New release - Taskbar 5 beta

[joska]

After too many years I've finally semi-finished the new release of Taskbar. It still a work in progress but is stable (at least for me!) and almost feature complete.

Read more and download here: https://atari.joska.no/Taskbar/beta/

Please report any bugs in this thread. I will currently be busy with some other projects for a while, but will follow up on bugs and (good!) suggestions later this year.

[marss]

Thanks!!!

[vinz6751]

I really enjoyed using your TaskBar back in the day with N.AES, I'm glad to see it's still maintained !

[joska]

Thank you!

[Rajah Lone]

Very good work. Thanks. I will adopt it gladly on my V4SA/FreeMiNT-XaAES. Seems configuration is not yet saved in $HOME or else.

[joska]

Seems configuration is not yet saved in $HOME or else.

Yes, this is done on purpose in this beta.

[joska]

A new beta is now available:

https://atari.joska.no/Taskbar/beta/

New:
- Fixed a couple of bugs that prevented if from working with MyAES.
- Spent quite some time debugging it under N.AES. I have not really used N.AES since 2006, so any changes since then has not been tested with it. There were quite a lot of minor and some major issues, mostly my fault and a little bit N.AES' fault.
- Works better - but not perfect - in monochrome.

Please test this and let me know what you find.

[joska]

A small update, the document history menu now works under N.AES.

https://atari.joska.no/Taskbar/beta/

[ragnar76]

Runs fine on my firebee but when i hide TosWin2, for example, any running window is also hidden. Would be cool to hide the ACC itself and not the window. Same applies to any other ACC wich opens a window or box.

And the time/date and also the mousepointer is flickering. i believe it's the update process for the seconds

[joska]

Runs fine on my firebee

Good

but when i hide TosWin2, for example, any running window is also hidden. Would be cool to hide the ACC itself and not the window. Same applies to any other ACC wich opens a window or box.

Not quite sure what you mean here, but Taskbar does not show/hide individual windows. It hides/shows applications and accessories using the appl_control AES-call. So in the case of TosWin2 it will hide all windows, as all TosWin2 terminal windows belongs to the TosWin2 application and not the shell/program you run inside a terminal window.

And the time/date and also the mousepointer is flickering. i believe it's the update process for the seconds

Yes, this is how the AES works. The mousepointer is a software sprite and is hidden while a redraw is in process.

[ragnar76]

Not quite sure what you mean here, but Taskbar does not show/hide individual windows. It hides/shows applications and accessories using the appl_control AES-call. So in the case of TosWin2 it will hide all windows, as all TosWin2 terminal windows belongs to the TosWin2 application and not the shell/program you run inside a terminal window.

What I meant: If, for example, TosWin2 is hidden, then the entry should reappear in the taskbar as soon as a window of the application is opened.

Yes, this is how the AES works. The mousepointer is a software sprite and is hidden while a redraw is in process.

maybe it helps not to update the time too often

[m0n0]

maybe it helps not to update the time too often

I guess most desktops default to hide the seconds (and have an option to enable display of seconds). Flicker or not, I find it is distracting a little bit when the desktop clock displays seconds.

[OL]

And the time/date and also the mousepointer is flickering. i believe it's the update process for the seconds

Yes, this is how the AES works. The mousepointer is a software sprite and is hidden while a redraw is in process.

In fact to display your date you not need hide mouse this is not useful because even it cause some glitch ( with no chance) you will update again area less than one second after so no really an issue, nobody will see that!

[joska]

What I meant: If, for example, TosWin2 is hidden, then the entry should reappear in the taskbar as soon as a window of the application is opened.

Taskbar always shows the acc/application on the taskbar regardless of it's hidden-status. It sounds like you misunderstand the "Don't display in Taskbar" option - this will prevent the application/accessory in question from being displayed on the taskbar and is meant to be used for AES processes that doesn't make sense to show there. Like the AES itself (AESSYS), or Freedom, BubbleGEM and other processes that are not interacted with directly.

Yes, this is how the AES works. The mousepointer is a software sprite and is hidden while a redraw is in process.

maybe it helps not to update the time too often

The clock is updated once per minute, so there will only be a very brief (I've never seen it, even on my STE) flicker once per minute. If you see a steady flicker of the mousepointer there must be something else (maybe in Taskbar, but AFAICR there is nothing else that is redrawn in regular intervals) that cause this.

[Neurotoxic]

I tried Taskbar 5b3 on my Firebee and it works very well under MiNT/XaAES/Thing 1.29. I didn't experience any issues.

taskbar_xaaes_full.jpg

I also tried Taskbar 5b3 under MiNT/MyAES 0.99b7/Teradesk 4.0.8. It works under that environment, too but different.

taskbar_myaes_full.jpg

After booting and starting up taskbar, there is no visiable differance noticeable. (MyAES uses a different texture than XaAES.) When starting up a new application the button of this application is placed on the right side of the application that were loaded during start up (e. g. the desktop). In MyAES that is done by the opposite way.

taskbar_xaaes.jpg

taskbar_myaes.jpg

I don't know why that is done in MyAES the other way round? I think it's much more comfortable than it's done in XaAES. All this MiNT/AES/Desktop stuff is often mysterious and esoteric to me.

[joska]

Thank you for testing. I don't have a working MyAES setup so I'm not doing any testing under MyAES myself.

When starting up a new application the button of this application is placed on the right side of the application that were loaded during start up (e. g. the desktop). In MyAES that is done by the opposite way.

Looks like MyAES's appl_search() returns the applications in descending order, while N.AES/XaAES returns them in ascending order. The AES docs doesn't specify any order here so both is correct. Taskbar does not sort the buttons in any way, the first returned application is shown to the left, the second to the right of the first, the third to the right of the second and so on.

[OL]

I tried Taskbar 5b3 on my Firebee and it works very well under MiNT/XaAES/Thing 1.29. I didn't experience any issues.


taskbar_xaaes_full.jpg


I also tried Taskbar 5b3 under MiNT/MyAES 0.99b7/Teradesk 4.0.8. It works under that environment, too but different.


taskbar_myaes_full.jpg


After booting and starting up taskbar, there is no visiable differance noticeable. (MyAES uses a different texture than XaAES.) When starting up a new application the button of this application is placed on the right side of the application that were loaded during start up (e. g. the desktop). In MyAES that is done by the opposite way.


taskbar_xaaes.jpg


taskbar_myaes.jpg


I don't know why that is done in MyAES the other way round? I think it's much more comfortable than it's done in XaAES. All this MiNT/AES/Desktop stuff is often mysterious and esoteric to me.

As said order is inverse in MyAES compare to other link to order they have been start, the more recent in first. There is a reason for that, it is more simple and faster to do like. There is no good order I think.

[Neurotoxic]

Thanks for your explanations. You are right OL there is no good order. I think it's about what you like or not and about what you are used to. Just a matter of taste. So it's not a bug or a misconfiguration by me.

[joska]

I will add sorting of applications to Taskbar for the next beta release.

[Neurotoxic]

I will add sorting of applications to Taskbar for the next beta release.

That would be great!

I also tried the alignment function out but it had no effect. Is this function broken?

[joska]

No, but it only makes sense if size is less than 100%.

[Neurotoxic]

No, but it only makes sense if size is less than 100%.

I think I misunderstood that function. After your explanation this function makes sense. Sorry.

[joska]

A new beta has been uploaded: https://atari.joska.no/Taskbar/beta/ (http://atari.joska.no/Taskbar/beta/)

taskbar.png

New since the previous beta:

• Application windows can be tiled or moved to pre-defined desktop zones.
• Configuration dialog(s) has been revamped.
• Visual changes/updates:
  • New optional button style - icon above button.
  • New taskbar background styles - plain with selectable colour, AES (with gradient under XaAES), wallpaper and "transparent".
  • Optional image background on the startmenu.
  • Optional: Taskbar grows/shrinks as needed.
  • Application/accessory order can be sorted.
• Some functionality avaiable via VA_START messages, which means that these functions can be controlled by Keyboard Tweaks or other external programs.

The betas only reads/saves configuration files in it's own directory, so testing does not interfere with your old Taskbar setup. Please test and report any bugs/issues here. NB! The included icon resource-files are just examples.