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Friday, August 20, 2010

Software Analysis–Desktop Manager (Organizing the Windows Desktop made easy)

Softwarenalysis_Cyan
I was developing this software for months and now finally, I have released its stable version. Desktop Manager a.k.a Violet Desktop makes it easy for you to access your favorite applications. It has a standard layout consisting of launchers. Take a look below:
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The program takes care of itself and by default four launchers are available namely, ‘Notepad’, ‘Windows Configuration’, ‘Command Prompt’ and ‘Configure’. All these four launchers are easy to access and can be launched by a click or touch of a finger. I’ve not yet tested its efficiency on touch screens but this is ready for it. Targeting touch screens, I have made launchers larger so that they are much more easier to access and read. Like windows desktop, you can associate anything to a launcher – a file or executable. However, at this stage, folders cannot be associated because it is a bit more hard to manage folders that way.
Since this is first version, there is not much to do. However, the application is fully customizable and you can even change the background to a picture or something like that. But please be aware that background picture might slow down the application to a great extent. So, make sure that you have enough resources available.

The interface has been divided into three parts, Left vertical narrow pane is the settings pane. Settings pane has several options which allow you to modify, remove, rename and stylize the launchers. However, option to stylize launcher has not been completed yet and so might make the application unstable if you are running it on a low resource computer.
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Right vertical wide pane is the launcher pane. It houses all the launchers of the application. You can add up to 30 launchers in this pane. Each launcher is interactive. As soon as you hover your mouse over it, it displays extension of the linked file and size of that file. This makes it even easier to manage them. Each launcher changes its behavior depending on the mode its in. When the application is launched, its in User mode. In user mode, launchers behave normally. Upon clicking them, they launch the file or executable to which they have been linked and when you hover them, extension and size is displayed. However, the mode can be changed by clicking either of ‘Mode’, ‘Remove’ and ‘Rename’ buttons.
Last pane is the bottom horizontal pane. It is status pane which tells you date, time, mode and the status of your laptop battery. It also tells if you are online or offline which makes it easier than the traditional windows taskbar.
Since I have designed this application to suite my needs, I find it very helpful to myself. I’ll be uploading this app on my blog soon.
This software has been designed to be a lot faster and stable than windows desktop and so, I have not included any flashy stuff in this version. However, next version will be more flashy and will also offer a huge amount of configurations for users. If you have any suggestions or inquiries, please leave them in comments section and I’ll be answering them soon.

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