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PC World India: article on 3.1 release

Articles, reviews and other mentions of Rainmeter on the web.
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moshi
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PC World India: article on 3.1 release

Post by moshi »

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jsmorley
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Re: PC World India: article on 3.1 release

Post by jsmorley »

Yeah, Andy contacted me a couple of weeks ago to do a "email interview" about the 3.1 release. Just in case you are interested, here is my exchange with him:

****************
Andy, let me go point by point:

- Let’s dig into IfConditions. It looks to me like this function along with IfActions allows for computation and conditional interfaces, as opposed to mere display. Am I correct? Also how much versatility does this allow? Are we talking the versatility of if-then statements and BOOL conditionals?

At its most basic, Rainmeter is a simple idea. It "measures" things, be it the time, CPU usage, drive space, network activity, unread emails, the current weather, and much more. It displays the results, using very customizable string, image, bar, histogram and many other "meters" that use the measure results.

A lot of "gadget" utilities do that sort of thing however. Maybe not as flexible and customizable as Rainmeter, but you can get the weather forecast on your screen any number of ways.

Rainmeter really sets itself apart, appealing to those looking to use their desktop for more than a nice wallpaper image and a mess of shortcuts, when you look at how skins can interact with measure values or user actions. Based on the values or actions, the skins can visibly change, animate, execute system commands, or just about anything else you want.

IfConditions are one of the key new ways for a skin to intelligently react to changing values. It works on any measure, comparing numeric values or formulas and evaluating the test as "true" or "false". The IfCondition test is followed by IfTrueAction and IfFalseAction options to execute Rainmeter bangs or system commands based on this boolean result. You can have as many of these IFConditions and IfTrue / IfFalse actions as you want on a single measure.

You certainly can use it to create powerful "if this then, else then" constructs. A simple example might be "If the current CPU usage is lower than 10%, set a string font color to green. If it is between 11% and 50%, set the font color to yellow. If it is greater than 51%, set the font color to red".

This is really a powerful extension to what was already available in IfActions, which are a more limited and single "is this measure greater than, equal to, or less than some other value or formula?". The ability to use the full range of both mathematical (+ - / * etc.) and logical (< = > <> %% || etc.) operators, allows the user to define comparisons that are far more flexible and useful than a simple "is this greater than that?".

The manual entry for IfConditions is at http://docs.rainmeter.net/manual/measures/general-options/ifconditions, and further explanation and examples can be found on our forums at http://rainmeter.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=113&t=16960.

- Can you elaborate on the IfMatchAction function?

IfMatchAction can be thought of as "IfConditions for strings". Where IfCondition evaluates a mathematical test as "true" or "false", IfMatchAction does exactly the same thing, in much the same way, for textual strings.

While it can be a simple "Is the string value of this measure 'Partly Cloudy'?", the real power of IfMatchAction is that it uses "Perl Compatible Regular Expressions" to do the comparisons. I can't even begin to describe all that is possible evaluating strings with regular expressions, it is one of the more flexible and powerful utility functions in all of end-user computing.

Again, you can take actions, and as many as you want, based on the string match being "true" or "false".

The manual entry for IfMatchAction is at http://docs.rainmeter.net/manual/measures/general-options/ifmatchactions, and further explanation and examples can be found on our forums at http://rainmeter.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=113&t=17421.

- What are LAN_CONNECTIVITY and INTERNET_CONNECTIVITY all about?

These are new features of the SysInfo plugin, that set the boolean value of a measure to "true" or "false" (actually a numeric 1 or -1) based on whether your system is currently attached to a local network (LAN_CONNECTIVITY) or can communicate with the internet (INTERNET_CONNECTIVITY). This basically uses the same methods that Windows does to control the little network icon displayed in the system notification area.

You can then use IfConditions or IfActions on the measure to have a skin react to the network and / or internet connectivity status. Again, visibly change something in a skin, or even enable or disable Rainmeter functions that are used to get information from the web.

The manual entry for the SysInfo plugin is at http://docs.rainmeter.net/manual/plugins/sysinfo.

- What new features do you particularly like and think will add something new and interesting to Rainmeter?

I think the addition of more powerful tools to compare and take actions based on measure values, the IfConditions and IfMatchActions functions, really open up a lot of possibilities for users to create more "active" skins that can do far more than just "measure this", "display that".

- Do you see Rainmeter becoming more interactive, as opposed to merely displaying info?

Rainmeter already has a lot of "interaction" features in it. Not only can the skin automatically do a broad range of things, really only limited by your imagination, when measure values change, there are several ways for the end-user to directly interact with a skin. We have a full range of mouse-based actions, so you can fire Rainmeter bangs or system commands on mouse hover/leave, mouse wheel scroll or mouse click actions, and the InputText plugin can get string input from the user and take actions based on what was entered.

We are always exploring new ways to interact with skins, but I caution that what we don't intend to do is try to be is a "shell replacement" in Windows. We are not going to fight with Windows over functionality, or try to replace core Windows functions. There won't be a Rainmeter file manager or system notification area or start menu.

- What major challenges remain, and can you offer some hints on 3.2?

The largest future effort we envision is to extend the capabilities we opened up when we recently changed the display of meters in Rainmeter from the older and less powerful GDI+ graphics to Direct2D. So far we have changed to the better graphics engine for string meters, but want to extend this to image-based meters, and then begin to add functionality that is only available with the new engine. This will include additional string effects, and a huge range of image capabilities like masking, more flexible sizing, cropping, and much more. While what we add to or change in Rainmeter going forward is not something we generally have firm plans laid out for, and many times we make rapid additions based on a good idea or need expressed by our user community on our forums, we do intend to make D2D advancements a priority. Our goal is to have the imagination and creativity of the skin author be the only limiting factor. Rainmeter is not just an application, it is a toolkit. We want to have as large and flexible a toolkit available as possible.

- For background, where do you think are the 2-3 best resources for skins? I figure Rainmeter.net and Deviant Art, but I might be missing something.

I really think this is best addressed here: http://rainmeter.net/discover.

Let me know if you need any additional information. Glad to help.

Jeff
***************

While I regret he just assumed SourceForge instead of GitHub for our open source repository, otherwise I think he did a pretty good job.
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Brian
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Re: PC World India: article on 3.1 release

Post by Brian »

I guess PC World India covers articles from the *parent* magazine PC World (although I am not sure how they are organized).

Here is a link to the original article, although the information is basically the same: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2363275/rainmeter-3-1-review.html

I have read PC World magazine off and on throughout the years since I was in high school. It makes me happy to not only read a review of a project I am apart of, but of specific code/features that I have worked on as well.

-Brian