DX Tutorial what do you want to see?

RomanDA, 1st, Thanx for helping us out!  I'm not sure where to begin as I have no real concept of using DX.  I've made 1/2ass attempts of using it ,but haven't gotten it down yet.I've been overloaded with Object Desktop'07, and just trying to understand all there is to offer (Massive GrayMatter OverLoad!)
Since you are offering your time, energy and kindness, I believe I should start,with you at the Beginners, Step #1  .
Again, THANX 4 Your Precious Time, Assistance and Caring for LostSouls!

I would like to learn how to make some widgets with DX.

In particular, any or all of the following: a Calendar, a Weather widget, ToDo List, Media Player, Clock, and Meters for Drives, CPU, Memory etc. It would also be great if there was a guide to show us how to add simple animations to them.

But I have one question. Would I be able to post my creations here on WC using the scripts that you provide in the guides or would I need to learn how to write my own code? I know absolutely nothing about coding and I haven't seen any royalty free scripts available that we could play around with and modify.

I would love to have a tutorial that describes building an actual working Desktop environment. Of course, the graphic elements could be skipped, because I'm sure that is a topic for another discussion (you either got skillz or you don't, LOL). Setting up the various parts of a desktop, (i.e. sounds, anims, scripting actions, and the sort). I would love to start building my own desktops, but am very intimidated by DX. GreenReaper has offered a little help in #stardock, but there is only so much you can teach someone,or learn, through a chat client.

Thanks again for "stepping-up".
boodahbellie

My plan for this is to start VERY simple.

With a "lets make a widget", provide the graphics and scripts, and show people how to put it together.

Then move up slowly to more complex widgets.

As for using scripts, if i post something on here in a Tutorial its all yours, have fun. You might want to note "thanks to RomanDA for the scripts" thats all i would ask.

I like the suggestions so far.

Thank you DA for never forgetting us noobs!

I'd really like to know how to do a Weather object. Mostly, how do you know what images to display (sunny, cloudy, etc.) I had to limit my first weather object to text because I was pulling and parsing the info like you would for an rss reader. I realize everyone is using Martin's scripts but I always like to know the nuts and bolts of what I'm doing.


That's all for now. Good luck with this Starter Guide. It is much needed and will be much appreciated. Thanks again.

Scripting! How is it done and where can it be learned? Are there scripting programs, or do you just pull it all outta your head? Is this something you would cover in your tut? I would love to be able to create widgets and objects, but I don't have a clue about scripting and would like to learn.

Well... Zubaz will tell you i never code anything myself, i "Take" what i need. The truth is, he is very close to the truth. The BEST way to find code is to first determine what you are trying to do.

For instance, how about checking the time between 2 dates (for say a COUNTDOWN program of some sort).

I first look at my favorite place GOOGLE and do a simple search: "vbscript date difference"
by looking at the first 2 or 3 links i find this:

olddate = "6/26/43"
nowdate = Now
Diff = DateDiff("s", nowdate, olddate)

So now i have something i can stick into DX.

The other way is to IMPORT widgets into DX that do what you are looking for (asking permission of course!), and looking thru the code to see what they did.

I will try and cover this as well (when i start this...)

DesktopX uses a version of WindowScript which consist of JScript and VBScript. W3Schools is a very good starting resource to get to grips with JavaScript and VBScript.

Then you got the unvaluable DesktopX documentation to guide you through the DesktopX functionalities.

"Unvaluable" or "invaluable"?

BIG difference.    

1. Start small: A "Hello World" widget... Basically, just a widget that says (in text and/or graphics, "Hello World").

2. Next, a widget with a little interactivity: Two or three buttons that you can click to make a message window appear.

3. How to incorporate coding/scripting into the widget, so it can do more complex things.

4. How to store settings, such as configuration settings and user input.

5. How to retrieve info from your computer (system settings, resources, etc.)

6. How to retrieve info from internet sources.

7. How to interact with Windows and programs (e.g., Outlook).


Sample applications:
- Clock
- Weather
- Calculator
- Color chooser
- System monitoring tools
- Post-It notes
- Simple games (Centipede, etc.)
- RSS readers
- Search boxes


Thanks for taking the time to do this for us.

I can do that!



Thanks for the link.

Okay, here's a pretty specific question. . . I'm using the Marvin widget (from the gallery), and, like a poster stated about it, the widget would really benefit from having a "mute" button, because it's cool when he wanders around your desktop spouting Marvin sayings while you're typing a document or searching the internet, but not so great when you're listening to music or playing a game. How would one such as myself tweak the sound properties and add a clickable mute option to widgets? Thanks.

No hablo english!

Thanx for the replies to my question(s). I will check them out and I await the tuts! Thank you for taking the time to help!

Hi, Iwould like to see if you could make a tutorial on how to use "read, write, create, edit, etc." databases.

Thanks in advance

This might be too much or off topic with what you have in mind...but I would really like to learn and/or understand HOW to write the scripts...in whatever language is best...Java, etc. I think if I had a general understanding I could go from there, kinda of like when I learned how to do html for geocities back in the day.

If you weren't planning on getting into this, could you recomend a good place to learn for a beginner...or even a good book on it. I have seen a lot of books on scripting at the bookstore, but not sure which code to focus on that DX uses.

Thanks Roman!

And thanks for all the help you have given me already!

Either VBScript or JavaScript. You'll find more examples of VBScript used in DesktopX though.
However, if you also plan to do some webdeveloping as well you might find JavaScript to be your language as you then only have to focus on one script language.

If I were you I'd stick to instructions/tutorials surrounding the most popular widgets. Obviously those are what people want to know how to do.

Many people seem to want instruction in general scripting but, excellent resources exist elsewhere including an excellent SDK from Microsoft. I'll try to post some more links to the DesktopX wiki of my personal favorites. Varying off into this direction most likely will confuse and frustrate many.

The possibilities within DesktopX using dxscripts alone are amazing. The other night I wrote an animated wallpaper strictly within desktopX without looking at any examples. Sure it uses more code than if I used some sort of array and/or loop but, it was quick and easy. I'll comment and upload it later.



What type of database? Access, Excel, XML, CSV, etc etc

Like the one he did here: https://www.wincustomize.com/articles.aspx?aid=133860

Here is something i did a while ago:
View Article

Although I have some of the basics down thanks to reverse-engineering Martin's scripts. I would really like to figure out how to do a graph. How do you control the images of the bars to get them to be the correct height and position them correctly?

I'm a very bar graph kind of guy, and I want to pull info from my web server so I can display it in a bar graph on my Desktop - I think that would be a cool and useful application of DX. But the first step would be to learn how to do the graph - after that would be the reading external values to display the graph.

Maybe I'm all alone in this one - if so, could someone point me to where I could do some reading to try and muddle through? Any help is gratefully appreciated.

I disagree. There's enough examples of the common widgets. The widget gallery is nowhere near to represent the true power of DX. I think more uncommon tutorials will be better and hopefully spark some new creations.

I agree.  If you want a weather widget that looks like X, reverse engineer one of the ones out there.  Same with clocks.

It's the difference between feeding a fish or teaching TO fish.

While I agree with you and truthfully enough entry level tutorials exist between the manual and articles. Maybe the direction should be more focused on intermediate/advanced scripting tutorials?



You know that's simple enough yet people still ask how to accomplish things that are demonstrated in already existing scripts.

This is an excellent guide!