Rainmeter V.2. What's different, what's new?

[vitasimplex]

I ask this because I am curious to know what should we expect with the new Rainmeter. If this is the wrong place for this type of discussion, I apologize. I'm glad to know that work is being done on it, but what vision does it have. The developers are hard at work based on the updates and fixes posted on their forum. But questions remain:
- But what direction are they going in?
- Will it look or feel like other desktop apps of the same nature?
- Will it stay a simply designed app?
- What's going to be different?
- What features are they working on know?
- What will be new?

Does anyone have there ear to ask these questions and get answers?

[gschoppe]

I've just been added to the team yesterday, but if I understand the issues correctly, the big push initially is going to be in Stability, forward compatibility, and streamlining, with new features taking a slightly lesser focus...

Rainmeter has been closed source for years, with no updates or fixes released... in that time, vista and seven have changed the computer scene a lot... many changes will have to be implemented to ensure smooth running now and in the future... UAC, multiple Cores, and more prevalent WIFI are a few of the changes that have occurred in Rainmeter's lifetime.

in terms of improvements, there have already been changes made to:
Anti-aliasing
Multiple Monitor Support
Text/Object alignment
and several other small tweaks/fixes

The big move however, is to support and fix Rainmeter, to make it a cleaner, more reliable version of the program we've all been using for years.

[jsmorley]

I've just been added to the team yesterday, but if I understand the issues correctly, the big push initially is going to be in Stability, forward compatibility, and streamlining, with new features taking a slightly lesser focus...

Rainmeter has been closed source for years, with no updates or fixes released... in that time, vista and seven have changed the computer scene a lot... many changes will have to be implemented to ensure smooth running now and in the future... UAC, multiple Cores, and more prevalent WIFI are a few of the changes that have occurred in Rainmeter's lifetime.

in terms of improvements, there have already been changes made to:
Anti-aliasing
Multiple Monitor Support
Text/Object alignment
and several other small tweaks/fixes

The big move however, is to support and fix Rainmeter, to make it a cleaner, more reliable version of the program we've all been using for years.

Don't forget the changes made by the "Aero" interface and the new "Windows Display Driver Model" and "Desktop Window Manager". There is good and bad with this concerning Rainmeter. There are some things which it breaks like window position "Desktop", but could add some interesting capabilities to take advantage of...

[furyfire]

Cheers
I just found out this project was relived yesterday. I've been using RainMeter for ages
And I must say I'm really twisted. On one hand I wanna keep the current ini files for skins. But on the other hand I feel they are very limited.

On one hand the INI files makes it simple to create a quick Meter on the other hand you constantly run into limitations i feel. Maybe it's just me with a coder background that finds it very hard to constantly repeat code. Creating skins like an RSS reader is horrible, and I think everybody with a programmer background will cry watching [RSSFeedTitle1], [RSSFeedDesc1] , [RSSFeedLink1] over and over again.

I got no solution to problems. But I've been thinking it over and come up with what I think is 4 differten options.

1. Leave it as it is.
Keep config files they way they are
Pros: Old Skins will stil work, easier for new users, Little Development
Cons: All of the above

2: Extend the current
Attempt as much as possible to remain the current configuration format but attempt to extend it with plugins etc. Say a dedicated Plugin that will read RSS feeds and autogenerate the Meters. This could also cover external tools to help creation and maintance of config files.
Pros: Small Development costs
Cons: It's not a real fix.

3: Reimplement the skin system
Ditch the old .ini files and reimplement it all in and more stable format (xml etc).
Pros: Could clean up skin creation alot.
Cons: Alot of development

4: Implement a scripting language.
Implement a lightweight scripting language (Lua)
Pros: Ultimate control, "Clean" way of theme creation
Cons: Hard for none programmers, Alot of development

Step 3 and 4 is what RainLendar did in recent year.

I know what my wish is as a programmer. (Option 4) But what are the wishes from a user perspective, and the developers?

[bhadkow]

i am not programmer and i believe skinning is not so difficult using ini files!! its awesome. i think implementing step 4 above might seroiusly cripple rainmeter skinning. its light as is now. i love it.

implenting a method to cross link ini i.e for example consider rss!!! it PIA . so what we do is create 3 diff rss feeds (each a copy of 1st one) and link them together so meters in one ini file can take values from another ini file!! is it possible???

another feature would be making rainmeter store the values in a 'super log file' ., every time my screen resolution changes (when i play games etc) all my meters get displaced!!

looking forward the release of v2

[furyfire]

bradkow thanks for your input.

implenting a method to cross link ini i.e for example consider rss!!! it PIA . so what we do is create 3 diff rss feeds (each a copy of 1st one) and link them together so meters in one ini file can take values from another ini file!! is it possible???

Is not so stupid. It could seriously clean up the somewhat messy INI files

[vitasimplex]

That's great news, congratulations! That's understandable and thank you for the information. I hope you guys have a PR person to announce the progress of the program and to give folks a heads up of what's to come. I'm thinking of this from a business end where the business (you guys) would want as many people using this as much as possible. If you think about it, major league options exist, Vista Sidebar, Google Desktop, Serious Samurize for Windows. But what makes Rainmeter and Samurize(too buggy for me, too much memory use too) BETTER is that you can get into the guts of if and make it your own. Yet, it still requires a certain amount of training in order to adopt. It's like getting a model car kit versus get a pre-made model that you can customize, for the devotee of the model car hobby, they prefer to make it from scratch, synonymous to Rainmeter/Samurize. Someone preferring the modifiable pre-made model car represents a much larger population Sidebar/Google Desktop. However, it would be great to see Rainmeter in the league of Sidebar/Google desktop, so users could experience how much more fun and useful it truly is.

You mentioned the following improvements:

Anti-aliasing
Multiple Monitor Support
Text/Object alignment
and several other small tweaks/fixes

Could you expound upon what that means? I thought anti-aliasing already existed? I use it on multiple monitors all the time. Clarity is hard to achieve but worthwhile when implemented, it can be the difference between 50 new users and 5000.

Furyfire brings up a good point about what he wants to see from the programmers point of view, but it's hard to read what people are asking for from our end, consumers. I would personally like to see more options like in Samurize, but without the bugginess.
- I liked how it would actually initialize he Perfmon within Samurize and complete the string for you, that's streamlined.
- The ability to create a full browser within the capabilities of Samurize, how awesome is that?
- Animations,just to make certain skins have more pop to them. That would be awesome, I would be able to to get rid of Object dock and star dock.
- Window path expansion, samurize had it to where it replicated elements of Stardock/Objectdock in being able to show the menu to whatever folder you opened up, that was a great feature that made it robust.
- Flash compatibility, potentially to have embedded streaming items. I have Prism now but I would prefer to centralize my apps and lessen the clutter of programs that I have that do unique things. I would like to stream something like Hulu or the CNN livestream, into my desktop versus having something like Prism.
- drag and drop configs for elements of an RSS feed, so we could have pictures embedded in a simpler manner to headlines. Just copy and paste urls versus coding the whole url, strings, etc. that if there were a way for rainmeter recognize, interpret the RSS, and provide options of what the final RSS would look like, that would be cool.

....................you asked. I compare it to Samurize because they are both very similar, they are in the same league so to speak. I've said before, if Samurize weren't so buggy, I'd go back to it. But that's not completely true, it has a learning curb as well, with RSS feeds, which are my focus more often than not. Those are some of the things off the top of my head that I think would be great. Animation would be great, that would add a lot of pop to the clunky way the existing bangs operate, which is hide or show, no style to it. I would like to hear other peoples thoughts to.

[furyfire]

About the animations.
You say you preffer less memory usage. In my world fancy animations tend to use more memory. I don't really see a need a for fancy slide in and slide out animations as there are serveal other projects that does this. Konfabulator Samurize Sidebar etc. I'm more hooked on displaying infomation. Sure a nice onHover action would nice but beside that I don't think that's the main area of interrest.

But again that's just my view as a programmer

[dragonmage]

@vistasimplex I have recently figured out how to do animation effects with Rainmeter. It isn't a perfect solution, but it does work. I'll make a post showing the code to do it in Tips & Tricks soon. There are a few aspects I haven't worked out yet like delaying the display of info until after the ani completes, but I'm pretty certain I can do it.

[vitasimplex]

I am aware of the information passed on by this link

http://www.flickr.com/groups/lifehacker-desktop-showandtell/discuss/72157616187634703/

It takes up a ton of memory from my work with it.

- Furyfire, I don't know if that is true or not but I will be devil's advocate and disagree. I run Objectdock at under 2500 K on average, and one of it's many highlighted features is it's ability to magnify upon mouseover of the png images of both the background and icons that it supports.
CD Art Display runs less than 5000 K on average for me and it overs a similar feature on mouse over.

If these programs with all of their features can pull it off, i don't see why rainmeter can't.