One of the projects i am currently working on is Cobalt, which is a IRC Client. Below is my first go at the interface.
Category Archives: Technology
Improvements to Windows 7
(just a quick note, i wrote this quickly, so there may be mistakes, and badly worded bits, so please tell me so i can update it)
I have been using Windows, and Windows 7 for a long time now, but like any operating system it has flaws and problems.
Problem 1 – Upgrading
The biggest problem that some of my friends have encountered is upgrading from a previous version to Windows 7. They need to make the upgrade system more flexible, removing issues such as upgrading from Business to Home Premium which currently requires a clean install. Upgrades also take a lot of time and can be unsuccessful.
Problem 2 – Installers
There are various installer systems for Windows, all of them different. As a user i would really like one underlying installer system that EVERYONE would use. I’m not saying they all need the same UI, but they should all use the same underlying technology, which should be Windows Installer.
They also need to add a auto updater protocol in this so that people can keep their software up to date via one interface. Something similar to Windows Update. This will keep people up to date, which means more stable software, more secure software, but also a way for companies to potentially advertise upgrades to newer versions, and the best bit of it all, the user gets a better experience.
This might also help improve Problem 1, as if everything uses the same installer system, then its easier to migrate programs across.
I know some projects like NSIS wouldn’t like this, but there are plenty of open source Windows Installer based systems for creating installers, e.g. WIX.
Those are the main two issues i see today, there are of course other issues, but they are minor.
Windows 7 has really improved on performance, but there is always more you can do.
Also i would like to be able to install a base version of Windows e.g. Professional, then buy licenses for the extras that appear in higher versions like BitLocker, without having to pay for all of the other extras that come in Ultimate. This would unleash new avenues of revenue for Microsoft, as well as helping to make Windows more modular.
If you have anything to add to this, or that you would like to suggest, then please comment, and i might make a follow up post.
Timetable Converter
Last night i started to learn python, and to practice my new skills, using IronPython i wrote a script to convert a CSV timetable into a iCal file. All the details are here.
Update
Its been a white since I’ve blogged due to various reasons. Most of these reasons are due to various hosting providers misbehaving.
I have still been doing other things.
RedKite v 0.1 was released and although it still needs some UI adjustments, but v 0.2 is well on its way.
I got my phone upgraded to a HTC Hero, which is a truly awesome device, even though i do miss Windows Mobile, Android is actually pretty good, although it does suffer from some rather lame parts of Google Apps, like Calendar which is just absolutely crap.
Windows 7 has been released to manufacturing, and i have been running it on my machines since it was given to MSDN, its brilliant and faster than ever.
I’m currently working on a post about what i would like to see in Windows 8, which should be coming up soon.
RedKite – New UI Design
A few weeks ago one of my misguided friends showed me his favourite twitter client – tweetie, and it has a very good UI layout idea. Rather than having a selection of tabs or filters across the top, it has them down the side. This solves the problem i was trying to solve in the UI of custom created tabs and filters.
So the initial problem was that i wanted a single column of tweets, and from my experience of twitter clients i automatically had the tabs on the top of the column of tweets, this lead to only having 4 tabs before i ran out of space. Anyway i saw tweetie and saw how it did it down the left side and this would solve my problem so i have taken a shot at implementing it.
In this design i have also customized and added extra features, a optional Close button so the tab can be closed, and a number which represents the the number of new tweets in that tab.
I am still working on making the code and templates for this properly, so it can be themed with minimal effort, if you want to take a look at the code, head over to my project on CodePlex and tell me what you think.
I’m about to start working on the Art for the splash screen and icons, so they should be up here soon.