KRO Dashboard Widgets for MacOS 10.4 Tiger

[neps]

Hey Everyone! - This message is geared towards our mac users, so I appologize if this doesn't apply to you.

Some of you might remember a year back we released a few widgets for a program called Konfabulator. While a great program, it was shareware, so it kinda wanned on me and others.

Now with MacOS 10.4 Tiger, they've released something similar (many would say rip off) to Konfabulator. So we're releasing the first three of our widgets, with more maybe to come.



Top Left: News Widget - Pulls the latest news posts from our News section

Top Right: Forum Widget - Pulls the latest replies to the topics in the General Forum

Bottom: Forum Search Widget - Search our forum database directly from the widget. (results will display in your browser)

So you download the files, and either double click on them to load them where they are, or move them into your /Library/Widgets folder and load them from inside Dashboard.

These should work great, but if you have any comments or suggestions please let me know!

http://www.knightrideronline.com/widgets/kroforum.zip


http://www.knightrideronline.com/widgets/kronews.zip


http://www.knightrideronline.com/widgets/krosearch.zip

[Knightuser]

It looks good at the screenshots . There is no Windows or Linux version (painful) ......

[ad227529]

Hey Everyone! - This message is geared towards our mac users, so I appologize if this doesn't apply to you.

Some of you might remember a year back we released a few widgets for a program called Konfabulator. While a great program, it was shareware, so it kinda wanned on me and others.

Now with MacOS 10.4 Tiger, they've released something similar (many would say rip off) to Konfabulator. So we're releasing the first three of our widgets, with more maybe to come.



Top Left: News Widget - Pulls the latest news posts from our News section

Top Right: Forum Widget - Pulls the latest replies to the topics in the General Forum

Bottom: Forum Search Widget - Search our forum database directly from the widget. (results will display in your browser)

So you download the files, and either double click on them to load them where they are, or move them into your /Library/Widgets folder and load them from inside Dashboard.

These should work great, but if you have any comments or suggestions please let me know!

http://www.knightrideronline.com/widgets/kroforum.zip


http://www.knightrideronline.com/widgets/kronews.zip


http://www.knightrideronline.com/widgets/krosearch.zip

i. love. you.

[FuzzieDice]

For linux, there's SuperKaramba which can do widgets. For Windows try Stardock's Object Desktop.

Now we need someone to convert them to those formats (don't look at me, I'm no widget programmer. )

[KFCreator]

Thank God for you Neps! You totally kick a--!!! Now my Mac is completely happy! hehe

[KFCreator]

Actually Neil, just noticed something about the News and Forum widgets that may need tweaking--there's no scroll button or feature incorportaed into them so that you can see what the list of Forum/News topics is if it goes beyond the bottom of the "TV screen." It would be awesome if the "scroll up" and "scroll down" buttons looked like ones from KITT's dash! I dunno if it'd be possible, but an option on the back of the widgets to choose things such as the number of topics displayed or the style of the widget would be cool for a future version (assuming work continues on this, which I hope it will). Just thought I'd alert you to these points because they're the only thing, from a functionality standpoint, that I think might need adjustment.

Also, just curious but any chance the look of the News and Forum widgets can look more like KITT's dashboard screens? For an example of a good widget that might look vaguely similar, check out the design of the "TV Tracker" widget that is spotlighted (no pun intended to Mac OS X 10.4 users LOL) on Apple's Widget download page.

Keep up the awesome work! The fact that you even provided widgets for OS X is awesome! Maybe your work will show up on Apple's Widget page or on http://www.dashboardwidgets.com soon!

[neps]

These are things I've been thinking about. I wanted them to look like KITTs monitors, and I think they do a good job of that. I might gloss them up a bit, is that what you were refering to on the TV Tracker? (which is a good widget, but too limited of a view)

For scrolling I was gonna try and maybe keep it simple, like an arrow at the bottom center of the screen that only highlights when you mouse over it and auto scrolls when you are on it. I didn't want to add buttons from the pod cause I didn't think that it was acurate.

I'm gonna add the ability to limit the post amount, but not just yet. I also was going to add an auto refresh, but you can just have it reload by doing apple-R when the widget is selected and it will refresh.

I think these do well for initial releases, not sure how quickly I'll update them, maybe in a week or so, or less if I get curagous. If you feel comfortable in code, you can right click (or ctrl click) on the widget and say "Show Package Contents" inside there is a .js file. Open that up and at the top you should see a URL to Knight Rider Online.

If you goto knightrideronline.com/phpbb/topics_anywhere.php and fill out the form to your liking, a URL will generate. Place that URL in the .js file and you can updated the text inside the widget a bit.

For Windows users, you can try and download Konfabulator at http://www.konfabulator.com. (It is shareware) They now have a windows version and you can try out the widgets we made back then here: http://knightrideronline.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=1637

If anyone is good with code and wants to help out, shoot me a PM!

[neps]

Okay, we've got a beta update here:

http://www.knightrideronline.com/widgets/kroforum2.zip

New features:
Imported some code from RSSBean which allowed the following:
- Scrolling items (can also configure speed)
- Auto Update (configurable via prefs)
Updated interface slightly

Also the items show the topic title and the last post, when you move over the item, it will show you who posted last and the number of replies.

As always, constructive feedback is appreciated.

[Alex T.]

You can do this in windows with a program called Konfabulator, you can create all sorts of cool widgets. It is the exact same thing apple gives you with dashboard.