Hello, all!

[ScottK]

Hi, everyone!

Allow me to introduce myself. I used the name / handle "ScottK" at a variety of websites all over the place, so if you run into it, it might be me...or then again - well, you know how nom-de-plumes work on the Interwebtubes.

I've been into Windows customization for quite a long time, going back to helping out with theming & troubleshooting / testing LiteStep .24 back in 2001 / 2002. I've also done theming in Samurize & DesktopX.

My current desktop appears to be quite a mess, but it works pretty well for me.

http://i.imgur.com/QWWnvJ7.jpg

A combination of Rainmeter (BlueVision & Omnio 6 + Dark Gear bits), Windows Gadgets (I like to live dangerously...hehe) and Circle Dock are being shown, along with the Snackr RSS Feed Aggregator ticker running just above the Taskbar. This is all running, as evidenced, on a Bottom-to-Top Dual Monitor Windows 10 Insider 16251 Build platform...Yes, I'm running Windows Desktop Gadgets on Windows 10.

As part of my "Hello!", I'm going to toss my first question out here to everyone: Has anyone tried or taken on the challenge of trying to either convert Windows Gadgets to Rainmeter Skins, or to encapsulate a Gadget by Rainmeter or provide similar capabilities to Skins under Rainmeter? I'd love to be able to toss the Windows Desktop Gadgets away, but for some of the interests I have I require to have that info on my desktop and it would be infinitely more convenient to have all of that under the Rainmeter umbrella.

So...anyone?

Thanks again!

--ScottK

[balala]

Has anyone tried or taken on the challenge of trying to either convert Windows Gadgets to Rainmeter Skins, or to encapsulate a Gadget by Rainmeter or provide similar capabilities to Skins under Rainmeter? I'd love to be able to toss the Windows Desktop Gadgets away, but for some of the interests I have I require to have that info on my desktop and it would be infinitely more convenient to have all of that under the Rainmeter umbrella.

Converting a Windows Gadget to Rainmeter Skin would be very difficult, or maybe even close to impossible, as far as I know. And finally doesn't even worth to be done. Writing the Rainmeter Skin starting from zero is much more profitable, in my opinion. Actually a few of the old Windows 7 gadgets are rewritten in Rainmeter (like the clock, calendar and so on), you can try them: https://forum.rainmeter.net/viewtopic.php?p=124162#p124162
You also can search the DeviantArt, there you can find a lot of excelent skins.

[SilverAzide]

ScottK,

If you are looking for a very faithful recreation of the original Windows Gadgets that came with Vista, this these out.
https://www.deviantart.com/art/Vista-Rainbar-4-6-0-3-156603886. Search for Vista Rainbar and you'll find lots of variants.

You can find every kind of skin imaginable either here or on DeviantArt. You don't seem like a fan of Steampunk, but if you want to see some really amazing gadgets combined with artwork, you can check out anything by Mordasius.
https://www.deviantart.com/art/Steampunk-Cogs-Tubes-and-Gauges-for-Rainmeter-346425526
https://www.deviantart.com/art/Geocentric-Tellurion-v-2-1-for-Rainmeter-366553369
https://www.deviantart.com/art/BB-B-Steampunk-for-Rainmeter-333162200

Another great resource is anything by jsmorley, who is one of the devs here on the forums. He posts tons of skins for tutorial purposes, which are perfect for learning Rainmeter. His suite here https://www.deviantart.com/art/JSMeterVIII-8-0-662199859 is a great place to start learning.

[ScottK]

SilverAzide - It was actually your Gadgets 3.0.1. release that got me interested in this whole idea. *Very* well done, sir!

I guess what I need to do, then, is to immerse myself in Regular Expressions and such to try to obtain the resources that I need for the datasets displayed in the more important gadgets I have displayed in my previously-mentioned screenshot (the 4 local weather maps, the 4 NOAA GOES Images below them, the 2 Solar images and the one Aurora Forecast gadget below the Solar Images). The others are easier to manage, data-wise.

Thanks again!

[ScottK]

Also, just a side-note: I've done a lot of modding of g3xter's epic BlueVision V0.2 Alpha Skin - smoother fonts, resizing, meter data source changes based on newer releases of SpeedFan, etc - just so you know that I'm not a n00b at theme coding, mods, etc.

In fact, the Satellite Weather bits might be a good source to "consume" for the model for data source collection for the new bits I'm looking for.

Thanks again!

--ScottK