Screenshot from Windows 7
Filed ↓ modesktop screenshot
moDesktop dev log
moDesktop is a virtual desktop manager for Windows, made by Marcus Olovsson. This blog covers everything that happens behind the scenes when the app is made.
My latest addition to moDesktop 2 is this update thingy. It’s greatly inspired by the Sparkle framework for Mac applications (check out their website and you’ll see the similarities).
It uses the same kind of XML-feed as Sparkle to manage the updates (a.k.a. appcasts), but it won’t auto-update as smoothly as Sparkle does. Also, moDesktop uses the Internet Explorer engine instead of WebKit (since the Internet Explorer engine is available on all Windows-systems).
But hopefully this will keep moDesktop users up-to-date in the future.
(note: the release notes in the screenshot above are not final, there will probably be more)
Sign up for the beta
If you’re interested in trying out moDesktop 2 before release, check out our GetSatisfaction site for information about the Beta-version.
Windows that doesn’t count as windows have always been a problem for moDesktop. Those windows would be visible on all desktops, which could be very annoying.
In moDesktop 2 you can add those windows to a list so moDesktop includes them in the window-list while switching desktops.
The screenshot above shows how this is stored in the Registry. The GUI is far from complete, so I’m afraid I can’t show you any of it yet.
clsSettings
One of the most important changes under-the-hood in moDesktop 2 is this little fellow:
It’s a class that loads and saves settings for moDesktop. Sounds pretty basic for an application, but that’s not the important thing here. The important thing is that this class handles the storage of all settings.
In earlier versions of moDesktop the storage of all settings have been a bit… messy. The first version used a single ini-file. When I added a few new features, I started using the Registry in Windows, but only for a few features. When Microsoft introduced UAC in Windows Vista I had to move the Ini-settings to the user’s Application Data-folder. So it was pretty mixed up. Mixed up settings also means mixed up code. Some settings used way to much code to remember things.
But since moDesktop 2 was written from scratch, I could make a single class that would handle all kinds of settings. So from now on, all settings are as default stored in the Registry.
But that’s not all. The Registry is nice, especially since all users can have their own settings, but sometimes you may want to use your settings on a lot of computers. In moDesktop 2 it’s easy to make the application portable. Just install it on your USB-memory (or wherever) and make a file called modesktop.ini in the same folder as the executable.
moDesktop will then ignore the Registry and store all settings in the Ini-file instead. That’s the power of clsSettings.cls :)
Not the most important feature ever, but nice anyway. moDesktop 2 comes with an additional tray icon that matches the Windows Vista/Windows 7 tray icons.
Something less interesting that you probably won’t notice, unless you really care about details, is that the tray icon in moDesktop 2 finally uses a 32-bit icon. Which means that the shadow in the 16x16 pixel icon works. Which means that it will look nice in most taskbars.
2.0 is on its way
Yes, it’s true. Otherwise I wouldn’t have created this blog (well, it’s more like a tumblelog). Even I am surprised that I actually took the time to make this new major version of the application.
It’s not like it’s a bad software. moDesktop does what it’s supposed to and it’s doing it great. But I bought a Mac, with a big screen. So I don’t have a need for virtual desktops on Windows anymore.
But I love moDesktop, it’s like a child for me. So that’s why I decided to work on moDesktop 2. It is completely rewritten from scratch and all components are reviewed so that they will be even better than before.
I will post the details about all components on this tumblelog. I hope you look forward to it :)
