Portable Apps Menu Mod Draggable Version * outdated *

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July 9, 2007 - 5:39am

xrxca

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Portable Apps Menu Mod Draggable Version * outdated *

New version posted: Link
OK, so netroid9 is finished for the time being, I was going to send him these mods, so instead I've added them myself.
For now there is just one change, but it needs testing (especially by others with multiple monitors) and that is the menu can now be dragged around on screen, left click and drag anywhere that isn't an active control (button etc) and you can move the menu around the screen.
More Information & Download
It will keep it's position between sessions, however when it starts up (or you switch themes) if any part of the menu is not on the monitor that the center of the form is on the menu will be shifted to put it all on that monitor.

I have some further ideas, keyboard movement and selection in the menu, categories etc.

I've given it a release number of 20 to differentiate it from netroid9s versions, I should probably have started at 1, but...

Feedback on how everyone thinks categories should work (not to mention any bugs) would be appreciated.

Disclaimer: Please be aware this version of the PortableApps Menu is a modification of the original version by PortableApps.com and is not officially supported.

July 9, 2007 - 5:55am

Patrick Patience

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Cool.

Sounds like fun, I will try.

Edit: Tried it, it shows up about a centimeter above the normal height on 1280x800, won't drag beyond the top of the screen, will drag beyong the sides and bottom of screen, which is okay, but if there is a fix to make it stop at the borders of the screen, that would be cool, otherwise, works fantastic, thanks.

Edit 2: However, restore position makes it go right back to it's regular spot just above the taskbar.

P.S.

Centimeter

=
____
_______________________________________________
It's kinda scary when my desktop is messier than my room...

July 9, 2007 - 6:00am

(Reply to #2) #3

xrxca

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Great, but...

Thats because I had a saved location in the PortableAppsMenu.ini file, I have fixed that (sort of), But need to handle no entry in there correctly (it doesn't at the moment at least on multiple monitor systems, it ends up at the very bottom right)
I'm Canadian, I know Metric (grumble) so centimeter is no problem
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July 9, 2007 - 6:09am

(Reply to #3) #4

Patrick Patience

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Yay!

Another Candian! Whoopy

Lol, too excited.

What Prov? Or Terri?

And would you like me to make the zip an installer?

Edit: Oh well, it's already done.

_______________________________________________
It's kinda scary when my desktop is messier than my room...

July 9, 2007 - 6:09am

(Reply to #4) #5

xrxca

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Alberta

Alberta, went Stampeding last night (Calgary Exhibition and Stampede) don't live in Calgary, was just in for the day.

As for stopping at the edge I could make that an option (my first attempt did so, but it didn't handle multiple monitors at all so I went back to the drawing board), I like being able to drag off the edge to see whats underneath.

If you wish you could turn it into an installer, however I'll be making more changes tomorrow night, I'm off for the night.
_________________________
* user (noun) usually offensive : a person affected with idiocy, often used as an explicative after hanging up the phone.

_________________________
* programmer (noun) : a predominantly nocturnal creature fueled by either Caffeine or Sugar (Or Both).

July 9, 2007 - 6:12am

(Reply to #5) #6

Patrick Patience

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Ahh.

I'm from Ontario.

6:11 at the moment. I guess 4:11 over their?

I still haven't slept either.

P.S. Read me edit in the previous post.

Oopsy, the installer has my ini setting. Oh well.

_______________________________________________
It's kinda scary when my desktop is messier than my room...

July 9, 2007 - 7:29am

incubus

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hi so if u need translation ive done it for netroid9 the german one
u can simply mail it to me if u do any changes to the english locales

greetz

July 9, 2007 - 11:35am

(Reply to #7) #8

xrxca

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great

When I get the categories working I'll be looking for translations for sure.
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* user (noun) usually offensive : a person affected with idiocy, often used as an explicative after hanging up the phone.

_________________________
* programmer (noun) : a predominantly nocturnal creature fueled by either Caffeine or Sugar (Or Both).

July 9, 2007 - 11:40am

(Reply to #8) #9

incubus

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no prob

just send me youre email
best way post it in my Kontakt Formular
@ www.homeinc.de

greetz incubus

July 9, 2007 - 7:42am

#10

ozbodd

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Categories

I keep seeing 'vista like' thrown around, I've never used it, my office has one vista machine and the user of it switched to the standard menu after about a week so when I'm at his machine I see the old menu. If I understand correctly what people are looking for is a simple tree ie:

Item 1
Another Item
Menu
  Sub Item
  Sub Item
Another Menu
  Another Item
  Yet Again
Collapsed Menu
Top Level Item Again
Item

I've created logic to handle just that in a curses environment for a unix oil/gas accounting app that I wrote, the logic should translate well.

I'm thinking a critical item to this is the ability to sort items how you want, not just Alphanumeric (Annoys me to the point that my own apps all have a number at the start so they comes in the order I want.)

Then we get to the issue of Sub/Sub Menus, I think the first pass will not support this however it may be easy when I actually get to it.

Now do I force the user to sort his app folders into menus, I'm thinking not, but I am thinking that subfolders should be available under apps to make organizing easier ie: if the program finds a folder under the apps with nothing but other folders it should drop down and check them for additional apps.

I'm thinking the sorting and categories selection could all be done from the popup menu for an individual app, by adding to the menu:

Move
  Top
  Up
  Down
  Bottom
Category (For AppItem)
  Cat 1
  Cat Other
  Cat Joe
  None
  -------
  New Category
Category (For Menu Item)
  Delete
  Rename (Not really needed as app rename would do it)
  New

Now the question is how do I indicate that it's a menu and not an app item, I suppose a folder like icon might do it, but on the other hand if you wanted to have custom icons for the menu why not? I'm thinking this all goes into the theme, the
only addition over the current AppButtons would be default icon and suboffset for positioning the subitems

[MenuButtons]
TransparentColorR=206
TransparentColorG=206
TransparentColorB=206
FontName=Tahoma
FontColorR=100
FontColorG=100
FontColorB=100
OffsetX=0
OffsetY=0
Bold=1
Italic=0
Underline=0
StrikeOut=0
SubOffset=10
DefaultIcon=IconTheme\Folder.ico

That said, I'm assuming the icons in the package are GPL'd and as such I can modify one to get rid of the music note for instance to turn it into a simply folder.

I've actually done quite a bit of problem solving in my head while writing this, all I need to do now is decide how to store the categories and sorting (and should I put it in it's own ini file separate from PortableAppsMenu.ini) I need to take a look at how netroid stored the info for the DB option as I'll have to change that.

Finally where should a new item be added when it's found, I'm thinking either new items Alpha sorted at top or bottom of top level, OR a New Items Category gets created if it doesn't exist or added to if it does.

Comments?
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* user (noun) usually offensive : a person affected with idiocy, often used as an explicative after hanging up the phone.

_________________________
* programmer (noun) : a predominantly nocturnal creature fueled by either Caffeine or Sugar (Or Both).

July 9, 2007 - 12:45pm

(Reply to #18) #19

incubus

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if u looking for gpl 'd icons

Hmmm
All Icons released under Ubuntu or other Linux
are gpl d and look even better then the windows ones

July 9, 2007 - 1:02pm

(Reply to #19) #20

yurzub

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<3 You make my days bright

July 9, 2007 - 1:09pm

(Reply to #20) #21

ozbodd

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Icons

http://tango.freedesktop.org/Tango_Icon_Gallery

July 9, 2007 - 12:53pm

#22

LittleUnkn0wn

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Hmmm...

Is it a mod of netroid's menu, or just the normal menu?
=====================
There are 10 kind of people in this world: those who understand binary, and those with friends.

July 9, 2007 - 1:05pm

(Reply to #22) #23

yurzub

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its netdroid9's r15 cont'd.

July 9, 2007 - 1:06pm

(Reply to #23) #24

xrxca

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Netroid9s

As I mention on my Info page it is based totally on netdroid9's Mod R15, I started with that as the base code, and am now hacking and slashing my way through it. (Thats hacking as in machete)
_________________________
* user (noun) usually offensive : a person affected with idiocy, often used as an explicative after hanging up the phone.

_________________________
* programmer (noun) : a predominantly nocturnal creature fueled by either Caffeine or Sugar (Or Both).

July 9, 2007 - 2:08pm

(Reply to #24) #25

LittleUnkn0wn

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Ah, ok

I see that now. I am using it right now and I like it very much. Good work!
=====================
There are 10 kind of people in this world: those who understand binary, and those with friends.

July 9, 2007 - 1:05pm

#26

ozbodd

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Nice ramble, could become a

Nice ramble, could become a tutorial ...

I think categories should come first and unsorted apps below, this is consistent with all file explorers.

Am I right you are thinking of building the category menu by finding apps in a similar folder structure? This may break the CommonFiles structure John has developed for JAVA and GTK. Using Pafdata files would be better if it can be done

BTW love the themes

July 9, 2007 - 1:14pm

(Reply to #26) #27

xrxca

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Definately not

And as to order, I think you should be able order them how you want using the movement feature, I personally would want a couple apps right at the top before any folders.

Kind of decided that while I was typing, but I am going to add the ability for the program to go down the tree if it sees a folder with nothing but other folders.
That way for instance, I could create a Work folder that has subfolders in it for each of the apps I use for work (mostly non gpl'd and using my own wrappers on them) and then place this work folder in the regular X:\PortableApps folder and the menu would find the apps underneath it (should that folder have nothing but folders in it, or a flag file of some kind...)
_________________________
* user (noun) usually offensive : a person affected with idiocy, often used as an explicative after hanging up the phone.

_________________________
* programmer (noun) : a predominantly nocturnal creature fueled by either Caffeine or Sugar (Or Both).

July 9, 2007 - 1:20pm

(Reply to #27) #28

yurzub

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go with flag file, because I

go with flag file, because I have folders for old app versions, and they would get noticed without my consent

Although, forced categories [via being noticed by folder structure] seems to overextend the current app finding features, and seems like it might screw with categorizing apps, for example moving one of those apps from the work subfolder to an outer shell, where it would not normally be found.

July 9, 2007 - 1:13pm

(Reply to #28) #29

yurzub

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I've suggested this on

I've suggested this on netdroid/tewan's forum, and in ozbodd's or someone else's topic, I'll just repost for simplicity. I suggested a bunch of logic that made sense to me as to how the categories etc would work...

1. Sorting categories should be a feature, and can be controlled from the main ini. Swapping values for each cat number, or adding another value to the end would be easy.

[AppCategories]
0=Games
1=Security
2=Office
...

2. Sorting Apps [within categories] is a nice but unnecessary feature. simply by splitting apps into categories [folders], the clutter will be so reduced that keeping track of individual apps would be a waste.

3.The category that the aopp would belong to would be defined in the pafdata files for each app, something simple like

Cat=Games

this way, changing the order of categories would preserve category contents.

Actually, that was much shorter and more to the point than what I had before.

July 9, 2007 - 1:25pm

(Reply to #29) #30

xrxca

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Thats more or less how I'd

Thats more or less how I'd implement the sorting, especially since the categories will be renameable.
I've always had a problem with predefined categories myself, calendar apps are a good example, predefined categories just keep getting added and then you've got a list of categories pages long (When I installed sunbird last time I ended up going into the data file to kill most the categories).
Quick, where would you put an FTP client, Network, Communications, Tools, Internet, File Transfer, Utilities...
Now if such an option did get added to the pafdata file I could try to handle it, but the user would have the final say.
If you can sort Categories you should be able to sort Apps no point in doing one and not the other.
_________________________
* user (noun) usually offensive : a person affected with idiocy, often used as an explicative after hanging up the phone.

_________________________
* programmer (noun) : a predominantly nocturnal creature fueled by either Caffeine or Sugar (Or Both).

July 9, 2007 - 1:32pm

(Reply to #30) #31

yurzub

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I guess it might then be

I guess it might then be prudent to have the per category sort position for each app in its paf data file, though you should add handling for moving to a new category [losing the old sort position and adding it to the end]

frankly, you're the boss on this one, as you're the one doing the coding

July 9, 2007 - 5:47pm

#32

incubus

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testet

ive testet it.
Nice work.
have u forget to include the icons from netroid or is there an other reason for this?
and could u add en local read for restore position

thx

July 9, 2007 - 6:40pm

(Reply to #32) #33

xrxca

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Hmmm

I'm not sure what icons you mean, I've checked, and I have included all the icons that were in his release R15.

A bug fix is coming momentarily that has locale entries for Restore Position and Snap to Screen (a quick simple new addition) As well as a few entries that dont have any coding to match them yet, just know what I've got planned.
_________________________
* user (noun) usually offensive : a person affected with idiocy, often used as an explicative after hanging up the phone.

_________________________
* programmer (noun) : a predominantly nocturnal creature fueled by either Caffeine or Sugar (Or Both).

July 9, 2007 - 6:59pm

(Reply to #33) #34

incubus

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i looked maybe i got the icons folder from en earlier release and havent deleted them lol

Ok man then go on with the base code changes

greetz

July 9, 2007 - 6:35pm

#35

Patrick Patience

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Categories.

Although ozbodds concept was quite good and worked quite well, I think tabs along the left or right side of the menu would be categorization.

That could be quite hard though.

_______________________________________________
It's kinda scary when my desktop is messier than my room...

July 9, 2007 - 6:45pm

(Reply to #35) #36

xrxca

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Hmmm hadn't thought of tabs

I'm working on a proof of concept for my changes, I'll look into that as well, just the menu portion so I can test / try a couple different approaches.
_________________________
* user (noun) usually offensive : a person affected with idiocy, often used as an explicative after hanging up the phone.

_________________________
* programmer (noun) : a predominantly nocturnal creature fueled by either Caffeine or Sugar (Or Both).

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