savvy person should appreciate not having to create a whole new page from scratch for every shortcut list), and ease of sharing these files that will hopefully lead to a community. Don't get too bogged down in extra features.

I really think a focus on simple text input and separate CSS theming is the way to go. It will surely result in much more lists being created and shared, and ultimately that is what is going to drive the popularity of this kind of app. If everyone has to create their own using HTML - even a little bit - it will be much less popular.

What I am proposing should be do-able within a week I'd think. It's pretty simple, but ultimately pretty useful and flexible. And more features could be added over time, but it would be immediately useful I think.

My 2 cents. :) If you want to talk more about how I envision this working I'd love to chat about it as I really like this core idea, I just think it got a bit lost along the way.

- Oshyan

app103

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Re: New Program Idea: Cheat Sheeter
« Reply #43 on: October 07, 2006, 11:05 AM »
I was just thinking how useful it could be if when it docks at the edge of a screen, that it could autohide.  Kind of resemble another taskbar that can reveal itself when you touch the screen edge. (I still have room for 2 more. ;))

Add a button to lock it when you need it to stay on screen...click again to release and go back to hiding.

It can still have tabs...just like the old MS Office toolbar had. And let the user configure each tab with the color of their choice to make things easier to find.

It would be quickly accessable...quicker than clicking a tray icon.

And just like how the windows key will unhide the taskbar, have a hotkey that will unhide it for keyboard freaks (and one to lock/release it)


JavaJones

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Re: New Program Idea: Cheat Sheeter
« Reply #44 on: October 07, 2006, 03:24 PM »
App, right along my lines of thinking too. Those things were definitely parts of the mental picture that came up for me.

- Oshyan

springro

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Re: New Program Idea: Cheat Sheeter
« Reply #45 on: October 30, 2006, 06:29 AM »
How about making the shortcuts clickable for those uncommon ones that you hardly even need.

Why find out what the short cut is if you're only going to use it once or twice?  All it would do is send the key combination that is shown in the list.

- Rob

CodeTRUCKER

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Re: New Program Idea: Cheat Sheeter
« Reply #46 on: December 18, 2006, 04:56 AM »
@mouser - I wonder if this click-reveal idea could be used on the self-installed badges?  BTW - is this still something being worked on or is it out?
« Last Edit: September 02, 2010, 07:03 PM by CodeTRUCKER »

mouser

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Re: New Program Idea: Cheat Sheeter
« Reply #47 on: December 18, 2006, 05:00 AM »
its actually still alive.. i have plans to finish it, but first must release some updates to my other programs..

CodeTRUCKER

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Re: New Program Idea: Cheat Sheeter
« Reply #48 on: December 18, 2006, 05:18 AM »
its actually still alive.. i have plans to finish it, but first must release some updates to my other programs..
Sounds good!
« Last Edit: September 02, 2010, 07:06 PM by CodeTRUCKER »

dlagesse1992

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Re: New Program Idea: Cheat Sheeter
« Reply #49 on: December 01, 2007, 09:44 PM »
This looks like a great idea. I, for one, am very interested. It did seem to be getting very complicated towards the end; I agree that it should be simplified. As for how it would be placed, how about just having it come up via hotkey as just a window with the cheat sheet in it instead of anything complicated. I might post a pic later of how I see this working in my mind, but looks great.

Trying this soon!
-Daniel

p.s. I think Cheet Sheeter is a great name.