Published on April 8, 2005 By Darkthorn In
OK, played around with the different options for a couple of hours for version 1.99b[b] that was posted today (4/7/2005), and here are my notes.

As usual, if you need my bar files, or more screenshots, let me know.

1) Still is making bar's background white for Developer object bar theme
Though you're currently highlighted task list item will sometimes get its image back. Also, submenus will have the skin correctly.
https://www.wincustomize.com/ViewSkin.aspx?SkinID=151&LibID=4&comments=1
Pict at : http://webpages.charter.net/samus42/WhiteObjectBar.jpg

2) On changing a bar's transparency on an auto-hiding bar, it will sometimes leave a 'ghost' of that bar painted on the screen.
Pict at : http://webpages.charter.net/samus42/GhostBar.jpg

3) On changing a bar's transparency on an auto-hiding bar, the bar will not come back for a while.

4) Shortcuts added to a bar still do not have their default working directory set correctly. Needs to default to the location of the shortcut/program.

5) Still unable to resize the regions of the bar. I.E. you cannot grab a seperator and resize it's containing area. The area sticks to the minimum amount and that's it. Which means on a side bar with a system tray, the tray will go up to the bottom of the previous upper bar (for me, my task list). And you can't drag it back down to the bottom, so your system tray is at a random spot on the left depending on how many tasks are running.

6) If you activate an auto-hiding bar, then go to it's properties, and just hit close, the bar will not respond for a couple of moments, even if nothing changed. Maybe we need to change the system mouse cursor to the background wait icon so it doesn't like the bar is suddenly broken.

7) On the menu editor, if you select a Virtual Desktop object, and hit "Configure", then go to the General Tab in the new Element Properties window, the "Configure Virtual Desktops..." button does nothing. However, right clicking on the virtual desktops will allow you to select the configuration option which does work.

8) Adding a new DesktopX widget should start you in the DesktopX/Widgets directory if it exists (i.e. if DesktopX is installed).

9) After adding a new DesktopX widget to an autohiding bar, the widget will appear even though you haven't activated the bar yet. Once you activate the bar, it will hide with the bar after that. However, for some widgets (in this example the Silica Memory Meter), your mouse cursor on certain areas will change to the 'move' cursor, even though you are not allowed to move the widget around. If you try, the widget will stay on the desktop even after the bar hides until you click somewhere else.

10) The element grouping tab's Show Items in this group as: option doesn't seem to make sense for a DesktopX widget

11) I finally managed to get the system tray to stay at the bottom by putting it below the 'Extra Space' item that appeared somehow on my bar contents (where does it come from anyway?).

12) If I click on an empty space anywhere on an auto-hide bar, the bar disappears, and sometimes won't reactivate for several moments. It should stay put.

13) The split group button will deactivate for the first item in the group, though reactivate for the other items. This is kinda confusing.

14) Attempting to resize the width of a bar with auto-hide on will cause the bar to disappear.

15) Bar's miniumum width if side bar seems to be restricted to the longest named item in the taskbar. But once that item is gone, the bar will not shrink. So its inconsistent, and I should be able to set that width myself and have it not change anyway.

16) Turning off auto-hiding and resizing got my skin back (from the white background), but it went away again after a minute or so.

17) The skin's transparency setting doesn't make sense, at 100% transparent, the bar is fully visible, at 0% it's gone.

18) Don't allow 0%, transparency, make the minimum 10% or something. If you're going to set 0%, might as well just hide the bar.

19) Sometime's the transparency slider shows what happens realtime, sometimes it doesn't.

20) Menu Editor interfact still needs work (see previous posts), though I will admit for single level bars, the new menu editor is growing on me, it gets annoying for bars within bars though.

21) Having a folder popup shortcut with the folder containing around 30 items will sometimes take a long time to display, and the bar appears 'locked up'. However the My Document's folder seems to be the exception to this. Though once it gets it, it seems to be able to do it decently quickly the 2nd time. Not sure what the slowdown is, maybe the file icon loading? In which case I'll get the file names up first and then fill in the icons later.

22) For some reason, my Favorites drop down folder on my developer bar (link above) has a scroll arrow at the top/bottom even though I've resized the bar to be able to easily display all the contents.

Comments
on Apr 08, 2005
The skin's transparency setting doesn't make sense, at 100% transparent, the bar is fully visible, at 0% it's gone.

"insert wise ass comment here"
on Apr 13, 2005
Here's a few items from my side (I'm using the 'Use Current Windowblinds skin' setting, just in case that causes some different behaviour).

1. Right click menu does not contain a 'properties' entry that invokes the proper properties dialog for the item that is clicked (i.e. shortcut items should allow shortcut properties to be launched, etc.). This problem shows up on quicklaunch bar items, shortcuts in the menus, shortcuts in the MRU list in the start pane, and so on. Where a properties entry does exist, it merely invokes the object bar item properties.

There should be a 'Properties' entry that invokes the properties for the object itself (shortcut properties, etc.), and an 'Item Properties' entry that invokes the ObjectBar item properties (or something to that effect ).

2. When the bar (horizontal) is stretched to double size (or more), and there is only one entry in the task bar, that entry's button image is stretched to the height of the bar, or the button image is the correct height, but the button text is wrapped to fill the height of the bar. Once there is more than one taskbar entry present, the taskbar buttons are shown correctly.

3. There should be a way to turn off the button animation on the taskbar.

4. (Low importance) There are still some issues in the Windowblinds import mechanism. There's still quite a few skins where skin items aren't aligned correctly, or they aren't tiled/stretched correctly, or the fonts aren't right, and I end up having to manually edit to get the skin to look right.
on Apr 13, 2005
I absolutely LOVE ObjectBar 1.65 - it works almost flawlessly for me. In fact, WindowBlinds and ObjectBar are the two items that I use all the time.

Now for OB20(beta).

1. Like the previous post, I rely a lot on the right-click in OB1.65 to give me the "native" dropdown for the item I click on. On my OB, I have the Desktop as the first item on my list - I keep a very small number of items on my desktop and I want them all in the top of the OB and rely on the rigt-click to act the same as it would if I right-click on the item on the Desktop itself. Mostly, I use it to Empty my Norton Protected Recycle Bin (you have a new OB item to empty the Windows Recycle Bin, but not Norton's.

1a. I use the right-click and cut/paste a lot between folders that I have in place on the OB. For example, I have a folder in My Documents called "My Toolbars" in that folder I have several folders that I use to store shortcuts to the apps that I use most during the day. So on my OB, I have that folder (My Toolbars) on the bar itself. When I install new apps, I like to be able to "Cut" the icon the app places on the Desktop (remember, I like to keep my Desktop clean) and put it in the appropriate Toolbar folder. OB2.0 won't let me do that.

2. Item Icons. OB1.65 lets me specify the size of the icons on the bar. OB2.0 doesn't.

3. DesktopX Widgets. Very flaky. I have tried several and they tend to grow my OB in width (I keep it docked / autohide on the left of my desktop). Even though the widget may be small, often it makes the OB 1/3 of my screen width and won't let me resize it. I delete the widget and all is well again.

4. Crazy automatic resizing of the OB when changing skins. 1.65 did this too, and it's IRRITATING. I have my bar set up, change the skin, and the width of the OB goes to, like 20 pixels when it was 100 before. I have to resize it over and over and over and over...

5. When I am editing my bar with OB2.0, the bar will just disappear. I have to click on the desktop or some other app's window and THEN roll my mouse to the left of the screen to get it to re-appear.

6. I create a folder list / MFU list on the OB that is too big to fit all the items on the OB, so I get the up/down arrows to let me scroll the list. OOPS! The whole bar disapears when I click on either arrow. I have to click on the desktop / another app's window and then slide the mouse to the left edge again to get it back.

7. Related to 6, I'm sure. I have part of the OB that is empty (haven't filled it up yet). Click on that "empty area" that is part of the bar, but not "populated", and the bar disappears.

8. I really miss the ability to have greater control over the size of each section of the Object Bar like I have in 1.65.

9. MFU List. Won't let me select "List as many programs as will fit in the selection"
on Apr 13, 2005
", I rely a lot on the right-click in OB1.65 to give me the "native" dropdown for the item I click on"

That's a major failing of 1.99 for me as well.
on Apr 13, 2005
Don't allow 0%, transparency, make the minimum 10% or something. If you're going to set 0%, might as well just hide the bar.



Insert additional wiseass comment here.
on Apr 14, 2005
Great feedback guys! Thanks!
on Apr 18, 2005
You can't re-order bar items on bars that display folder content (Quick Launch). It appears that alpha-numeric order is the only possibility. That pretty much makes OB2 un-usable to me.
on Apr 18, 2005
Reverted to a really old version of the developer skin and for some reason now the background sticks after reapplying all skins from a newer version (meaning that the main sidebar works pretty good now ....) .... .... previously had the background reverting to white after a few seconds of use, still having the bars "flash to hidden" when using virtual desktops and bar sizes somehow don't seem to stick (in addition to the great lists above).

Posted via WinCustomize Browser/Stardock Central
on Apr 21, 2005
Hey Guys,
Thanks a lot for the great feedback. I was able to put together a nice todo list for myself based on your feedback, here's a batch of replies:



Scott:


1) Still is making bar's background white for Developer object bar theme. Though you're currently highlighted task list item will sometimes get its image back. Also, submenus will have the skin correctly.

Solved, thanks for the notice.

2) On changing a bar's transparency on an auto-hiding bar, it will sometimes leave a 'ghost' of that bar painted on the screen. Pict at


Was not able to reproduce this, i wonder if it is a graphics card particular. Will investigate further.


3) On changing a bar's transparency on an auto-hiding bar, the bar will not come back for a while.


solved, related to problem #1


4) Shortcuts added to a bar still do not have their default working directory set correctly. Needs to default to the location of the shortcut/program.


Agreed. You can now set the working directory manually, but for when its not set it will default to the folder of what's being ran.
In general for best results, enter your working directory in the "Start In" area of the shortcut properties.



5) Still unable to resize the regions of the bar. I.E. you cannot grab a seperator and resize it's containing area. The area sticks to the minimum amount and that's it. Which means on a side bar with a system tray, the tray will go up to the bottom of the previous upper bar (for me, my task list). And you can't drag it back down to the bottom, so your system tray is at a random spot on the left depending on how many tasks are running.

Sizing bars is more restrictive in v2.0 than in previous versions in effort to get users to have fully visible optimum layouts automatically. You'll find however that when a bar is docked, or if you have it set to not restrict its maximum size, when editing the content of the bar you'll see an "Extra Space" entry. Move this entry up and down like you would anything else to tell ObjectBar where to put extra space when there is any - for your use, this will be right before the system tray.


6) If you activate an auto-hiding bar, then go to it's properties, and just hit close, the bar will not respond for a couple of moments, even if nothing changed. Maybe we need to change the system mouse cursor to the background wait icon so it doesn't like the bar is suddenly broken.


Will check on that. I should note that in general, closing a bar is not generally smiled upon in OB2 if you plan on reopening it soon, as it intentially is not overly simple to just open and close bars from files. Closing at this point basically means completely removing.


7) On the menu editor, if you select a Virtual Desktop object, and hit "Configure", then go to the General Tab in the new Element Properties window, the "Configure Virtual Desktops..." button does nothing. However, right clicking on the virtual desktops will allow you to select the configuration option which does work.


Ensure you have the most up to date version of Stardock Virtual Desktops (BandVWM). We're still making sure we have all the kinks worked out in that, as the legacy "BandVWM" stuff used in control center is being phased out. I'm not sure if the replacment has made it out to absolutly everyone at this point though.


8) Adding a new DesktopX widget should start you in the DesktopX/Widgets directory if it exists (i.e. if DesktopX is installed).

Agreed, I'll make that happen.


9) After adding a new DesktopX widget to an autohiding bar, the widget will appear even though you haven't activated the bar yet. Once you activate the bar, it will hide with the bar after that. However, for some widgets (in this example the Silica Memory Meter), your mouse cursor on certain areas will change to the 'move' cursor, even though you are not allowed to move the widget around. If you try, the widget will stay on the desktop even after the bar hides until you click somewhere else.

Tried to reproduce but had no luck. Tried adding on then changing the widget around, but it was successfully staying on the bar in question. I'll ensure I have the latest DX build, make sure you have the latest as well.

For the "move cursor" happenings, that is DesktopX's responsibility, so I forwarded the message along to Alberto to take a look at with some instructions on what needed be done. So should get fixed up.



10) The element grouping tab's Show Items in this group as: option doesn't seem to make sense for a DesktopX widget

true true. Doesn't make much sense for a clock either of virtual desktops. But, I leave it in for continuity, as you can group any other kind of things with it as well, including folder lists or otherwise shortcuts, etc.


11) I finally managed to get the system tray to stay at the bottom by putting it below the 'Extra Space' item that appeared somehow on my bar contents (where does it come from anyway?).

Sweet ya figured it out. Hopfully it didn't take too long. Hopefully i answered this question succinctly above?

12) If I click on an empty space anywhere on an auto-hide bar, the bar disappears, and sometimes won't reactivate for several moments. It should stay put.

Good call again, same same problem as #1 and #3. Last minute kind of thing for DesktopX widget support, sorry again for the inconvenience.


13) The split group button will deactivate for the first item in the group, though reactivate for the other items. This is kinda confusing.


Well, this *was* as-design, but I can see your point how this could be confusing. The point was for the button to mean "Split up by starting new group here", e.g. so if you're at the top you're already at the start of a group, so you can't really split it up. I'll see what we think of there, thank you for the feedback.


14) Attempting to resize the width of a bar with auto-hide on will cause the bar to disappear.


#1, 3 and 12


15) Bar's miniumum width if side bar seems to be restricted to the longest named item in the taskbar. But once that item is gone, the bar will not shrink. So its inconsistent, and I should be able to set that width myself and have it not change anyway.

Hrm. Ok i'll see what I can do. Remember the goal with OB2 is to have things be more automatic, so unfortunatly the last thing I'm going to do is have a number entry field for you to enter in a size. Hrm.


16) Turning off auto-hiding and resizing got my skin back (from the white background), but it went away again after a minute or so.


Yep 1,3,12&14


17) The skin's transparency setting doesn't make sense, at 100% transparent, the bar is fully visible, at 0% it's gone.


Yeah, guess you're about right.


18) Don't allow 0%, transparency, make the minimum 10% or something. If you're going to set 0%, might as well just hide the bar.

0% isn't allowed currently. 1% is, off the basis that it could be desired at some point to have an OB bar that just hosts widgets, which do not follow the transparency setting of the bar they're on. In that event, you could go for the 99% invisible bar, which would still be 1% visible so you can still right click it to quickly configure, with fully visible widgets on it.


19) Sometime's the transparency slider shows what happens realtime, sometimes it doesn't.

Programmatically, it's in full real time. I would expect that video card issues be a part of that ; my laptop when it switches to not 100% visible has it flash black quickly, but no other machine i've seen it on does this.


20) Menu Editor interfact still needs work (see previous posts), though I will admit for single level bars, the new menu editor is growing on me, it gets annoying for bars within bars though.


Hrm. Ok.


21) Having a folder popup shortcut with the folder containing around 30 items will sometimes take a long time to display, and the bar appears 'locked up'. However the My Document's folder seems to be the exception to this. Though once it gets it, it seems to be able to do it decently quickly the 2nd time. Not sure what the slowdown is, maybe the file icon loading? In which case I'll get the file names up first and then fill in the icons later.

I feel it might be the icons. Not sure I can take care of this immediate-term but I've made note. A way you can test this out, open the menu, close it, and open it again. Is it faster? Assuming yes, it was the inital icon-loading factor (happens in explorer as well, but not to the degree due to its ability to gradually show the icons)


22) For some reason, my Favorites drop down folder on my developer bar (link above) has a scroll arrow at the top/bottom even though I've resized the bar to be able to easily display all the contents.


Hrm. That is odd. Not sure what to say about that one at the moment.



-------------------------------------------------------------------

Aleatoric:


1. Right click menu does not contain a 'properties' entry that invokes the proper properties dialog for the item that is clicked (i.e. shortcut items should allow shortcut properties to be launched, etc.). This problem shows up on quicklaunch bar items, shortcuts in the menus, shortcuts in the MRU list in the start pane, and so on. Where a properties entry does exist, it merely invokes the object bar item properties. There should be a 'Properties' entry that invokes the properties for the object itself (shortcut properties, etc.), and an 'Item Properties' entry that invokes the ObjectBar item properties (or something to that effect ).



Will see what we can do about that. OB2 was designed to be more simple, but it seems as if I need to make available a way to get to the system's menu as well.


2. When the bar (horizontal) is stretched to double size (or more), and there is only one entry in the task bar, that entry's button image is stretched to the height of the bar, or the button image is the correct height, but the button text is wrapped to fill the height of the bar. Once there is more than one taskbar entry present, the taskbar buttons are shown correctly.

I'll check that out, thanks


3. There should be a way to turn off the button animation on the taskbar.

Not sure what you mean. E.g. turn off the "flashing" on the taskbar for apps requesting attention?

4. (Low importance) There are still some issues in the Windowblinds import mechanism. There's still quite a few skins where skin items aren't aligned correctly, or they aren't tiled/stretched correctly, or the fonts aren't right, and I end up having to manually edit to get the skin to look right.


Well, you can help this if you want by naming a few skins that are having problems. I'll take a look and see if there's anything i can do to improve the system.

-------------------------------------



CmputrAce:


1. Like the previous post, I rely a lot on the right-click in OB1.65 to give me the "native" dropdown for the item I click on. On my OB, I have the Desktop as the first item on my list - I keep a very small number of items on my desktop and I want them all in the top of the OB and rely on the rigt-click to act the same as it would if I right-click on the item on the Desktop itself. Mostly, I use it to Empty my Norton Protected Recycle Bin (you have a new OB item to empty the Windows Recycle Bin, but not Norton's.

Agreed, i'll see if there's something I can do about this.


1a. I use the right-click and cut/paste a lot between folders that I have in place on the OB. For example, I have a folder in My Documents called "My Toolbars" in that folder I have several folders that I use to store shortcuts to the apps that I use most during the day. So on my OB, I have that folder (My Toolbars) on the bar itself. When I install new apps, I like to be able to "Cut" the icon the app places on the Desktop (remember, I like to keep my Desktop clean) and put it in the appropriate Toolbar folder. OB2.0 won't let me do that.


I think i understand what you're saying. I'll see what I can do as far as dropping files into folder sections in OB. Won't be able to dig into menus to drop however definitely.


2. Item Icons. OB1.65 lets me specify the size of the icons on the bar. OB2.0 doesn't.

Assuming you mean in the "element grouping" tab, you can't set a grouping to all have a specific size. Correct. I'll see if it's ok for us to put in a drop box where you can pick an icon size for a grouping, do not know if that will add complexity we don't want back in though. In the meantime, if its a shortcut or other item you've placed on the bar yourself, you can use the change image button to customize the icon's size


3. DesktopX Widgets. Very flaky. I have tried several and they tend to grow my OB in width (I keep it docked / autohide on the left of my desktop). Even though the widget may be small, often it makes the OB 1/3 of my screen width and won't let me resize it. I delete the widget and all is well again.


Not all widgets will work correctly with the system, it's intended mainly for use for widgets that have been shown to work. Some do fun hidden things that make them unsuitable for being hosted.

4. Crazy automatic resizing of the OB when changing skins. 1.65 did this too, and it's IRRITATING. I have my bar set up, change the skin, and the width of the OB goes to, like 20 pixels when it was 100 before. I have to resize it over and over and over and over...

Different skins have different metrics, so it must adjust when changing skins. Is it minimizing to like an aboslute minimum size every time?


5. When I am editing my bar with OB2.0, the bar will just disappear. I have to click on the desktop or some other app's window and THEN roll my mouse to the left of the screen to get it to re-appear.


Found an issue related to widget alignment that caused issues with autohiding bars. This issue has been resolved.

6. I create a folder list / MFU list on the OB that is too big to fit all the items on the OB, so I get the up/down arrows to let me scroll the list. OOPS! The whole bar disapears when I click on either arrow. I have to click on the desktop / another app's window and then slide the mouse to the left edge again to get it back.


Same issue as #5


7. Related to 6, I'm sure. I have part of the OB that is empty (haven't filled it up yet). Click on that "empty area" that is part of the bar, but not "populated", and the bar disappears.


Same as 5 & 6


8. I really miss the ability to have greater control over the size of each section of the Object Bar like I have in 1.65.

Unfortunatly, the direction taken with OB2 was that of a more automatted approach, to allow creation of custom menus and bars without deep knowledge of the underlying system. Being a programmer who's used to going and designing things, I didn't mind the original way at all ; designing a bar was like designing anything else. But the rest of the world tended to have problems figuring out exactly what was going on. Sorry but I'm not sure increased control is coming back any time real soon :-/



9. MFU List. Won't let me select "List as many programs as will fit in the selection"

Related to #8. Since the sizing is more controlled now, that kind of process doesn't really meld with the system anymore. Didn't blank it out completely as I was hoping to figure some sort of way to make it happen, but the simple mechanics of trying to find out how large the bar should be make that not really work well. Setting a fixed number isn't that horrible anyways i suppose.


------------------------------------

Chef Garry:


-I rely a lot on the right-click in OB1.65 to give me the "native" dropdown for the item I click on"

Agreed. I'm seeing what I can do about that.

-You can't re-order bar items on bars that display folder content (Quick Launch). It appears that alpha-numeric order is the only possibility. That pretty much makes OB2 un-usable to me.

Agreed also. I'll see what I can do to make that possible again.
on Apr 21, 2005
As for #6, I didn't mean Close as in closing the bar, I meant closing the properties dialog by hitting the X or OK button.

And for #21, once the folder is loaded, it stays loaded, so I think it's icons as well

-Scott
on Apr 22, 2005
Great response!

As for my number 3 (button animation), on the object bar I'm running, when an app is closed (only one or last member of a group), the remaining buttons shuffle themselves around on the taskbar. On my work machine, which is where I use OB most often, that animation is very slow (my work box is a real dog ).

As for the context menu properties entry, most of the time, it isn't really a big deal, but I do find that I have a few menu items that won't activate on a normal menu click, and I have to launch it with the properties option (most notably, since I enumerate the control panel applets, when I click on the network properties applet it won't launch unless the system properties option is available). I saw this in 1.65, and in the latest beta, but 1.65 would let me get to the properties.

As soon as I get a few spare moments at work, I'll test out a few skins that, if I remember correctly, would have a few issues on conversion. One I know of right off hand is Tiggz's KTek steel. Most everything looks good except for the bitmap on the programs mouseover (it looks like it's in two places at once when the mouse is not over it, and the mouseover image highlights over one of those two places). Also the transition graphics between the taskbar and the system tray (and the transition between the system tray and the 'extra space' at the end of the bar), the image graphics are tiled instead of stretched.

The only other thing I see (also relates to doubling the width of the bar), is that a container (like quicklaunch or systray) will sometimes arrange the icons in two rows, and sometimes in only one (obviously, when the bar is doubled, my take on it is that the icons should be in two rows).

All in all, great work, look forward to seeing an even smoother working bar!
on Apr 25, 2005
ah! finally it's going to let me post again - have been waiting 3 days for it to allow me to



Scott:

Ah ha. Then for #6:

In that case it's the saving that's causing that slowdown. I implimented an improved saving system in ObjectDock which speeds up the saving process *considerably*, hopfully I can get that system going in OB as well. BTW, if it was a not-in-need-of-confirmation change, when you close the "Theme Editor" dialog the theme will automatically save.



Aleatoric:

Ah, i see what you mean by "button animation" now. I'll be sure to put a checkbox in the ObjectBar general options to disable this. It will be hidden away somewhat, but, you'll be able to find and disable it.

Notes taken about the skin conversion, i'll check them out.


As for "double row" stuff, I've been having difficulties with that. Specifically, sometimes it'll get confused as to when it should calculate for two rows and when for only one, etc. Perhaps there's something I can do to improve that, thanks for the reminder.


I'm glad you're enjoying the new system




Thanks again for the feedback!