Iconbar

Two things to improve the iconbar

1) Able to adjust the size of the iconbar (useful at low resolutions)

and

2) To be able to make the Iconbar always on top and to ensure that no other window can go on top of it. Similar in vein to what Windows does. This should also be an option so it can be turned off for die-hard acorns fans who disagree with me ;-)

nx

1) Able to adjust the size of the iconbar (useful at low resolutions)

Minor problem with this, applications when calculating the y position of the iconbar menu assume a fixed size iconbar. If you want to change this you’ll have to change Wimp_CreateMenu (in the OS) to correct this. This’ll be easy for apps that create their menu in the correct position. A few apps get this calculation wrong however, and it’ll be hard to work out if these dodgy menus belong to the iconbar or not.

2) To be able to make the Iconbar always on top and to ensure that no other window can go on top of it. Similar in vein to what Windows does. This should also be an option so it can be turned off for die-hard acorns fans who disagree with me ;-)

Or just press SHIFT + F12?

1) Able to adjust the size of the iconbar (useful at low resolutions)

In addition to what James has said; you’‘ll also need to consider applications that detect where on their iconbar icon a mouseclick occured (eg VirtuDesk).

Some applications animate their iconbar icon (eg BlackHole) so they’d need to be able to read the size of the iconbar.

2) To be able to make the Iconbar always on top

I have something in the works that can possibly be expanded to provide this.

Maybe the iconbar could be rendered into a buffer (instead of directly to the screen) and some 2D OpenGL funtions could be used to resize and display it.

Minor problem with this, applications when calculating the y position of the iconbar menu assume a fixed size iconbar. If you want to change this you’ll have to change Wimp_CreateMenu (in the OS) to correct this. This’ll be easy for apps that create their menu in the correct position. A few apps get this calculation wrong however, and it’ll be hard to work out if these dodgy menus belong to the iconbar or not.

The problem of not being able to detect menus which are created at the wrong position can be solved simply by changing the detection code so that it detects any menu created in response to an iconbar click.

Maybe the iconbar could be rendered into a buffer (instead of directly to the screen) and some 2D OpenGL funtions could be used to resize and display it.

I’m a little rusty on how iconbar icon rendering works, but if programs can render custom things ontop of their icon, then I think rendering to an off-screen buffer/sprite and scaling the result down is the only real solution. But if programs can only ever use an icon block to render the icon, then I think it would be possible to just write a different icon renderer that is capable of rendering everything at the smaller size (not that I’m sure that that would be preferable to using a buffer).

For programs that rely on the position of a mouse click within the icon, we could perhaps borrow an idea from Mac OS X and make the icons expand to full size when the mouse hovers over them. Assuming Apple haven’t patented the idea, of course (Software patents – pure evil!).

(Software patents – pure evil!).

Could the territory module be updated to contain a flag as to whether software patents are allowed in that country and software could use it to turn off patended features? :)

...make the icons expand to full size when the mouse hovers over them. Assuming Apple haven’t patented the idea…

Regarding multi-touch

"The first Multi-touch system was made as far back as 1982 by Nimish Mehta."

so if expanding icons have been done before then some would say it’s fair game anyway!