I thought it might be helpful if some of the ideas voiced in the forum were centralized in a single topic so I made a list of things that would be helpful for the upcoming builds.

• Limit the included skins to 3-10 most popular skins.
• If possible install ALL skins to DS Applications folder not the DS Program Files folder to avoid multiple copies when using DSPACKAGE installation.
• Fix DSPACKAGE installation for plugins
• Create automatic installation options for newsfeeds and command line customizations.
• In Add Panel window have menu start at top of list, not middle.
• Import/Export Settings Button to make and restore backups of DS layouts.
• Floating Panels
• Faster loading of Toolbar menus.
• Scrolling of Toolbar folder menus.
• Support for non-Weather.com weather information sources.
• Global refresh button to refresh ALL panels simultaniously.
• Atom XML support in Newsroom Panel.

If anyone opposes these suggestions or has more to add feel free to voice your opinions. I just thought it could be helpful to see some of the popular requests that have been posted all in one place rather than scattered around the forum.

~acommonjo

EDIT: Strikethrough items on the list have been implemented.

Just the addition that Import/Export settings should include
newsfeeds.

You can import or export newsfeeds.Or maybe you mean that along with the backup option there shuld be also newsfeeds?

I think that DoItJust was talking about including all the users Newsfeeds in the backup along with the users custom sidebar panels and layout.

~acommonjo

Yes that's a good idea.

Why not go 1 step further, and use flash graphics to display the results from whatever panel.

It would consume less bandwidth in sending/receiving data, i think.

Here's my real list.

1. Direct Integration with DS Forums
2. Faster Load time of DS Options
3. Support Atom/XML Datafeeds
4. If you are web browsing, ds could have a comment box, to help share thoughts about different web sites.
5. Come up with it's own version of instant messager that requires ds to be running to communicate, so we can inherently communicate with other dsers.
6. P2P capability with DS to send files/messages to other dsers

heres my $0.02 worth

1. Faster loading of menu's in toolbar panel
2. floating panels
3. global refreash button (that refreashes all panels in one click)
4. extended weather forcasts from non-weather.com sources like weatherbug
5. ability to pin DS open, without having to disable autohide

ill probably think of something more and add to the list later but im really sleepy now...

I updated my first post to include some of the suggestions mentioned by others in this topic thread. I didn't add the ones that I felt were not needed, at least not while the developers still have to focus on getting rid of their bugs list.

~acommonjo

Unfortunately some of these requests require significant effort so it will be difficult to implement them soon but I added them to my “to do” list and we will see…

I have a small but cool suggestion :
I think that it will be cool to have a small animation while DS loads itself.Maybe even there will be an option to set any gif file to be shown while it loads itself.
Maybe even more-the skin deigner will be able to set its skin to show the animation he wants so it will fit the skin.
It can be nice although I know that it may lower the system performance.
I don't mind to design some cool animations for DS load time.

Being the simplist that I am, why not just have the Blue skin only packaged with the install and then the users can get the skins they want.

I think the only way this would happen is if

1) There was an easy way to download and apply the skins right within DS
and
2) Each skin could be previewed

Otherwise most users won't bother.

Here are my suggestion regarding skins

1: Only include 3 basic Windows skins with the installation, to make it leaner and faster.
2: New skins will be only available in the forums or skinning page
3: ALL new skins MUST come with a screenshot.
4: Screenshots must follow certain standards. They must include the clock, newsfeed, calendar, stock, slideshow, stack, etc (we need to decide on a standard for screenshots that will cover all basic panels and features)
5: If the skin included mirroring code, then a mirror screenshot can be provided.

Once this is done, then it is allright if we dont have a preview capability. Screenshots that have all basic panels in them should give a fairly complete indication of what the skin will look like on your computer.

DS should have a skins previewer-when you see the skins list there will be an option to see a skin previewer.The skin previewer will contain a list of all avilable skins and each time a user selects a skin it will show him the screenshot of it.The screen shot should be customizable so that the user wil be able to decide how he wants to see it-with a certain panel,docked to the left or to the right.That way it will solve the problem.

If not,I think that an auto apply option when selecting each skin in the skins tab will be enough.

I think somebody mentioned this before so sorry if I repeated it, but it would be really neat if you could change/load/save panel configurations on the fly. I could have it show the default panels that we all see when we install for the first time...then switch on a click to the configuration I have now with everything and in the places I had. Then would allow me to configure a "road" package of panels, but when I get to the office...I could click and it would open the layout I wanted.

You mean something like "Media Configuration" for having only the WMP and Winamp panels shown,or a "News Configuration" for having the newsroom panel and the mail panel shown?Such thing could be a great idea if it become avilable.