[Karl]

Retrophase Sidebar Beta 2 Preview

This is a sidebar meant to replace the the useless one found with Windows Vista. It displays community-developed tiles. Tiles are written in any .NET language (C#, VB.NET...etc) and use the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) for a vector-based, hardware-driven experience. The sidebar was engineered so that it would be easy for anybody with minimal knowledge of programming to create a tile.

Requirements:
- Windows XP, 2003, or Vista (SP1 untested)
- .NET Framework v3.0 or higher. Some tiles may require v3.5
- Search Tile requires Windows Desktop Search v3.1 on XP only (not required on Vista)

Known Issues (all will be fixed in next beta, unless stated):
- The tile installer does not check if the tile is already installed. This can lead to errors when disabling already disabled tiles. Do not install the same tile twice.
- Undocked flyouts do not remember their positions after reboot or closing the sidebar.
- Sidebar tiles do not remember their positioning when restarting the sidebar
- Sidebar tiles do not automatically scale themselves down when shrinking the sidebar
- Installing a tile is not easy and involves browsing the filesystem. This would be done better with a custom container format and automatic file copying. Will be included in a later version.
- Read the release notes!

Download (ZIP):  Sidebar_Beta_2_Preview.zip (2.03MB)
Number of downloads: 11270 (updated: 8th Feb 2008)
Release Notes:  Release_Notes.txt (4.95K)
Number of downloads: 1363 (for Beta 2 Preview)

For further updates, check THIS site!

Note: Search Tile is not installed on first run, but is included. Install it through the Sidebar Configuration dialog. But remember to install WDS v3.1 if not on Vista, first! The reason it is not installed on first run is because it depends on WDS.

[ingeniouspieman]

Thanks for the update, i look forward to a release

[joejoe]

Great news Karl.

Hope you will start bloggin' again ;-)

[Edootjuh]

YAY! This is the best news I've heard in weeks!
Thank you Karl!

[Karl]

Maybe I will blog it. I'll talk to someone about maybe getting my AXP webspace back...

Running in to problems with Visual Studio at the moment. It doesn't like DataTemplates with types defined in other assemblies - when it compiles, the Data items turn up blank, and when I think I've fixed it, it won't compile :S

Going to update to 2008 when I can find my MSDN-AA details - it's not on MSDN-AA (yet?)

Oh, and I'm going to add a zipped container format (like the .Gadget or whatever that MS has), for easy distribution of tiles and because embedded resources in WPF are massively overcomplicated. So to make tiles easier for everyone to create, you can just assume resources are in the tile's directory.

[Edootjuh]

I hope you'll get your blog.
Otherwise you could still choose a free blogging service.

[ricktendo64]

Will this work on XP?

[Edootjuh]

Karl, on Nov 21 2007, 03:50 PM, said:

does work on XP (but without transparency, as XP doesn't support that hardware accelerated. May make it an option).

[Karl]

Instant search tile is performing very well now (very handy as an app. launcher), and everything scales very nicely (below is a 2x2 scale. Just for fun.)
Note: I have 2 search boxes because I was playing around with it. Normally you'd only have 1.

Also, I've found it doesn't quite work as expected on XP. Will fix sometime.

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[Edootjuh]

it's becoming even better than I thought
Is it gonna overlap the taskbar like you showed in your blog though?

[peacho]

Looks very cool, even if it doesn't work properly on XP. (I'm excited, but I understand that sometimes things get in the way)

[Karl]

The taskbar overlap feature is a little unstable and needs work before it can be released. Note that there's no clean way to shorten the task bar (I asked a few developers on the shell team, and nobody in the room when I asked could think of a way. The taskbar doesn't play like normal AppBars). This means that it's a dirty hack to get the same effect. You literally have to slice a bit of the taskbar's render, whilst moving stuff the exact right amount to make it appear shorter. Oh, and it won't work unless you inject the code into explorer, which makes it angry and crash a lot. Good news is that it works on XP as well.

Anyway, tiles can be fully resized, but the maths concerning calculating scale factors for the containers is making my head spin. - bah, it's not hard, just that one of the tiles had undefined width :S

[Willy]

Looking great and thanks for the heads up! Where could one find a copy of said sidebar? thanks in advance.

[Peteski]

its great to see you working on this again karl, i wish you the best of luck with its development.

Willy, on Nov 24 2007, 06:10 PM, said:

Looking great and thanks for the heads up! Where could one find a copy of said sidebar? thanks in advance.

if you read what's been said prior, then you'll know that its in development.. therefore you can't get a version.

[winlonghorn06]

using a xaml vector based background is a very good idea. I have an idea too. Maybe you could add moderate 3d to the background. I know that it can't be very much because of performance. However, a 3d logo or something like that would be cool.

Edit: oops I missed the part where you mentioned the 3d. lol I was so happy about you deciding to continue the project that I read the news too fast.