Hi Bill,
Good to know that you have now reached second stage: acceptance :-).
Revolution is not Konfabulator.
So the question is, WHY aren't there more of them for Rev?
The K. site lists over 1500 "widgets" that do everything from
display RSS
feeds to displaying the current position of the International Space
Station.
I believe I have said exactly the same on this list a year ago. I
agree, K. Widgets are cool. I love the translucent designs.
I started writing widgety stacks for a week or two, when evaluating
revolution. Like you, expressing the view that revolution would
attract so much more users with a gallery of widgets the Konfab
style. I bought a few books on design, photoshop, etc. and I gave it
a start. Damn, they are not easy to design. You need to have artistic
talent (like Scott) to achieve that kind of result. But that's not
really the issue. You can follow tutorials step by step and get there.
My answer to your question is that we don't have galleries with 1500
widgets because that's TOO simple with revolution. I am a hobbyist,
with no formal training in computer science and most of them don't
take more than an hour or two to program. If you want an idea of some
widgets very easy to reproduce with revolution (in fact easier to
code with revolution than konfabulator), have a look at:
http://revolution.lexicall.org/listing.php
- Make a sample RSS displayer that could be tweaked easy with new
graphics
and a different URL.
Did it. Didn't take me more than 2 hours. No fun. See RSS reader at
the bottom of:
<http://revolution.lexicall.org/listing.php>
- One of the top Widgets is a Calvin and Hobbes fetcher. A guy
called "DMP"
has something that does this for a site called uComics. (But it
doesn't
work.) Get that thing brushed up, gel-ified, airbrushed.
I did better, shows the matches of a google image search. Did it. No
more than a few hours. Not difficult enough. See "Viewer for Google
Image Search" at the bottom of
<http://revolution.lexicall.org/listing.php>
I also get the application to update my blog "Blog Updater" or a
"Font Utils".
Too easy to keep me going!
But if you write such widgets, then download the "metafile creator"
in the education gallery and specify a few information about your
stack. You can even take a snapshot. If you send me the metadatafile
by email along with the gif file with the screen capture (and the
stack if you have no place to host it yourself), then it will be
promptly added to the gallery. I am ready to add a konfab section
just for you!
Yes, I fully agree with you, it's a few years behind in terms of UI.
There are good chances that's one of the improvement we can expect as
this has been mentioned many times on this list. But man, open the
bonnet and get to discover the engine. They are not behind there.
What could you tell people about RunRev if it *REALLY* took an hour
for someone to make one of these pretty gizmos???
Yes, some of them toke less than 2 hours. 30 minutes programming, 1h
playing with photoshop.
Thomas wrote:
What I think is needed is a set of guidelines or templates like you
said. Sort of the way the Revolution Online scripting conference
stacks are similarly following a format BUT for the widgets it is
the actual look and feel that changes and the template is for the
floating and coding and expected behavior of the widgets when
deployed.
Thomas, I am very much interested in this approach, but in a more
"useful" area. See: <http://projects.lexicall.org/exercist/>. I will
have to think on how to treat common parts of some applications as
widgets that can easily be moved from one application to another,
with a skin that can be easily replaced by another. I would love to
see what you have come up with for your "application profiler" that
you recently presented as a case study on this list. If there are
parts that you can make public, please consider putting me among the
recipients of the email.
Marielle
PS. Guys, I have been very impressed by the way you acted during the
flame episode. My hat to you.
So,
- if someone wants to create a vector-based clock that kind of
looks ok in
Revolution, we have all the tools for it in this thread.
- if someone wants a really cool looking clock (or really cool looking
"anything"), they should hire Scott Rossi
- if someone wants to create an exact replica of the K. clock in
Rev, they
should give up, which is what I did :)
Bill
------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------
Marielle Lange (PhD), Psycholinguist
Alternative emails: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Homepage
http://homepages.lexicall.org/mlange/
Easy access to lexical databases http://lexicall.org
Supporting Education Technologists http://
revolution.lexicall.org/wiki
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