Desk Drive 1.5.1 fixes two issues and introduces a new translation:
- Icons are not always removed on program exit
- Positional effect not centered on icon
- French translation added
Thanks for the feedback. Also, I just received translations for Galician and Spanish. I'll try to roll these out in the next couple of days.
A few months ago I wrote a quick little Vista gadget called "Calculator" mostly to teach myself how to write Vista gadgets. They're really simple to write if you know a bit of HTML and JavaScript. You can read more about the Calculator gadget from the original post.
What's makes my calculator different is that it's geared towards function vs. pushing buttons and duplicating the look of a calculator. Frankly, I can type faster than I can hit buttons on with the mouse. Also, by not having a button pad, it takes up less screen real estate. It has stack of previously entered values that can be recalled by pressing the up arrow. And if you're so inclined, you can program it. There are several built-in functions including trig functions and It's definitely a function over form approach.
If there was one annoyance I had with it, it was that it displayed decimal numbers to more than two digits of precision. Two digits of precision suffices for most chores and so I added a checkbox with a dollar sign that toggles between full precision and two digits.
I've also right-aligned the text which seems to be what most other calculators do. You can get it from the downloads page. Vista only.
Desk Drive 1.5 adds a new feature many of you have asked for -- Remembered icon positions. Plug-in your USB Stick, move the shortcut that appears to a new location on your desktop and Desk Drive will remember to put it there the next time. (Note, this feature only remembers Desk Drive icons, not all the icons on your desktop)
A new checkbox to activate the "Remember icon positions" has been added to the interface. I added localizations for all the currently supported languages using Google translate for this new item. This means the translations are close but probably not quite right. Feel free to send me corrections.
Speaking of languages, version 1.5 adds Portuguese (Brazilian) to the program. Desk Drive currently supports the following languages.
- German
- Italian
- Slovenian
- Chinese
- Japanese
- Finnish
- Portuguese (Brazilian)
Adding new languages to Desk Drive couldn't be easier. Locate the DeskDrive.exe.xml file (usually located in C:\Program Files\Blue Onion Software\Desk Drive) and change the items labeled "default" to reflect your language. Send it to me and I'll add it to the next release.
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A few of you have emailed asking if it is possible to change the icon that Desk Drive puts on the desktop. Well, the answer is yes with qualifications. There is no option in Desk Drive to change drive icons but it can be done a couple of ways from the Windows itself.
For USB flash drives, create an autorun.inf file in Notepad and add the following:
[autorun]
label=USB Flash Drive bla bla bla...
icon=usbstick.ico
Copy both the autorun.inf and icon file to your flash drive. Next time you plug the flash drive in it will show up with the new label and icon. It will also appear the same way in Windows Explorer. Here's an example from my desktop.
Example USB icon
Another way to modify default drive icons/labels is to edit the registry (in Windows XP at least). There's a great article at markwilson.it that thoroughly explains how to do this.
Does anyone know if Windows Vista supports the same registry settings as XP for drive icons/labels? I did a quick check on my Vista machine and didn't find the required registry entries.
Desk Drive 1.4.7 includes two new features:
- Simplified Chinese translation
- Bring settings window to foreground
The Chinese translation looks cool.
Anyone up for doing traditional Chinese? It's easy. Just edit the DeskDrive.exe.xml file in the distribution. Change the "Default" tags to render in your language of choice. Run the program and see your new translation. Send me the file and I'll add the new translation to the distribution. Don't forget to tell me which language it is since I'll likely not recognize it.
Currently, Desk Drive is translated into the following languages:
- German
- Italian
- Finnish
- Japanese
- Simplified Chinese
- Slovenian
The "Settings" dialog pictured above also had a habit of hiding behind other windows which made it difficult to find. It now comes to the foreground when activated. It also displays in the task bar while visible.
My 9 year old son is nuts about NASCAR. Who knows where he gets it from. I certainly have (make that had) no interest in it. Still, it's what he likes so I do my "Dad-ly" duty and indulge his interest. Actually, as sports interests go, this one is OK by me. Racing is technical, requires skill and determination and most of the drivers are good role models. As a parent, I can't really find fault.
Fortunately for us, we live about 25 miles from one of the best racing facilities in the world -- Michigan International Speedway. MIS is a two mile oval with wide turns and fearsome straightaways. At 180 MPH, these bad boys are lapping the track every 41 seconds. I imagine it's quite a rush to fly around that oval at those speeds.
So this year as a gift for my son's birthday, we went to a NASCAR race. The CarFax 250 is a Saturday race leading up to the big Sunday event. Many of the big names don't race in it. Still, there were plenty of recognizable names in the field including, Tony Stewart, Carl Edwards and Mark Martin. Mark Martin is of particular interest to us since he hails from Batesville, AK, where we visit friends from time to time. Martin has a nice little car museum in his car dealership there that is worth the visit.
MIS is a huge place. You park literally miles from the track and take shuttles to the grandstands. Unlike many places I've been, MIS handles large crowds of people well. Everything is spread out so there's lots of room to walk around. There are very few pinch points. When you arrive, you are greeted with a huge array of vendors. It easily takes a couple of hours to walk around and take it all in. There are the usual car shows, sponsor booths and pretty women to ogle over.
The race itself was a bit of a let down by comparison. There were yellow flags in the first and last lap of the race. In fact, the race was actually won in the pits. With 10 laps to go a caution came out. The leaders all pitted at the same time. We could see the entire pit row where we were seated. The seconds mattered here. Stewart, who was 10 seconds up until the caution, pitted along with Edwards and Martin. By the time they came out, Stewart was 4th, Martin 3rd and Edwards 1st. The difference in pit times could not have been more than 2 seconds. Bummer, because Stewart was running the better race. It looked to be an exciting finish in the last lap when a caution came out in turn 2. Finishing under yellow takes the thrill out of the finish.
Not being a sports fan, I never understood the fascination some people have with identifying with their favorite sports hero. To my surprise, when the race ended, very few people left the stands. Instead, they stayed to watch the driver (Edwards) do a victory lap and customary burnout/spinout. People were actually jumping, shouting and celebrating with all the gusto they could muster. I imagine part of the fun of sports is living vicariously through others. It seemed to me that the victory meant almost as much to the fans as it did to the driver. I just don't have the "sports gene", which I suspect is my loss given the enthusiasm that was going on all around me.
Desk Drive 1.4.5 includes two new languages, Japanese and Finnish. Keep those translations coming.
The installer now adds the correct icon to the start menu application shortcut. This was a simple fix but understanding the problem was more perplexing.
Some of you reported that the "icon was wrong". I kept thinking it was the icon that Desk Drive generates for the shortcuts that appear on the desktop. Finally, someone actually said it was the icon in the start menu (or maybe the application icon, I forget) and the light bulb went on. Sorry for being so dense but there's also an important lesson here. You can't put too much information in a bug report. Details matter!
Keep the comments and suggestions coming!
When it comes to computer desktops, most people fall into two categories. Those who keep their desktops virtually clear of any icons, and those who throw icons on it like a toxic waste dump. I fall into the later category.
Deskview changes the desktop view to the equivalent of Windows explorer's list view. As a result, the icon density increases significantly allowing you to more stuff on your desktop. Here's a couple of before and after pictures from both XP and Vista.
(original source: http://jimcofer.com/personal/?p=208)
As Jim Cofer's article states:
I am not the author of deskview.exe, nor do I know how to contact the author of the software. I have no idea if this software is licensed, and if so, what terms are provided in said license. If you are the author of deskview and want me to remove it, or credit you with its authorship, please don’t hesitate to contact me!
Deskview is the perfect compliment (IMHO) to Desk Drive, my automatic media/drive shortcut for your desktop program. I'm hosting the download here as a mirror to Jim's site because it dovetails so well with Desk Drive. Deskview can be found on the Downloads page.
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