Update

1. No Worries Don't worry... This is nothing to do with the state of PalmOS or Screens. I don't want to say anything just in case something does not happen as planned but I will not be very active on Screens in the next few weeks for some family prime-time. 2. Technical improvements I have uploaded the latest code for the shell bar and while it does not display anything at the moment on the bar (apart from an empty gray slice), the code is ready for loading the menu items from the xml but I still need to write a bit of code for displaying them in the menu list which is not very much code at all thanks to the UIList component which does most of the work for me. I can't wait to show you all an early demo of the slider which while it won't look up to snuff, it should be enough to rub your imaginations of what it could be in the future. 3. Platform status PalmOS is not in the best of shape at the moment and at the looks of things windows mobile is a little stale as well. Apple's iPhone seems to be the new kid on the block and hopefully won't suffer the same slowdown in a few years as PalmOS and Windows Mobile have suffered. I just bought an iPod Touch... Not for Screens but for personal productivity. I will keep my LifeDrive around for Screens development. I am not changing development sides but I need a device that won't crash all the time and the iPod Touch seems to cover that need. 4. Hope for the future Screens is still alive and kicking better than ever before and I hope you agree with me after the last few months of great activity. I am amazed how suddenly everything has been going great for Screens, how I am able to get so much done after so many years for absolute nothing. Thanks for keeping an eye on this blog, I hope the blog gets more interesting as time goes by as I pile the features on and getting Screens ready for the 1.0 release. Hopefully it will be this year but looking at my record, don't take my word for it.

A bit more thought

I added the rectangle when moving a window that shows the border that will cause the window to maximize.

I still need to do a bit more design before I can finalize on the system bar and finish a first draft of its implementation. Hopefully I can have something by the middle of next week.

About the patents... It does not matter since the code is already public domain and I don't mind if someone else copies the idea, but thanks for thinking that its worth a patent in the first place.

Its getting really exiting (SVN 0.73)

Things are moving along again and every small step is shaping Screens into a much more usable demo. Here is a demo of the maximize/restore feature I told you all about which I hope you will like:

I found it very practical and easy to use and I wonder why no one else uses this method instead of small buttons. When the shell will be finished, you will be able to minimize windows by just dragging them to the bar at the bottom of the screen.

Screens object storage itself does not use the multi-tasking API's but then again since its cooperative multi-tasking, they don't need to. The advantage of cooperative is that the code does not have to worry about being stopped in the middle of processing. Switching of threads only happens when they call CoreThreadYield.

Moving along the shells (SVN 0.71)

Sorry for the lack of updates but this has been a slow period since not much changes from a visual perspective but alot has changed under the hood making way for the shell bar + slider. Windows can now be maximized by dragging their title to the top of the display and can be restored by dragging the title back into the middle of the screen. I hope you like it, I will upload a video soon showing this feature.

Maximizing along (SVN 0.68)

I have added maximize/restore ability to windows and added the window title text.

I will be starting shortly on the shell package which manages the Safire main system parts which is the slider menu and system bar.

I am designing the last API parts of the menu. Note that because I have not implemented timers, there will be no animations in the slider but it will still give the effect.

I can't wait to try the slider myself and show it to all of you.

On my way (SVN 0.66)

Details of my shell design are really coming along and I am starting to implement the basics to support the Safire shell. I already know more or less how the UI will look and I cannot wait to show you a demo of it. Now that all the platform main problems are behind me, I can finally start do things that are more user visible. A bunch of moving windows is not enough to spark user interest but I feel the shell will spark that interest.

I don't know how long it will take me, but I am trying to put as much time as I can on the project even though I have a full time job.