UPDATED: 5/06/2004

Minor updates, update for latest SDK, and initial language support (English and German). Weee. This is pretty close to being it. You can now send me email through it if you have suggestions, requests, comments.

The only planned enhancements remaining is to allow you to create your own "themes" to use.

This is a testable version so the install is not currently included. Once things settle down and I don't see too man bug reports, I'll package the official install. There are plenty of instructions through-out this forum to explain how to install .NET plug-ins with regasm.exe when an installer isn't provided.


******* Install can now be found on the main fileforum.

RegAsm worked for me but the installer didn't. Anyone else?

Me as well.

Matt - Is your development folder on a network path or local? I got an odd reference on the DSI looking for a network resource, thus terminating the install.

I'll take a closer look. It's all local (as I'm working at home on this) but I may have something set weird. I'm not much for installs.

I don't know. The installer worked for me, but DS couldn't load the plugin till I used RegAsm. I didn't get the message about network references. The only message I got was that DS successfully installed the plugin, but it couldn't load it. Using RegAsm made that error go away. Very useful plugin, Matt. Great work!

Eitan

The panel works great. One really nitpicky thing. When DS is loading and I do NOT have this panel minimized, the numbers show up next to the word "Loading..." before any panels are even displayed on DS. Is this normal? While this doesn't affect the behavior of your panel or DS, it just looks a little strange. Is there a way to fix it?

I could not uninstall the plugin completely
can anyone help me out
I have already unregistered the .dll and delete both .dsi and .dll
but when I start DS, it still said cannot load the plugin

I think Mattisking noticed the digital signature issue as I ran into with my own plugin I'm working on.

For the time being, you will still need to register new DLL installed from the DSI using REGASM. Not sure if you did delete the old .plugin file but that needs to go before you try to install his latest one. Then you can go register the DLL, and start up DS. You'll see it when you want to add a new panel.

New, better version coming very, very soon with a fully working installer (and uninstaller). I'm going to work on that weird display bug. I know what causes it but not completely sure the best way around it... I do have an idea, though. The panel is actually loaded up top there and then each of the GetFitHeight methods are called to correctly put the panels in their place. My panel begins it's "paint" cycle before being moved into place which is why you see it up there during the load. Maybe I'll use the timer to force it to wait a few seconds... I'll take a look and see what I can up with.

Oh yeah... make sure you delete the .dsplugin file. You can actually leave the DLL's if you want as long as you remove the .dsplugin file Desktop Sidebar won't care.

I understand the problem. How is it that YOUR panel gets painted first while all the others seem to work just fine?

Because my panel is largely using my own controls where-as most of the others are using controls from the DesktopSidebar SDK.

This one seems to work great for me

-Reg

Bump for new version.

Mattisking,

a big thanks for the work you have done so far! perhaps you can get somehow get ur sys uptime panel added to the standard performance panel (well i think its useful enough to try and get it in there)

just a thought, would it be possible to have the system uptime be shown as simple text as an alternative to chunky characters? with perhaps the 'bold' function if you wanted it to stand out a little more?

cheers,
vampyr

ahhh simple view well that solved that didnt it.

one thing i have noticed when running this panel, is that it causes the rest of the panels to flicker every second basically in beat with the clock. even if i dont show the seconds, it still causes the flickering.

dont know if this is something that can be fixed easily, but yeah.

just figured i would let you know,
vampyr

i installed this plugin now i get an error application can't start because dscontrols.dll was not found.. ??
where can i get this dll


* Edit *

well after i uninstalled and installed the lastest build it seamed to fix the problems i was having.. guess the stable build anit so stable..

Maybe I'm just being an idiot, but the installer does not work for me at all. Windows does not even recognize the .dsi file extension. Any suggestions?

Now I'm assuming that you have DesktopSidebar installed... are you running the latest beta? Maybe that's needed. I'm really not certain but DesktopSidebar should "own" that extension after installation is complete. Though build 59 is a "beta" it's actually much better than the latest release build.

I'll install the beta and see.

Yep, solved it. Thanks

I install it, but i can not find it to add it to the panels...

It's invisible...

As with most of the plugins at the moment it is not compatable with builds 62 or 63. There was a major change in the SDK and the plugin developers need to update thier plugins accordingly before they will work with these builds. I am sure mattisking will post his update plugins as soon as he can, but as of now they are not available.

~acommonjo

I'm just trying to put in the hooks to properly support Multilingual. That way as translations become available I can simply provide an updated .dslang file. Once this is completed all plug-ins will be updated and at least one new one released. Sorry for the wait all. If it takes any longer than the next couple of days I'll just go ahead and release it without multilingual so it can be used by the latest build.

feature request

can you add the following info to the system uptime plugin:

1: current session timer
2: network connection timer (how long have i been online)

Thanks

I'll take a look into those requests.

Great plugin! .I suggest you to develop a clock panel which will operate similar to the system up time panel.I think that that kind of panel will be really cool and it won't be too hard to develop it since it is really similar to the system up time panel!

Rather than developing a new clock panel maybe kdam could add support for skinned numbers in the existing clock panel. There could be a third option Standard, Analog, and a new "Digital" clock. All it would do is set an image for each number rather than printing the text for it.

~acommonjo

But if mattisking have already the code for something similar maybe he can do it sooner than kdam.

System uptime, and others should be included in the perf. panel.
Info is all there in the OS, just to grab and display.
I guess.

if everything is going to be included in the perf panel, then i think i wont be too happy. right now i have a stack with perf panel, IPPanel, and uptime plugin. i had suggested some other info to mattisking that can be included in the uptime panel. then it will have enough to be a panel of its own. if everything is going to be integrated, id really like the seperate versions of the panel to also be available for people like me who like them seperately.

stuffedtiger79- You can always add mutiple copies of the same panel if you don't want everything grouped together.

~acommonjo

I'm getting this error *see pic*. I RegASM'ed the one DLL then I did both and nothing helped, this is with the newest version of Sidebar.

the high CPU usage, is it been resolve already?

Just tried this one undocked and the dividers are pink

still no update? i wanted the panel so much... pls upgrade it

Mattisking is slammed with work from his day job, hence why you haven't seen him in a while. Once he gets through that, he said he will come back with some updates and new releases as well.

as a recent convert to the sidebar, i found the system uptime plugin really cool, but with the new build 69, i follow the instructions to register the plugin (without extracting dsidebarpia.dll but the regasm complains about a missing dependency. so i extract this dll, and it registers ok, but when i restart d/s, it warns me that the dsidebarpia.dll is present and offers to remove it. what should i do - is there an easy fix for this??

thanks

First delete all the files you extracted to DS's directory, there is a new installation method. Download the file from this page (make sure you save it with the DSPACKAGE extension) and double click it while DS is open. The panel should be added (the codebase alert is fine).

hmm - i get a warning from regasm complaining that the /codebase switch cannot be used with unsigned assemblies. see error below. and then d/s crashes and restarts, without the ability to add the new panel...

[forget that - tried it again, and it worked without a problem! ]

Glad to hear you succeeded.

Hello,

I recently discovered your Plugin --- and i love it... the only thing i would like to see, if possible, would be able to see some statistics about past session ... I know, I don't have any idea how to put such a plugin together, but i thought i'd ask anyway

Thx,

Dan

Ok.. let me know what requests are out there... This plugin seems to be my most popular. I have alot of things I want to implement but just haven't had time. Still, if everyone throws in some suggestions I'll make a large effort to get these into the next release. I've hit a spot of "free" time so take advantage of it!

I was just thinking about it now that you brought it up:

Do you think it is possible to put the date and time of when the system was started up in either the details window or in the panel itself? Just so we don't have to do the math

Eitan

Good idea.

Definitely. I'll look into that. One user also wanted to be able to see previous session values. I'll probably implement that as well.

Since the 69 build I use it and it's great (before this panel, and others, makes flashing DS)

I'd really love to put my personal theme... Do you think it is possible in a futur release of this panel ? (I've searching for different pictures of themes, but I think they are in .dll files)

Sigh.... yes you are. I promise. I really do.