[v1.0 ready]Skin collection - Some help with testing needed

[Saiho]

Forum won't let me attach it, it seems my file is too big, so here's a link instead.
Beta 0.1 link

Features (and what they should do):

• Clock: Time, date, reader and weather. Click on date to expand/reduce the panel, and on top icons to switch between reader and weather.
  • Reader: Automatically cycle between 5 feeds or use buttons to manually change view
  • Weather: Nothing fancy here, just click on weather to visit the yahoo link
    The 5th link is not really expected to display correctly, I'm not sure why it works for me, just curious if it will for anyone else.
• Currency converter: Click on any currency to choose another (need to know its code) or any number to select amount to convert.
• Control: Basic Shutdown, hibernate etc buttons, folder launcher and recycle bin manager.
• Monitor: Track up to 4 hard drive discs, CPU usage and temperature, memory, battery state and network traffic. Click on disc letter to open them. Temperature needs CoreTemp to be installed and running.
• System: Click on computer name to open My Computer, tools icon for computer management and task icon for task manager.
• GMail: Displays total unread mail over up to 4 accounts, click on it to expand and view individual emails.
• All skins: Right-click to change colors and edit settings for each skin from custom skin actions.

Note:
- This is an early beta, credits an attributions are not complete yet, as well as many other things, so please don't share, include in published layouts or use for anything but testing at this stage.

All feedback (especially on the code, if anyone has the time and energy to read some of it), suggestions and improvements will be much appreciated. Thank you!

[Kaelri]

First: I notice that you have your ContextTitles and ContextActions (up to #6?) repeated for all skins. You could add this to your "SkinVariables" include file to avoid this duplication.

Code: Select all

;--------------------------------------
;Change at your own risk - things may not display correctly

[Rainmeter]
Group=GroupHex
ContextTitle=Hexagon: Skin Color
ContextAction=[]
ContextTitle2=---
ContextTitle3=Blue
ContextAction3=[!WriteKeyValue Variables ThemeColor Blue #@#Settings\SkinVariables.inc][!RefreshGroup GroupHex]
ContextTitle4=Red
ContextAction4=[!WriteKeyValue Variables ThemeColor Red #@#Settings\SkinVariables.inc][!RefreshGroup GroupHex]
ContextTitle5=Green
ContextAction5=[!WriteKeyValue Variables ThemeColor Green #@#Settings\SkinVariables.inc][!RefreshGroup GroupHex]
ContextTitle6=Yellow
ContextAction6=[!WriteKeyValue Variables ThemeColor Yellow #@#Settings\SkinVariables.inc][!RefreshGroup GroupHex]

[Variables]
ThemeColor=Green
PrimaryFont=Cambria

Code: Select all

[Rainmeter]
@Include=#@#Settings\SkinVariables.inc
ContextTitle7=---
ContextTitle8=Hexagon: Clock Settings
ContextAction8=["#@#Settings\ClockSettings.inc"]

(Also, you don't need to include Update=1000, since that's the default value of Update.)

Second: in HexClock.ini, you're including "weather.inc" and "reader.inc." Each of those files looks like it used to be a separate skin, since they both have [Rainmeter] and [Metadata] sections, and some of the same @include statements. You should merge these into the main .INI file.

Third: I don't see any particular reason why the fifth link in Reader shouldn't work. Maybe I've misunderstood the problem.

That's all I noticed from a cursory glance at the code. The rest looks pretty solid.

[Saiho]

Thank you so much, Kaelri!

First: I'll change the context titles, makes things easier, I just didn't think you could include them like that. I don't need to include the same files again in the variables section, right?

Second: I started them indeed as separate skins, so I could deal with one of them at a time. Also made editing a bit easier. I can easily turn off one of them (and not have to re-parse 5 feeds 50 times just to position a line in weather) and I have 3 files of more manageable size instead of one that is huge. I'm already a bit confused by all the buttons that open/close/toggle things,so keeping them like this made my life a bit easier. Does @Include slow things down or is there another advantage in keeping everything in one file? If so, I'll merge them once I'm sure everything works as intended.

Third: The 5th link is a Greek feed, which, as I understood from earlier posts, doesn't work well with lua (reader uses your reader lua script). A test on a Swedish computer at least showed most of the text as ?'s, so I still don't get when/if the skin will display Unicode characters.

[Saiho]

I don't expect there will be much more interest in testing, so version 1.0 is available to download!


[devart]333171411:[/devart]

Hope you like it!

[Kaelri]

Sorry for the late reply; I've had a busy week.

These responses may no longer apply to your project, but here they are anyway. :)

First: I'll change the context titles, makes things easier, I just didn't think you could include them like that. I don't need to include the same files again in the variables section, right?

Correct. It doesn't really matter where you place the "@include" line in the skin, unless you need to override some option values in the include file, in which case the @include line should be placed somewhere above the new values.

Does @Include slow things down or is there another advantage in keeping everything in one file? If so, I'll merge them once I'm sure everything works as intended.

It doesn't slow things down at all, except for maybe a few milliseconds when the skin is first loaded - i.e. nothing noticeable. There's nothing wrong with placing all the Reader/Weather meters and measures in include files - that's what they're there for. You just shouldn't have those [Metadata] sections in there, or "whole-skin" elements like those other @includes, which should be moved to the [Variables] section in the main .INI. :)

Third: The 5th link is a Greek feed, which, as I understood from earlier posts, doesn't work well with lua (reader uses your reader lua script). A test on a Swedish computer at least showed most of the text as ?'s, so I still don't get when/if the skin will display Unicode characters.

Ah, I see what you mean. Yes, those characters are broken on my system, as well. Unicode and character encoding are complicated subjects, but basically, the reason they work on your system is probably because you have your language settings in Windows set to Greek. This affects your "codepage," the list of characters that are available in extended-ASCII (non-Unicode) text on your system. If you don't actually have the Greek codepage set on your system, then I'm not sure how to explain it - I must admit I'm not an expert in this area.

[Benjamin Linus]

Props on this release.
I especially love the reader where it shows you the time the feed was updated.
Very useful!
Great job

[Saiho]

Sorry for the late reply; I've had a busy week.

No worries, I'm already grateful for all the help, it was more than I could ask for. I figured most of the last questions out by testing, but of course a confirmation I got it right is more than welcome And I plan to make changes/improvements if something comes up in the future, so all comments are still relevant.

My Windows is in English, the only 'greek' thing is location settings (or whatever they're called) for date, currency etc. that you choose when you install them. I imagine it has to be something to do with that because it's the only thing different from any other computer out there.

Great job

Thank you!