This is actually a bit scary, because you can load sort-of … anything To prove it (you’re gonna love this … I should take a video, really, but it’s time for bed, so this will have to do): check this out Beat that!

So yeah, I have this control written from an earlier project which creates a task list with live preview images. When I say “live previews” I mean actually live, like on the Vista Alt+Tab: if there’s a video playing, you can watch it in there (of course, it dies a horrible death on XP, but I have other code for that).

As a side note the TaskBar2.panel stuff is from the TINS release I made months ago, there’s several fun .panel files in there … but you have to load a bunch of the TINS assemblies first, I didn’t distinguish which ones, I just did:

Of course, in .Net 3.5 the RichTextBox has the ability to go ContentEnabled="true" which should allow those things to be actual controls you can click to switch active task, right-click to get a task menu, etc (although I haven’t tried that yet). We might just have to upgrade

Anyway, it’s past time for bed, so I’ll preempt complaints about how this isn’t ready for release yet with this quote:

I don’t have to take this abuse from you; I’ve got hundreds of people waiting to abuse me. — Bill Murray, “Ghostbusters”

Honestly, I think the icons need some work in this, they’re ridiculously generic in the version he’s showing off in the video (as in: no way to tell one PDF from another PDF), which for me would completely break the program. I would want a faster easier way to “open” the piles without waiting for the pile plugin menu to show up (and I’ve never been a big fan of fisheye menus). That said … the way the drag-select works, and animations for draggins groups of files, and the stacking and pile plugins … are very cool, and just the sort of stuff I’d like to add to the desktop.

Just to be clear, this is a standalone app, and although it’s based a litte bit on the geoShell look, it’s actually a .NET application which requires the .NET 2 Framework…

That said, the big deal is my attempt to rethink what I want in “fast access” to files. DeskOps lets me temporarily add the build folder for the project I’m working on as a pane on my desktop, right alongside my existing application launching bands, and my download band. I can have some bands in large icon mode and some in list or details modes….

The screenshot just doesn’t do it justice, so if you’re curious, you should download DeskOps, and then come back here and peruse the feature list. As a side note: remember, this is beta software, there’s no installer (just unzip somewhere appropriate), and no uninstaller (don’t forget to delete the config file), and especially: not much tech support (feel free to post suggestions and comments on this post )

Here’s a partial list of what it does:

DeskOps Features:

• Creates “Bands” containing ListViews (Large Icon view, small icon view, list, details … )
• Uses Plugins to populate the lists
• Currently (only) includes folder plugin
  • Lets you drag-and-drop files from one pane to another (or to/from your filemanager)

• Lets you launch applications, folders, or files from the pane

Panes:

• snap to each other and to the screen edges
• have a roll-up feature
• have a hide button
• optionally animate in and out

• hide/show from a main panel

Main Panel:

• Has a hotkey for focus (Win+`), and is completely keyboard navigable
• Lets you create new panes (Ctrl+O)
• Has a “bring all panes to front and hide everything else” mode (Win+Alt+`)
• Lets you hide/show panes one at a time (focus, then press a number, or the first letter)

• Can bring up the config (F1) NOTE: Currently just opens the file — you need to have .config files associated with a text editor

Future Plans:

• DeskOps 1 Beta 2
  • Done Major: Config for folders
  • Done Minor: Default settings
  • Done Minor: Save panel positions
  • Done Major: Resizeable panels
  • Done Minor: Hotkeys
• Done Minor: Full Screen Focus View
• DeskOps 1 Beta 3
• Done Major: Details View
• Done Minor: Small Icons View
• Done Minor: List View
• DeskOps 1 Beta 4
• Major: Skin bands
• Major: Custom paint ListView ( transparent background, opaque icons )
• Minor: Additional details for details view (eg: emulate the default explorer view: file type, size, modified)
• Minor: Tool Tips
• Minor: Enable Grouping (on any of the details columns)
• DeskOps 1 Beta 5
• Major: RSS Links List plugin
• Major: Rateable Links List plugin (for my AI project)
• DeskOps 1 FINAL!
• All of the above, but working all at once
• A control panel for settings instead of editing the XML file
• Beyond that …
• Tasks List plugin (with thumbnails) (using grouping)
• Even Bigger Icons?

• Icon-ized Rollups (eg: show as large PNG icon when rolled up)

The bottom line is, I really still want to do all the things I’ve talked about over the last year or two, but I’m still bogged down in real life and not making a whole lot of progress. However, I have whipped together a first-draft of my desktop application …

Have a look at that screenshot, and let me know what you think. Imagine you can have as many of those little semi-transparent windows as you want (ignore Miranda and Rainlendar in the corners). Imagine they gravitate to each other when you move them around, and you can stack them, and they snap-to each others edges. They also collapse to their title bars when you want them to, and if they’re stacked, when you collapse/un-collapse them, they act something like the Outlook sidebar, so they all stay visible. Basically, the intent is that you could leave these on your desktop, and summon one or all of them to the top at the press of a hotkey to launch applications, or just copy files to a work directory.

In the screenshot, the icons come from plugins, so you can have any kinds of items you want … the ones in the screenshot all come from a FolderList plugin, so they represent files/folders and you can drag-and-drop things to/from them (and onto the app shortcuts) at will… but you could easily have a ToDo list, or an RSS feed or something …