http://customize.org/blogs/cuttheredwire cuttheredwire's blog at Customize.org Copyright 1998-2012 Customize.org. All rights reserved. en-us cuttheredwire news Rainmeter, only months after being reawakened, has reached the big 1.0 mile stone. It was good news to here development was being picked up on Rainmeter. It is great news to here they have reached the 1.0 mark. When I write an article (ok, not so often these days, but I digress), I don't take every increment out for a test spin. For this one, I just had to. I've never tried the whole Enigma desktop thing. I've read about it, but never got around to connecting the dots (it used a few different apps). I was looking forward to the full Rainmeter version, and was not disappointed. It's a great looking theme, and adding all kinds of stuff is a just point and click. Sure it has CPU and RAM, but it has Wifi, Gmail, and Twitter (not tested) too. Double click the Rainmeter icon to see the configuration dialog. Try it out and you'll see everything is self explanatory. There are lots of skins, or what I'll call from here on out as elements, to choose from. Click on what you want, drag it where you want it. To turn off elements, right click them and use the context menu. Some elements have additional settings via that method too. For most of the elements you can choose between text and iconic views. The WiFi is a great example. It can be an icon with a meter next to it, or a numeric read out. The result is a desktop easy to tweak with no lines of code. You can situate a clean text look, or load up on crazy icons. I think the best reason for this being the default skin is that is shows off a lot of what Rainmeter can do now. At a glance, this sets the bar for other Rainmeter skins. Gone are the days when all we has was sysmeter. A word from one of the developers, E. V. McKay: "A rather exciting development is coming for the desktop customizing world: with its first major update in over three years, Rainmeter is finally coming out of beta. And, among other things, it has a new Enigma upgrade built right in." Enigma, just to clarify, is a robust system meter, RSS feed, To-do list, etc. skin for Rainmeter and Samarize. The author, Kaelr, has stated that the plus for Rainmeter was power, but the plus of Samarize was the GUI. Additionally, the full effect required CD Art Display, as Rainmeter only worked with Wimamp (a sign of the times). Now Rainmeter can do everything all on its own. Here are the changes, also according to our friend Mr. McKay: Among Rainmeter 1.0's numerous improvements: - A built-in theme manager, RainThemes, to save and load your setups. - Complete compatibility with Windows Vista and 7. (Your data is no longer stored in Program Files, which eliminates problems with UAC.) - New visual options, such as text shadows, transformation matrices and improved anti-aliasing. - Expanded plugin support for iTunes, WiFi and even Recycle Bin management. - An official online forum at Rainmeter.net (http://www.rainmeter.net/forum/index.php) for support, discussion, third-party addons, tips and feature requests. As for Enigma 2.5: - Enigma is now the default skin for Rainmeter. It is available immediately after installing. - No more code editing required: a new Configuration tool manages your personal settings, like Google account login, weather code and feed URLs, from a GUI interface. - Sidebars and themes now scale to your screen resolution automatically. - Reader skins now support RSS, Atom, Gmail inbox and Twitter. - Music skin gets iTunes song information automatically; CD Art Display no longer required. - Multiple new skins, including a miniature calendar, system uptime, wireless signal strength, and even your local sunrise/sunset times. - Templates are now accessible from the theme manager. --- Special shout-outs to LifeHacker and craeonics for inspiring me to write a better article than I normally would. Mon, 10 Aug 2009 19:42:27 -0500 http://customize.org/blogs/view/381 http://customize.org/blogs/view/381 cuttheredwire news Rainmeter, after being abandoned for quite some time, has been brought back to life. Rainy, maker of the popular calendar app Rainlender, has brought on some help and restarted development as a Google code project. There is a forum and a IRC channel too. For those unfamiliar with the app, Rainmeter is a skinnable system resource monitor for windows. It can give you a readout on just about anything on your computer (and then some). It was the first really flexible app of its kind, blowing old Sysmeter 2 out of the water. Even in its dormant state, dedicated users continued to skin it. It's one of those old school apps I love to see returning to the scene. This may be very good news to another app: LiteStep. One of the unique features of Rainmeter is was that it could run as a LS module (plug-in). It could be completely integrated into your desktop experience. Hopefully the new guard will hold true to this ideal. Special thanks to DragonMage for keeping me in the loop and his dedication to the app. Links: • Site • Forum IRC: irc://irc.freenode.net/rainmeter Thu, 30 Apr 2009 23:31:32 -0500 http://customize.org/blogs/view/367 http://customize.org/blogs/view/367 cuttheredwire news ColorPad, after a long period of dormancy, has had an unexpectedly fast code revamp and release. CodePad has a newer alpha uploaded too. ColorPad is a popular skinnable color picking program; one that's been around for years. This latest release "add(s) support for floating point number format ... commonly used by OpenGL and Direct X". Release notes are in the download (way down in colorpad.txt). The author thought is would take much longer to complete the new version. He only began work on revamping the code in the past few days. Revived activity in an old favorite like this one is more than welcomed. In other news, CodePad has newer alpha (v0.15) uploaded. CodePad is a free-form, skinnable text editor aiming to handle syntax highlighting for HTML and possibly other languages. Bugs will be obvious if you view HTML in it, but it does have basic functionality. You can open and edit text files, which is more than the last alpha I had could do. Still, the author has a renewed interest in the program and plans on improving it. Link: http://matthieu.bizland.com/index.html Chatter: http://www.teknidermy.com/board/index.php/25? Thu, 20 Nov 2008 22:14:56 -0600 http://customize.org/blogs/view/348 http://customize.org/blogs/view/348 cuttheredwire news Good news, the home site for one of the most skinned programs is back: ColorPad! Tonight I got an e-mail from the original author that the site for ColorPad was back on-line. I checked the link, tested the download, and sure enough it was back. Now, this isn't a new version, but hearing from a long lost coder is never a bad sign. My hope is that Val will continue development, and think I speak for the community when I say that. For those wondering: "Why did he contact this guy out of the blue?" It just was so that I could update the archive at skinnables.org, which has long provided a mirror for the app. A warm "thank you" was extended to skinnables.org, and we appreciate the app and the gratitude. Home Page: http://matthieu.bizland.com/index.html Tue, 18 Nov 2008 02:15:38 -0600 http://customize.org/blogs/view/345 http://customize.org/blogs/view/345 cuttheredwire news Xion, the uniquely skinnable audio player, has recently released a new stable version. With over 200 fixes, tweaks, and added connivances, it's worth checking out if only to see what's new. Xion is an audio player designed to be fast, easy on memory, be innovatively easy to skin, and just play music. When it came out, it received a warm welcome by skinners who just were enjoying the skin format of the program. No, it doesn't do as much as WinAmp; no, it isn't as minimal as Foobar. This app does fill a certain role, though: it is a light, skinnable, audio player. If winamp does too much boating for you, or if Foobar's simplicity doesn't have enough glamour for you, then Xion might be what you are looking for. "With 200+ fixes it is well worth the download! There have been many improvements, fixes and changes to make this release well worth the wait." Here are some highlights: 008 - Add wrapping song name 021 - Add support for new animation types that allow volume/balance and progress display 046 - Add support for Installing Skins that aren't in the Xion Interface Directory. Will copy there and open 112 - Add right click menu to Stop button 113 - Add support for "Fade out and Stop" by Shift Clicking the Stop button 114 - Add support for Toggling "Stop after current" by Ctrl Clicking the Stop button 124 - Add Support for the following file formats: mo3,umx,aac,mp4,m4a,ac3,ape,mac,cda,mpc,mp+,mpp,spx,tta,wv,ofr,ofs 123 - Add support for AutoPlay CD's when they are inserted 168 - Add Portable Release build option that builds a version that doesn't access the registry or have support for file types There are a total of 227 changes of various degrees of importance. If you want to see what is new, all changes are listed at the site. A lot of effort into preventing crashes was made. If you didn't use the player in the past due to stability issues, give it a try now. Chances are, it's fixed. If not, let them know about it (at least in a reply here if not, better yet, the forum there). "I've converted from using the FmodEx engine, over to the BASS engine which opens up a large array of new file formats including AAC, MP4, M4A, MPC and APE to name a few." *cough*mo3,umx,aac,mp4,m4a,ac3,ape,mac,cda,mpc,mp+,mpp,spx,tta,wv,ofr,ofs*cough* "This release brings with it many new features for the skin engine which give skinners even more power to create amazing skins." This app was known and loved by several skinners for its easy to use and powerful skinning engine. It just was fun to skin. There are no text files to make or code, yet it can do some crazy stuff. Change 21 ("Add support for new animation types that allow volume/balance and progress display") should be interesting. Everything is controlled by layer naming and internal file manipulation; no dicing and splicing images. I would love to see more programs embrace this method. Links: • Xion HomePage • Download Sun, 29 Apr 2007 16:59:27 -0500 http://customize.org/blogs/view/108 http://customize.org/blogs/view/108